GOP holdouts threaten Trump megabill with key vote underway

WNN —
House Republicans remain in a dramatic overnight stalemate as President Donald Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson attempt to cajole nearly a dozen holdouts to support the effort to move forward on the president’s sweeping domestic policy agenda bill.

Johnson has said he plans to keep a key vote to advance the bill open “as long as it takes.” Johnson and his leadership team are whipping members to back the procedural vote in a furious last-minute scramble.

If GOP leadership succeeds, the House would move onto final passage as quickly as possible, following debate on the bill. If the vote fails, however, it would deal a major setback to Republicans, and GOP leaders would need to go back to the drawing board to find a way forward.

A number of House Republicans are — for now — standing in the way of delivering Trump the first major legislative victory of his second term.

For weeks, Trump and his team have promised Hill Republican leaders that he would deliver the headstrong GOP hardliners who are still vowing to defy the president on his agenda, according to three people familiar with the discussions.

Now, it’s all coming down to the wire. Trump and his team have spent much of the day in talks with the GOP holdouts on the bill, including summoning groups of Republicans for meetings at the White House to air their grievances with the Senate-passed version of the package. And Johnson is again facing a test of his powers in the narrowly divided House, as he seeks to steer his fractious conference to swallow a vote that many of them dislike.

President Donald Trump on the South Lawn of the White House on Tuesday.

In a meeting with centrist-leaning Republicans, Trump’s tone was “cordial,” one GOP member in the room said. The White House brought in Dr. Mehmet Oz – who leads the agency in charge of Medicaid – to help educate members on related provisions in the Senate GOP bill, such as provider taxes and a bolstered fund for rural hospitals, and the potential impacts to hospitals in their districts, according to another person familiar with the discussions. Trump and Vice President JD Vance were both in attendance, helping to convince members to back the bill,“Those meetings are having a big impact, members are moving to yes,” Rep. Dusty Johnson of South Dakota told reporters after returning from the White House meeting with Oz, Trump and Vance.

House Majority Whip Steve Scalise nodded to the importance of Trump’s involvement in the discussions earlier Wednesday, telling reporters at the US Capitol, “The president from day one has been our best closer, and he’s going to continue to be through today.”

Roy is a leading member of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus, which outlined their opposition to the Senate’s version of Trump’s domestic policy bill in a new memo obtained by WNN.

The right-wing group of Republicans pointed to more than a dozen problems they have with the current bill, including what they described as watered-down energy tax credit measures, an increase to the deficit and various Medicaid provisions that differ from the House-passed version of the bill.