{"id":10861,"date":"2025-07-01T21:31:44","date_gmt":"2025-07-01T21:31:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/johnson-trump-push-wary-house-republicans-for-july-4-passage\/"},"modified":"2025-07-01T21:31:44","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T21:31:44","slug":"johnson-trump-push-wary-house-republicans-for-july-4-passage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/johnson-trump-push-wary-house-republicans-for-july-4-passage\/","title":{"rendered":"Johnson, Trump push wary House Republicans for July 4 passage"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Speaker Mike Johnson<\/a> and President Donald Trump are digging in to pass Republicans\u2019 massive tax and safety-net reform bill by Friday in time for a July 4 celebration. The biggest hurdle in their way right now: dozens of House Republican holdouts who are wary the bill doesn\u2019t deliver on key promises they\u2019ve made to their constituents.<\/p>\n

From fiscal hawks to vulnerable centrists worried about the Senate\u2019s steeper Medicaid cuts, a substantial cross-section of the House GOP conference would rather take the time to amend the package and send it back to the Senate. Head GOP rebel Chip Roy <\/a>of Texas said Tuesday the chances of passing a bill out of the House by that deadline are \u201ca hell of a lot lower than they were even 48 hours ago\u201d based on what he saw of the Senate bill.<\/p>\n

And, for now, some are openly questioning Trump\u2019s push to \u201cGET IT DONE\u201d by July 4.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll see. I doubt it,\u201d Roy said.<\/p>\n

But the Republican holdouts\u2019 options are not good. They can either defy Trump or fall in line as they\u2019ve consistently done throughout the last few months.<\/p>\n

GOP hardliner Rep. Ralph Norman<\/a> of South Carolina, as he entered the Rules Committee Tuesday afternoon, told reporters he was a \u201cno\u201d vote on the bill, and that he would oppose the rule on the floor and the bill for final passage.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we ought to do is take exactly the House bill that we sent over and go home and say, \u2018When you’re serious, come back.\u2019 That’s my message,\u201d Norman said. \u201cI\u2019ll work all weekend.\u201d Fellow Freedom Caucus member Andy Ogles<\/a> followed up with a post also arguing for a delay. \u201cIf the House doesn\u2019t pass the Senate\u2019s version of the OBBB, then it turns into legislative ping-pong. But that’s okay,\u201d Ogles wrote.<\/p>\n

But GOP leaders quickly made clear that they intend to charge ahead to pass the legislation this week, and without changes.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody’s got different questions about pieces, but ultimately they recognize that this bill is still over 85 percent of what the House said,\u201d Majority Leader Steve Scalise<\/a> told reporters Tuesday. \u201cThe plan is to bring it to the floor as the Senate sent it to us,\u201d he added, noting leaders want to pass the legislation \u201cas soon as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a key sign of the bill\u2019s momentum, influential budget hawks who have been key players in blocking the bill in recent months in order to forge better deals are not raising objections this time. It\u2019s an acknowledgement that Trump and GOP leaders will push through the bill at any cost this week.<\/p>\n

Still, Roy and other ultraconservatives have tried to push back on White House pressure to swallow the bill as is. He argued that Trump officials\u2019 efforts to undercut fiscal hawks\u2019 concerns about the legislation was \u201cgarbage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rep. Victoria Spartz <\/a>(R-Ind.), who frequently acquiesces to Trump\u2019s pressure, also noted the Senate version \u201cviolates the minimum fiscal framework \u2026 by roughly half a trillion dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo members will have a decision to make,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Another significant obstacle for GOP leaders are the dozens of GOP members concerned about deeper Medicaid cuts in the new bill. Many are in competitive districts and already shaken by Sen. Thom Tillis<\/a> (R-N.C.) torching his<\/a> conference\u2019s Medicaid provisions on the Senate floor shortly after he announced his retirement.<\/p>\n

Johnson in recent days tried to push Senate GOP leaders to soften the Medicaid cuts in their bill, to no avail. Privately, he warned<\/a> Republicans the Senate\u2019s approach could lose House Republicans the majority in the midterms. But shortly after the Senate cleared the bill Tuesday, Johnson said he was still pushing to pass the bill by July 4. At the same time, he appeared to acknowledge the reservations among some members.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey went a little further than any of us would have preferred,\u201d Johnson told reporters.<\/p>\n

The alarm among a swath of members about Medicaid has only escalated in recent days. On Monday, Johnson tried to calm anxious GOP members on a call with Main Street Caucus Republicans. But it went south for frustrated Republicans as Mehmet Oz, the Trump official who oversees Medicaid, insisted the<\/a> Senate\u2019s cuts went after waste, fraud and abuse. Even a swath of conservative House Republicans don\u2019t want to vote on the Senate Medicaid cuts as they hear from their state hospital and the health care lobbies.<\/p>\n

Other moderate House Republicans declined to weigh in on the Senate-passed bill. That includes Rep. Don Bacon<\/a>, a key centrist Republican who announced this week he would not seek reelection.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m keeping my powder dry,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Cassandra Dumay, Benjamin Guggenheim and Calen Razor contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Speaker Mike Johnson and President Donald Trump are digging in to pass Republicans\u2019 massive tax and safety-net reform bill by Friday in time for a July 4 celebration. The biggest hurdle in their way right now: dozens of House Republican holdouts who are wary the bill doesn\u2019t deliver on key promises they\u2019ve made to their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10861\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}