


President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” that passed the Senate Tuesday afternoon is back in the House, where it will meet many obstacles ahead of the ambitious goal of final passage before the self-imposed July 4 deadline.
After over 26 hours of debate on and off the Senate floor, the bill cleared the Senate in a 51-50 vote. Sens. Thom Tillis (R-NC), Rand Paul (R-KY), and Susan Collins (R-ME) were the three Republicans who strayed, forcing Vice President JD Vance to intercede and break the logjam.
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But Republicans’ battles are far from over. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) had warned the upper chamber not to stray far from the House-passed bill, given his razor-thin majority. With several modifications made to the text, over two dozen House members are currently holdouts on the major piece of legislation.
Before the bill even reaches the House floor, however, it must pass through the Rules Committee, where at least one GOP member has pledged to vote against advancing the legislation: Fiscal Hawk Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC). If two more members join him, it could prevent the bill from moving forward. The Rules Committee convened to debate the legislation shortly after 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday.
Norman, who sits on the House Rules Committee, said the bill is a “non-starter” for him.
“What we ought to do is take exactly the House bill that we sent over and go home and say, ‘When you’re serious, come back,’” Norman told reporters heading into the Rules Committee meeting on Tuesday afternoon. “That’s my message. Send the House bill back. When they’re serious, come back to us.”
Norman said he’s a no on everything: the rule vote out of committee, the rule on the floor, and the bill for final passage as it stands right now. Many of his other colleagues are in the same boat.
House GOP “no” votes have been racking up over the last week as the Senate made several changes and the parliamentarian threw out provisions related to Medicaid designed to offset the cost of making Trump’s 2017 tax cuts permanent. Fiscal hawks hoped the upper chamber would improve the bill by making more spending cuts through slashes to Medicaid and a more aggressive phase-out of Biden-era green energy credits.
Rep. David Valadao (R-CA) said in a statement this weekend that he will not support a reconciliation bill that “makes harmful cuts to Medicaid” and that he backs the House’s version of the bill.
“I urge my Senate colleagues to stick to the Medicaid provisions in H.R. 1 — otherwise, I will vote no.”
Medicaid has been a sore spot for Republicans in both chambers. The Senate lowered the provider tax, which the states use to help fund Medicaid, from 6% to 3.5% starting in 2028, whereas the House bill simply froze it. The parliamentarian originally slashed the Medicaid provision from the Senate bill, but GOP leaders reworked the language to preserve it.
However, Fiscal hawks were displeased that many of the steep cuts passed in the House bill were axed by the Senate parliamentarian. One House Republican moved to wipe the Senate bill completely in favor of sending the House’s version back to the upper chamber.
“I don’t work for the Senate parliamentarian. I work for the PEOPLE,” Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) wrote on X. “That’s why I just filed an amendment to delete their dud and replace it with the strong House bill we passed weeks ago. The Senate’s version of the Big Beautiful Bill guts key Trump provisions—all at the behest of an unelected parliamentarian.”
Johnson is now tasked with rallying his caucus behind the Senate’s version of the bill, which includes convincing the House Freedom Caucus to vote for the bill despite it violating its cost-cutting agreements after the Congressional Budget Office said the Senate version would add some $3.3 trillion to deficits over the next decade. Still, the CBO also scored the bill using the current policy baseline and found the legislation would reduce the deficit by $508 billion.
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“The changes the Senate made to the House passed Beautiful Bill, including unacceptable increases to the national debt and the deficit, are going to make passage in the House difficult,” Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-IN), a Freedom Caucus member, said in a post to X.
Fiscal hawks are not the only problem House GOP leadership could run into.
TRUMP’S ‘BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL’ TAX BILL CLEARS SENATE AFTER GOP REBELLION FORCES VANCE TIEBREAKER
Senate Republicans maintained the House’s $40,000 cap on state and local tax deductions after many weeks of discussions. The controversial issue for blue-state House Republicans, whose constituents pay higher state taxes, would quadruple the current rate of $10,000. This provision was crucial to win over key SALT proponents such as Reps. Mike Lawler (R-NY) and Nick LaLota (R-NY).
However, this deal could still run into some problems in the House after the Senate’s version included language allowing the cap to last only five years before snapping back to the $10,000 limit. LaLota said last week he rejected the deal.