After an initial embarrassing defeat, Republicans on the House Budget Committee managed to move forward President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill" on tax cuts, energy deregulation, and border security through the House Budget Committee, and they are expected to debate it in the dead of morning on Wednesday in the House Rules Committee, with an eye for getting it passed out of the House by Memorial Day.
But while the MAGA hardliners allowed it through the Budget Committee after some commitments from leadership to make Medicaid work requirements and the phaseout of alternative energy subsidies stricter, much remains up in the air. And one of the bigger hardliners, Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), is still unconvinced he will vote for the end product.
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According to Punchbowl News' Samantha Handler, one of Roy's sticking points is that he wants additional changes to the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage, or FMAP — the ratio of federal to state funding for Medicaid. He also reportedly has misgivings about a provision slipped into the bill that would bar states from enforcing regulations against AI for 10 years, a special handout to OpenAI that has prompted bipartisan criticism from state attorneys general.
Additionally, Roy — who says the next 24 hours could make or break the process — is uncomfortable with the fact that the Rules Committee is going to try to ram the bill through when everyone is sleeping, and wants the Congressional Budget Office to weigh in on the total cost of the bill.
"I'm skeptical of going to Rules at 1am on Wednesday morning," Roy said.
Trump, for his part, has grown irritated that the GOP is not coalescing behind a plan, proclaiming in a Truth Social tirade on Friday that "We don’t need 'GRANDSTANDERS' in the Republican Party. STOP TALKING, AND GET IT DONE! It is time to fix the MESS that Biden and the Democrats gave us."
