Members of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus revolted Wednesday against the Senate's version of President Donald Trump's budget bill.
The caucus issued a three-page memo highlighting multiple areas in which they felt the Senate's version fell short. Their consternation comes less than 24 hours after the Senate voted to pass the bill by a 50-50 margin, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote. The bill is now heading back to the House for reconciliation.
In the memo, House Freedom Caucus members highlighted seven specific failures of the Senate's version of the bill. They noted that it will increase the federal deficit, waters down the repeal of the Green New Deal, does not remove enough immigrants from Medicaid, allows transgender medical care to be covered by Medicaid and the federal children's health care insurance program, does not limit Planned Parenthood funding enough, contains "excessive pork" for Alaska and Hawaii, and provides a "bail out" to blue states "electing socialists to run their cities."
"In total, the Senate gutted House spending cuts and added new spending to the tune of more than $400 billion. Absent these cumulative changes, the Senate bill would have at least been in the ballpark of the House framework," the memo reads in part.
The memo was released at a time when House Republicans are working to drum up support for the bill. Republicans have a razor-thin, eight-vote margin in the House, and the 31-member House Freedom Caucus has enough votes to sink the bill.