


It is, by now, a well-worn routine.
Spending hawks in the House declare their irrevocable opposition to the fiscal legislation G.O.P. leaders are advancing. They savage it for days as irresponsible and insupportable, condemning its impact on the already soaring federal debt. Suspense builds: Will this be the time they defy their leaders and President Trump and vote no?
Then, after meetings and calls with Mr. Trump and much arm-twisting on the House floor, they cave.
House Republican leaders hoped on Wednesday that that pattern would hold as they raced to pass their party’s behemoth bill to slash taxes and social safety net programs. A refusal to relent could cause Congress to careen past Mr. Trump’s deadline for enacting the bill and derail the legislation that Republicans have toiled for months on to deliver the president’s domestic agenda.
Members of the House Freedom Caucus declared on Wednesday that this time they were dug in, and spent the day meeting with Mr. Trump at the White House and Speaker Mike Johnson at the Capitol, demanding major changes to the legislation the Senate passed on Tuesday.
There is lots in that bill for them to despise. To win the support needed to pass it, Senate G.O.P. leaders added at least another $1 trillion in spending, including a $50 billion fund for rural hospitals to help health care providers absorb the impact of the Medicaid cuts the bill would impose.
It would blunt conservatives’ bid to immediately end clean energy programs created by former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Companies building wind and solar projects could still claim a lucrative tax credit as long as they either began construction within a year of the law’s enactment or put them into service before the end of 2027.
At the behest of the Senate parliamentarian, they struck a provision approved by the House that would ban Medicaid from covering any gender-affirming care for transgender patients. They also eliminated a provision that restricted “Trump Accounts” — $1,000 tax-advantaged investment accounts created by the bill for every baby born in the country — only to the children of U.S. citizens.