Congressional Republicans are rushing to advance the crown jewel of President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda — a sweeping tax, energy and border package that they hope will be a boon to businesses and offset the tariff-induced economic turmoil of recent weeks.

But financial firms are watching warily as they lobby lawmakers not to turn Wall Street into a pay-for in the reconciliation package.

A variety of proposals that could eliminate tax breaks used by financial institutions are on the table as Republicans look to pay for tax cuts that Trump has promised. The coming weeks are poised to test GOP lawmakers’ willingness to defy some of their traditional allies in the business world to deliver the “one big, beautiful bill” Trump wants.

The House Financial Services Committee — which oversees Wall Street and its regulators — voted along party lines late Wednesday to approve its portion of the reconciliation package after a nine-hour markup. The legislation, which will be wrapped into the broader reconciliation package, would slash the amount of funding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau can get by almost 60 percent and fold the U.S.’s top audit watchdog, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, into the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Democrats on the panel threw up procedural hurdles to slow the meeting down and offered dozens of amendments that Republicans voted down.

Financial Services Chair French Hill (R-Ark.) said he expects the savings produced by the legislation to exceed the $1 billion in cuts that the panel was required to produce by a budget resolution adopted by both chambers of Congress. But those savings remain a small fraction of what Republicans need to produce to pay for the Trump tax cuts. All eyes are on Congress’ tax-writing committees — House Ways and Means and Senate Finance — which are considering an array of more controversial savings proposals.

Several targets that could touch financial services firms are on the table. Tax writers are expected to release an initial proposal in the coming weeks, but the dynamics could change as the reconciliation bill moves forward and lawmakers look for additional savings.

Most controversially, the Ways and Means panel is weighing whether to close the so-called carried interest loophole, a controversial tax break that gives favorable treatment to the profits earned by private equity firms, hedge funds and venture capital investors. The latest signals suggest Hill Republicans may be souring on the idea, but conversations among tax writers are ongoing. Any effort to kill the tax break would be met with opposition from more business-friendly members, including on Financial Services. Hill told MM last week that the policy “is a major source of economic growth, jobs, that impacts every community in the country — it’s not a loophole.”

Hill and other Financial Services Republicans are also pushing tax writers not to strip municipal bonds of their tax-exempt status. They wrote in a letter to Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith last month that the exemption is “a critical tool that has underpinned American infrastructure and community development for over a century.”

Finally, the U.S.’s credit union lobby is playing defense as lawmakers face calls to strip the institutions of their tax-exempt status — a major lobbying push for community banks. Jim Nussle, the president of America’s Credit Unions and a former Republican lawmaker who chaired the House Budget Committee in the early 2000s, said the industry is “in a strong position going into this.”

But some credit union advocates — like lobbyists representing other segments of the financial services industry — worry that a last-minute deal could put them on the chopping block.

“We take nothing for granted,” Nussle said.

Make no mistake: Medicaid is at the center of the GOP’s challenges as they try to assemble their “big, beautiful” bill. And the problems start at the very top.

Donald Trump is deeply skeptical of the emerging House Republican plan to make deep cuts to Medicaid to pay for the GOP’s megabill. And Speaker Mike Johnson is running out of time to convince him.

Senior House Republicans are expected in the coming days to present Trump with a menu of potential Medicaid changes, along with estimates of the savings they will generate and the impacts on beneficiaries.

Among the options the White House has agreed to consider is “per capita caps” — a controversial proposal that would limit the federal allotment to states that have expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

The Trump administration has other ideas that have nothing to do with Medicaid: White House officials have requested proposals to instead find savings by pursuing a “most favored nation” drug-purchasing policy linking certain government payments for pharmaceuticals to the lower prices paid abroad, reviving a failed push from his first term.

Johnson has been scrambling to secure Trump’s support, shuttling up and down Pennsylvania Avenue and calling him multiple times a day to ensure they remain in lockstep and avoid a repeat of the GOP divisions that doomed the president’s 2017 push to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

But divisions abound: While moderates continue raising concerns about rolling back Medicaid expansion, fiscal hawks have been angling for even steeper cuts to the program. House Freedom Caucus members, including Reps. Chip Roy, Andrew Clyde and chair Andy Harris, met with Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie late into Wednesday night — without reaching an agreement on how to proceed.

GOP senators, meanwhile, were briefed Wednesday on polling and options for Medicaid changes, including new work requirements, during their closed-door lunch by Foundation for Government Accountability’s Tarren Bragdon. Sen. Josh Hawley issued a warning afterward, saying benefit cuts would be “catastrophically unwise.”

Elsewhere, House Republicans are being hammered on multiple other fronts as their megabill dreams come crashing into political reality. Johnson failed Wednesday to resolve his standoff with vulnerable Republicans over raising the cap on state and local tax deductions, even as he expects Ways and Means to take up its draft of the GOP tax plan next week.

Key GOP lawmakers also yanked controversial provisions around car fees and antitrust enforcement from their Wednesday markups. And GOP Rep. Mike Turner is warning that a provision cutting federal government pensions that Oversight Republicans advanced Wednesday won’t pass the full House in its current form.

What else we’re watching:

– Thune’s Ed Martin problem: Senate Majority Leader John Thune has churned through the most controversial of Trump’s nominees, but he’s facing early warning signs over another: Ed Martin, the acting U.S. attorney for D.C. Sen. Thom Tillis, whose Judiciary committee vote could be pivotal, says he plans to meet with Martin as controversy swirls over his past comments about Jan. 6.

– “Skinny budget” incoming?: White House budget director Russ Vought will meet this morning with House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole and his dozen subcommittee chairs. The appropriators are clamoring for Vought to send a “skinny budget” this week, followed quickly by a full budget request, so they can start cranking out their dozen fiscal 2026 funding bills.

– Raining on REINS: Senate Republicans are already casting doubts that the version of the REINS Act that their House counterparts advanced Wednesday as part of Judiciary’s megabill markup can pass muster with their chamber’s parliamentarian. And that’s after House Judiciary Republicans stripped a different provision, on consolidating antitrust oversight, for a similar reason. “They always think they know what the Byrd rule is, and they have no clue what the Byrd rule is,” Sen. Rand Paul said.

Rachael Bade, Adam Cancryn, Jordain Carney, Brian Faler, Meredith Lee Hill and Myah Ward contributed to this report.

A Democratic effort to rebuff President Donald Trump’s sweeping global tariffs failed Wednesday, thanks to two absent senators.

Senators voted 49-49 to reject the national emergency Trump used to impose tariffs of between 10 and 50 percent on many of the United States’ largest trading partners. It came on the same day the Commerce Department revealed that the economy shrank in the year’s first quarter, largely due to Trump’s trade policies.

Three Republicans joined Democrats in rejecting the tariffs: Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky. Paul was a cosponsor of the resolution with Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat.

Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) were missing from the vote, leaving supporters of the resolution short of a majority. Whitehouse was absent because he was returning from the Republic of Korea, where he represented the U.S. at a conference on protecting the ocean from threats like climate change, pollution and overfishing.

McConnell, the former Republican leader, missed several votes Wednesday.

“The Senator has been consistent in opposing tariffs and that a trade war is not in the best interest of American households and businesses,” said David Popp, a spokesperson for McConnell. “He believes that tariffs are a tax increase on everybody.”

The vote was largely symbolic: The House has approved a rule to block a vote on the resolution and Trump has threatened to veto such a measure if it makes it to his desk. Still, the resolution’s failure hands Trump a victory as his administration tries to maintain support for the aggressive tariff platform among increasingly nervous Republicans.

Paul said he felt the vote was more about the debate than the result, because he knew it wasn’t likely to clear Congress.

“Most Republicans are just going along with it, but many of them are quietly still on the other side of this,” Paul said. “They just aren’t willing to say anything yet. But I think if we went through another quarter of negative growth and or another scare in the marketplace, I think there will be more visible voices against the tariffs.”

Yet even lawmakers who defended Trump’s tariffs acknowledged the uncertainty that has come with Trump’s attempts to upend the global trading order, an effort that has tanked consumer sentiment in the U.S. and spooked many businesses and investors.

“I appreciate that many of us in this chamber have heard from constituents concerned about the economic impact of the tariffs,” said Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), who chairs the Senate Finance Committee that oversees trade policy. “All of us are watching this issue closely and working with the administration to find ways to minimize its impact on Americans. We should also be working with the administration to address a shared objective: more opportunities for Americans in foreign markets and an end to discriminatory actions in foreign markets.”

Lisa Kashinsky and Jordain Carney contributed to this report.