Despite months of work to bring it together, the latest rough draft of President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill" promising tax cuts, energy deregulation and border security is facing major backlash from multiple factions of the House Republican caucus, Punchbowl News' Jake Sherman reported on Tuesday morning.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), who is at the helm of the negotiations, "has said repeatedly over the last few months that he is in the 'consensus-building business.' But as markups begin today, an objective view of the landscape is that Johnson does not have consensus," Sherman wrote.
Republicans can only lose three votes in the House on the finished product — and there are way more unsatisfied Republicans than that currently.
One of the biggest problems is that, even though the bill sharply cuts Medicaid, which itself is a matter of bitter contention among swing-district Republicans and a handful of hard red-state populists, it still isn't seen to be a big enough cut by the hardliners.
"The House Freedom Caucus is putting the onus on GOP leadership to make 'very aggressive changes' to the reconciliation package before it comes to the floor. Many conservatives have asked for at least $2 trillion in cuts," noted the report. "These HFC-backed changes – more Medicaid cuts, a total repeal of IRA clean energy credits and 'deficit neutrality' – would have to happen during today’s trio of committee markups or the Rules Committee." Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), one of the hardliners, says he cannot back the bill as written.
EXCLUSIVE: Breastfeeding mom of US citizen sues Kristi Noem after being grabbed by ICE
Another major problem is the state and local tax deduction (SALT) cap, which blue-state Republicans have repeatedly demanded be eliminated in its entirety, but instead the bill just boosts it from $10,000 to $30,000 while setting an income limit of $400,000 to take the deduction at all.
New York Republicans "left a meeting with committee members and House GOP leaders Monday unhappy with the direction of the talks. Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) said the reconciliation bill, as written, won’t have his support. Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) said he’s 'a hell no for a bill that has a flat $30,000 cap,'" the report noted. But one other New York lawmaker in GOP leadership, Rep. Elise Stefanik, has pushed back hard on critics of the bill, saying it's not a finalized number and that it's still a bigger tax relief than Democrats ever offered.
All of this, the report noted, comes as Johnson is scrambling to get the reconciliation bill to a vote on the floor of the House next week — a short time frame in which to quell all the dissent.