With the Senate passing its own version of the “big, beautiful bill” around noon on Tuesday, the significantly altered budget reconciliation goes back to the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson will attempt to swiftly send the bill to President Donald Trump’s desk before Republicans’ self-imposed deadline of July 4.
But before the big beautiful bill gets another vote on the House floor, it will have to go through the Rules Committee. Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., a member of that committee, is skeptical that the Senate’s changes to the reconciliation package can survive a vote on the House floor. He spoke to The Daily Signal before heading to the crucial Rules Committee meeting Tuesday afternoon.
“We won’t even have a copy of what is going to be considered,” Norman told The Daily Signal. “We really need to have it in print so we can see it.”
The Rules Committee will now “take it up something that is 980 pages, and nobody’s even read [it].”
While the 13-member Rules Committee is made of nine Republicans and four Democrats, the committee vote will likely be decided by a one-vote margin because Norman and fellow fiscal hawk Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, hold two of the GOP’s seats. “I don’t know how many people will vote it down in Rules Committee,” Norman said. “I’m ready to do that.”
“That’s pretty drastic, but what they presented us is nothing but a list of pork projects to get senators to vote for it, which is crazy,” Norman argued. “To do it on this quick of a notice—it’s something you need time to do.”
Now that the Senate has passed its product, Norman said, “we’ve got to actually debate it” in the House before bringing it to a vote.
“We shouldn’t be trying to pass something we know nothing about,” Norman added. “To go above the debt … that a lot of us had to swallow hard to pass—to go above that almost three quarters of a trillion dollars is unconscionable to me.”
House conservatives have grown increasingly frustrated with the changes the Senate has made to the big beautiful bill, particularly when it comes to government spending levels.
Previously, Johnson struck a deal with fiscal hawks while passing the budget resolution—which governed how the lower chamber went about drafting the budget reconciliation package—that established a relationship between deficit-inducing measures and cuts in government spending. The House could go beyond its original level of tax cuts, just so long as they maintained that ratio.
While Senate Majority Leader John Thune was an outside player in the House’s push to get a budget resolution across the finish line, he and other prominent senators were still involved in negotiations as the House assembled what became the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
On Monday, the House Freedom Caucus pointed out the difference between the House and Senate versions with respect to government spending in an X post:
The House budget framework was clear: no new deficit spending in the One Big Beautiful Bill. The Senate’s version adds $651 billion to the deficit — and that’s before interest costs, which nearly double the total. That’s not fiscal responsibility. It’s not what we agreed to. The Senate must make major changes and should at least be in the ballpark of compliance with the agreed upon House budget framework. Republicans must do better.
Some of the provisions in the Senate package are not what Trump wants in the package, either. Norman pointed to the Inflation Reduction Act green subsidies as an example. “The president wants them done away with. We do, too,” but the Senate keeps key parts of these provisions intact. “To do what he wants, we need to debate it and go back to the drawing board and stop a lot of this insanity,” Norman told The Daily Signal.
If Johnson tries to rush the package to the floor, it is very possible the House could vote against it because the GOP majority is so slim. “It’s not just three people,” Norman said. “I think we’ve got seven to 10 that will just say no, and we’ll sit up here as long as it takes to work something out.”
Previously, Norman, Roy, Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., and Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., have all indicated to The Daily Signal that they could vote no, especially if leadership attempts to jam the House with a swift vote. Other Republican members, such as Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., could also be holdouts.
“Here’s what’s frustrating,” Norman told The Daily Signal. “This is our time. You know, reconciliation was something we may not have another chance at. To control all three branches of government? It’s our time to show conservative values of what we campaigned on.”
When asked about Johnson recently floating another reconciliation package in the future, Norman brushed it off as unserious. “It’s not gonna happen because [tax cuts] are the leverage point,” he said. “So to talk about another one, what’s going to be the leverage for it? If we can’t get it now with the tax cut angle, then how are we going to do it? We won’t.”
“July 4 is an aspirational date,” Norman said of Johnson’s deadline. “I know the president wants it, but I doubt the president wants it in the shape that it’s in now, because it’s none of what [the House] had.”