{"id":9460,"date":"2025-05-21T00:16:59","date_gmt":"2025-05-21T00:16:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/republicans-close-in-on-big-beautiful-deal\/"},"modified":"2025-05-21T00:16:59","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T00:16:59","slug":"republicans-close-in-on-big-beautiful-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/republicans-close-in-on-big-beautiful-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"Republicans close in on ‘big, beautiful’ deal"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Republican leaders are increasingly confident they will be able to notch a final deal with key GOP megabill holdouts and move toward a final vote in the coming days after several whirlwind hours of closely held negotiations.<\/p>\n

The upbeat turn in the frequently tumultuous talks was described by six senior Republicans who are participating in them. It came after President Donald Trump visited Capitol Hill Tuesday morning to personally urge the warring factions<\/a> to drop their demands and come to an agreement on the sprawling domestic-policy bill centered on a multi-trillion-dollar suite of tax cuts.<\/p>\n

Some of those holdouts emerged from the morning meeting proclaiming ongoing opposition to the current proposal. Behind the scenes, however, many of those obstinate members have been looking for off-ramps \u2014 eager to find a way to \u201cyes\u201d while also proclaiming victory on their particular interests, said the six Republicans, who were granted anonymity to describe the private talks.<\/p>\n

A bitter war waged by blue-state Republicans over the state-and-local-tax deduction, or SALT, is nearing a final resolution, according to people involved in the talks, after GOP leaders offered to slightly sweeten their offer. The group huddled Tuesday evening with Speaker Mike Johnson in hopes of wrapping things up.<\/p>\n

And to win over hard-line conservatives pushing for more spending cuts, Johnson\u2019s team is working to accelerate the phase-out of clean-energy tax credits enacted under former President Joe Biden. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters Tuesday night that the bill would \u201climit dramatically any new projects from starting\u201d using Inflation Reduction Act incentives.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think everybody on both sides have been looking for \u2018outs,\u2019 and I think they\u2019re getting them today,\u201d said one senior GOP aide.<\/p>\n

House leaders are rushing to notch a deal with the various factions ahead of a scheduled 1 a.m. Rules Committee meeting, where the bill will be readied for floor consideration. Johnson has imposed a Memorial Day deadline for a final House vote and is holding out hope that things could be wrapped up as soon as Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’ve been talking to other sides of the conference,\u201d Scalise said. \u201cBecause, of course, with each of these pieces, for every person that wants to make a change over here, there are people that don’t want to make the change over there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re gonna be up late,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

The progress, however, has been palpable. Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland \u2014 chair of the hard-right Freedom Caucus \u2014 emerged from the morning Trump meeting insisting that he was far from a \u201cyes\u201d and demanding further cuts to Medicaid. By the evening, he declared things were \u201cmoving in the right direction\u201d and was no longer insisting a vote this week was impossible.<\/p>\n

Harris said some major work remains on ironing out the parameters around axing the clean-energy tax credits, but he and other conservatives have all but dropped their push for the steepest cuts to Medicaid following Trump\u2019s insistence Tuesday morning that they leave the program alone.<\/p>\n

GOP leaders have worked to split the opposition, peeling away members who are less dug in on policy principles and are otherwise uncomfortable breaking with the president and the bulk of the party.<\/p>\n

They include Rep. Josh Brecheen (R-Okla.), who has taken a less confrontational stance than fellow fiscal hawks Reps. Chip Roy (R-Texas) or Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) \u2014 and, according to the Republicans involved in the talks, has looked for ways to get on board after helping tank a key Budget Committee vote last Friday, enraging Trump.<\/p>\n

Johnson huddled with Brecheen alone on the House floor Tuesday afternoon. Shortly after, he told reporters he was \u201chopeful\u201d on a deal.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, vulnerable centrists are relieved that Trump told conservatives to back off further cuts to safety-net programs, and the SALT Republicans are heading toward a resolution after a Trump tongue-lashing<\/a>. Leaders are proposing to extend the length of a new $40,000 cap<\/a> to a full 10 years after previous offers would have sunset after shorter windows.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe weren’t even in the same universe a couple of days ago,\u201d said Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) after walking out of Johnson\u2019s office Tuesday night. \u201cWe\u2019re in the same ball field now.\u201d<\/p>\n

GOP leaders aren\u2019t necessarily determined to get every last holdout on board before sending a bill to the Rules Committee. Two key hard-liners who sit on the panel \u2014 Norman and Rep. Morgan Griffith of Virginia \u2014 said Tuesday they were inclined to advance the bill to the floor.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where Johnson\u2019s leadership circle believes they can lean on the final holdouts until they break \u2014 possibly with help from Trump.<\/p>\n

The thinking, several of the Republicans said, is that some members will keep asking for more time until leaders finally call the question: Are you with Trump and your Republican colleagues, or aren\u2019t you? <\/p>\n

And if they insist on voting the bill down, the belief is they would eventually crumble under fierce public pressure from constituents and MAGA loyalists furious about the failure of Trump\u2019s signature bill.<\/p>\n

\u201cThings don\u2019t get better when you hold it out there,\u201d as one senior Republican said.<\/p>\n

Another was more blunt: “It’s easier to break up with someone from a basement over email. Harder to do it in person, face-to-face.\u201d<\/p>\n

Robert King and Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Republican leaders are increasingly confident they will be able to notch a final deal with key GOP megabill holdouts and move toward a final vote in the coming days after several whirlwind hours of closely held negotiations. The upbeat turn in the frequently tumultuous talks was described by six senior Republicans who are participating in […]<\/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-9460","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\/9460","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=9460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9460\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}