Updated April 09, 2025 at 21:18 PM ET
House Republican leaders are delaying a vote on a multi-trillion budget framework meant to advance much of President Trump's domestic agenda because of a critical mass of opposition within their own ranks.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., tried to downplay the rebellion that persisted after days of negotiation, including direct pressure from Trump. The delay is the latest in a series of setbacks for a bill that is meant to be the first step in a lengthy process. Republicans will need near unanimous agreement at every step of the way.
"This is all positive — this is part of the process," Johnson, told reporters after a closed-door meeting with GOP holdouts. "We want everybody to have a high degree of comfort about what is happening here, and we have a small subset of members who weren't totally satisfied with the product as it stands, so we're going to talk about maybe going to conference with [the] Senate or adding an amendment."
He added: "Don't make too much of this."
GOP leadership had projected confidence that the vote would take place Wednesday night, despite brewing dissent among its own ranks.
Fiscal hawks within the House GOP spent the past several days raising alarm over limited cuts to the federal deficit and other issues in the Senate-passed plan, which provides a budget framework for new tax, immigration, defense and energy measures.
Three Republican members voted against a procedural vote to advance the legislation Wednesday afternoon. It is the maximum number of no-votes leaders can afford in order to pass bills in the narrowly divided House.
Hours later, over a dozen members dramatically left the House floor to meet with House leadership while a vote on another bill was held open. That meeting went on for more than an hour.
Missouri Rep. Eric Burlison, a House Freedom Caucus member who was in the room, said he and other skeptics don't trust the Senate, and need guarantees there will be bigger cuts in the final bill.
"I think that this town has got a lot of snakes in the grass who don't want to accomplish it, and anyway that they can they're going to stop it from happening," Burlison said. "And I want to ensure we don't end up in a place where we let the president down in that regard."
That so many Republican House members were willing to rebuke President Trump's public demand that the conference vote yes is notable.
"Just in case there are a couple of Republicans [not] there: you just gotta get there, close your eyes and get there," Trump urged at a National Republican Congressional Committee dinner on Tuesday night. "It's a phenomenal bill. Stop grandstanding. Just stop grandstanding!"
Johnson said he spoke Wednesday evening with Trump and that "he understands and supports the process."
Republicans are working toward a plan they hope will become a hallmark of Trump's second term, including a tax overhaul, a flurry of new policies revamping immigration and other top GOP priorities. First, House and Senate Republicans need to pass identical versions of a budget resolution to get access to reconciliation, a feature of the budget process that bypasses a Senate filibuster tied to Democratic opposition.
During a House Rules Committee meeting Wednesday morning, top panel Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., quoted several House Republicans publicly trashing the Senate plan. He said he would add more orders to Trump's demand to vote for the blueprint anyways.
"Close your ears, cover your ears and hide your calculators," McGovern said. "He wants all of you guys to close your eyes and kiss his ass."
Policy hurdles ahead
Republicans are hoping to bridge the divide by highlighting the areas where they do agree. Both plans would raise the U.S. debt limit by $5 trillion, which would avert a potentially catastrophic default this summer.
Senate and House Republicans also direct similar levels of new funding to a range of GOP policy priorities, including U.S. border enforcement, immigration initiatives and defense spending.
But the two chambers remain trillions of dollars apart in expectations of how much should be cut from the federal budget in this process, triggering an intense intraparty divide.
The Senate plan, which was passed early Saturday after a late night session, directs only about $4 billion in the federal deficit cuts. That falls dramatically short of minimum $1.5 trillion reductions in the House version.
The divide put House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, in an awkward position, seemingly testifying for and against the plan in a House Rules Committee hearing on the framework.
"It's critical that the reconciliation bill be guided by the House's resolution framework, otherwise we do risk adding trillions of dollars to the national debt," he told the panel.
Republicans also agree they'd like to extend the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed in 2017 under Trump's first term. However, the cost of extending those cuts is closely tied to fiscal hawks' concerns. The independent, non-partisan tax analysis arm of Congress, Joint Committee on Taxation, has estimated extending the cuts could cost more than $4 trillion. But there is a significant dispute among Republicans about that cost and how to account for it in the policy writing process.
The tax cuts are set to expire by year end, which Republicans argue would mean a tax hike for millions of Americans.
Leaders add limits to tariff pushback
House Republicans also added a provision to the procedural step that would essentially ban any vote to roll back Trump's tariffs for the next six months. The language was approved along with the measure setting rules for debating the legislation.
Democrats attempted to remove the provision in committee but were voted down.
The decision to add the tariff language to the rule fueled Democrats' attacks on GOP members backing the bill. Top Democrats vowed to hammer swing district Republicans in the midterms for going on the record backing Trump's economic policies.
CJ Warnke, communications director of the House Democrats' Super PAC, known as House Majority PAC or HMP, confirmed the plan in a written statement to NPR.
"House Republicans will today vote to tank the economy, destroy retirement savings, lay off workers, and raise prices," Warnke wrote. "HMP thanks them for writing our ads for us."
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