Around 7:30 p.m. ET on Tuesday, House GOP leaders pulled consideration of their budget framework amid pushback from fiscal hawks who pledged to vote against the legislation over concerns that it did not include sufficient spending cuts or a substantive plan to address the national debt.

But a few minutes later — after telling lawmakers to go home for the evening — they scrapped that last-minute plan to scrap the vote.

Seeing hope for their budget blueprint, which includes $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and $2 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade, they called members and told them to come back to the House floor for another vote. That bet paid off: the budget framework narrowly passed, 217–215, meaning that House GOP leaders can officially kick-start the reconciliation process.

Given House Republicans’ extremely narrow majority this Congress, attendance was seen as crucial for this vote. Democrats called around to ensure that expected absences would show up on the House floor and oppose the legislation, including Representatives Kevin Mullin (D., Calif.), who is recovering from knee surgery, and Brittany Pettersen (D. Colo.), who is on maternity leave after having had a baby last month.

In the end, House Republicans emerged victorious. Tonight’s vote is a major procedural win for House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.), who has spent the past few months lobbying President Donald Trump to support his “one big, beautiful bill” to enact the White House’s agenda on defense, border security, energy, and tax cuts.

Johnson held meetings on Monday and throughout the day on Tuesday with on-the-fence Republican members concerned about the deficit or potential spending cuts to Medicaid. Those discussions spilled onto the House floor on Tuesday evening: House GOP leaders dragged out the simple suspension vote from the typical 15 minutes to over an hour, as key backers of the budget framework tried to whip holdouts into submission before the vote closed (and reopened).

That whip operation paid off, as House GOP leaders were able to win yes votes from members such as Warren Davidson (R., Ohio), Tim Burchett (R., Tenn.) and Victoria Spartz (R. Ind.), who had spent the whole day telling reporters they planned to vote against the legislation. One can only imagine the words that were exchanged to “convince” those holdouts to change their minds. Only Thomas Massie (R., Ky.), a longtime adversary of Johnson, stood his ground and voted no.

Tonight’s vote is just the start of what’s expected to be an incredibly chaotic legislative agenda this Congress. House GOP leadership still needs to address the debt limit and figure out how to get every member on board with their mammoth reconciliation bill. Further complicating matters is the fast-approaching March 14 government funding deadline.

Given the perennial chaos in the lower chamber, it’s no wonder that Senate Republicans are intent on pursuing their own reconciliation path forward as a fallback option.