Despite a stalling tactic by Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, the bill is on track to clear the House by the July 4 deadline set by Trump.
As Hakeem Jeffries, leader of the House Democrats, aims to break the record for longest floor speech ahead of the final debate and vote on the GOP’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” fiscal hawks say they are ready to support the legislation after the president resolved their initial concerns.
Speaker Mike Johnson confirmed to reporters this morning that the president met with two groups of members yesterday and took calls from individual members overnight. Johnson said he last spoke with the president at 1 a.m.
“The president helped answer questions. We had cabinet secretaries involved, and experts in all the fields, and I think they got there,” Johnson said. “He was directly engaged. He was available. If anyone had a question, they could go straight to him.”
Representative Tim Burchett, initially a GOP holdout, said that during meetings yesterday the president and vice president changed his mind to vote yes on the bill. Burchett and all House Republicans except Representative Brian Fitzpatrick voted yes overnight in favor of the procedural vote.
“He and JD Vance were very persuasive in their conversations with us,” Burchett told reporters Thursday. “They were just really informed. You get in a situation with executives where a lot of times, they’ll try to just roll you — that wasn’t the case at all. If he didn’t know the answer, he would find someone who did.”
Fiscal hawks released a three-pager yesterday listing their criticisms of the legislation. According to the list of grievances, the Senate bill (1) increases deficits, (2) fails to terminate Biden’s “Green New Scam,” (3) fails to ensure that illegals are fully removed from Medicaid, (4) eliminates the prohibition on Medicaid and CHIP funding for transgender surgeries, (5) scales back the limits on Planned Parenthood funding from ten years to one, (6) contains excessive pork for Alaska and Hawaii in order to secure votes, (7) includes more expensive SALT provisions to bail out blue states in high-tax jurisdictions.
The discussions centered on these concerns, including enforcing qualifications for Medicaid and qualifications for tax credits in the energy sectors, according to Burchett.
“What he’s going to do is use his powers as chief executive to make sure that the companies that apply for solar credits, as an example, he’s going to make sure that they’re doing what they say when they say they’ve started construction,” Representative Ralph Norman, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, said on CNBC Thursday morning. “He’s going to make sure they’ve done that.”
Asked if he and other GOP holdouts “caved,” Burchett denied the suggestion.
“That’s negotiating, you hold out till you get what you need,” Burchett said.
Johnson said that House Republicans took an appropriate amount of time to assess the Senate modifications to the bill and came to a reasonable conclusion.
“I don’t think they caved,” Johnson said. “I think every member made a thoughtful and informed decision.”
Though the vote continues to be delayed as Jeffries’s floor speech stretches past eight hours, the bill is on track to clear the House in time for the July 4 deadline set by the president. Johnson confirmed that a signing ceremony is in the works at the White House for the occasion.
“If Hakeem Jeffries would stop talking, we could deliver relief for the American people,” Johnson said. “That’s what we’re about to do.”