WASHINGTON — House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) postponed a key budget vote Wednesday in a setback for President Donald Trump’s domestic policy agenda.

About a dozen far-right members had said before the vote was scheduled to happen that they would oppose the resolution, but Johnson pushed forward anyway.

The speaker held open a previous vote for more than an hour as he haggled with the holdouts, only for them to keep on holding out. Johnson finally gave up and said he would try again on Thursday.

Adopting the budget is a key part of the legislative process Republicans are using to enact Trump’s plan to extend the temporary tax cuts he enacted in his first term, plus increase funding for border security in an eventual piece of legislation nicknamed the “big beautiful bill.”

The setback came shortly after Trump scaled back tariffs he’d just imposed on U.S. trading partners, another signature economic policy that remains unsettled.

The House was scheduled to leave town on Thursday for a two-week recess, but Johnson may keep lawmakers in Washington to try to make progress.

The Senate adopted the budget over the weekend, ignoring a House-passed budget that allowed less room for tax cuts while partially offsetting their cost with cuts to programs like Medicaid and food assistance ― cuts that were too controversial for some Senate Republicans.

The House holdouts hate the Senate budget partly because it uses an accounting gimmick to wave away the $4 trillion cost of extending the tax cuts, with little promise of spending cuts to offset additional tax breaks Trump pitched during his campaign for president last year.

During a fancy dinner event with House Republicans on Tuesday, Trump told them to get over themselves, embrace the Senate budget and forget everything they’ve ever said about fiscal responsibility.

“You just gotta get there. Close your eyes and get there. It’s a phenomenal bill. Stop grandstanding. Just stop grandstanding,” Trump said.

The budget isn’t designed to become law, but rather to instruct congressional committees to draft legislation meeting specific cost targets. Both the House and Senate would later need to vote on that legislation; Democrats would not be able to filibuster the bill thanks to the special two-step budget process Republicans are using.

Earlier on Wednesday afternoon, Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.), one of the holdouts, said he didn’t believe party leaders’ assurances that they could eventually find spending cuts to offset the cost of the tax cuts.

“The Senate is prone to set up to give us the shaft, like they’ve done for decades and decades,” Burlison told reporters. “Every time we get to this moment, it’s like Lucy with the football. They pull the football. They never do the hard thing.”