President Donald Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ could be headed for a House-wide vote as soon as Wednesday night after its approval by a key committee in an 8-4 vote.
The House Rules Committee, the gatekeeper for most legislation before it gets to the full chamber, first met at 1 a.m. Wednesday to advance the massive bill in time for Speaker Mike Johnson’s Memorial Day deadline for sending it to the Senate.
The panel adjourned shortly before 11 p.m. Wednesday after all four Democrats voted against the measure and all present Republicans voted for it. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, was the lone lawmaker to miss the vote.
Proceedings crept on for hours as Democrats on the committee repeatedly accursed Republicans of trying to move the bill ‘in the dead of night’ and of trying to raise costs for working class families at the expense of the wealthy.
Democratic lawmakers also dragged out the process with dozens of amendments that stretched from early Tuesday well into Wednesday.
Republicans, meanwhile, contended the bill is aimed at boosting small businesses, farmers, and low- and middle-income families, while reducing waste, fraud, and abuse in the government safety net.
In a sign of the meeting’s high stakes, Johnson, R-La., himself visited with committee Republicans shortly before 1 a.m. and then again just after sunrise.
But the committee kicked off its meeting to advance the bill with several key outstanding issues – blue state Republicans pushing for a raise in state and local tax (SALT) deduction caps, and conservatives demanding stricter work requirement rules for Medicaid as well as a full repeal of green energy subsidies granted in former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
A long-awaited amendment to the legislation aimed at fixing those issues debuted around 9 p.m. on Wednesday evening.
The amendment would speed up the implementation of Medicaid work requirements for certain able-bodied recipients from 2029 to December 2026, and award states that did not follow Obamacare-era expansion plans with more federal dollars.
It would also end a host of green energy tax subsidies by 2028 if they did not demonstrate relatively quick return on investment.
Democrats, meanwhile, accused Republicans of hastily trying to change the legislation without proper notice.
Johnson told Fox News Digital during his Wednesday 1 a.m. that he was ‘very close’ to a deal with divided House GOP factions.
Returning from that meeting, Johnson signaled the House would press ahead with its vote either late Wednesday or early Thursday.
But the legislation’s passage through the House Rules Committee does not necessarily mean it will fare well in a House-wide vote.
A pair of House Rules Committee members, Roy and Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., and were two of the conservative House Freedom Caucus members who had called for the House-wide vote to be delayed on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the White House bore down hard on those rebels, demanding a vote ‘immediately’ in an official statement of policy that backed the House GOP bill.
Several of those fiscal hawks were more optimistic after a meeting at the White House with Trump and Johnson, however.
Republicans are working to pass Trump’s policies on tax, immigration, energy, defense and the national debt all in one massive bill via the budget reconciliation process.
Budget reconciliation lowers the Senate’s threshold for passage from 60 votes to 51, thereby allowing the party in power to skirt the minority — in this case, Democrats — to pass sweeping pieces of legislation, provided they deal with the federal budget, taxation or the national debt.
House Republicans are hoping to advance Trump’s bill through the House and Senate by the Fourth of July.