Backfire: JD Vance shares text from 'undecided' GOP lawmaker swayed by Dem speech
With the House continuing to deliberate on President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act into Thursday morning, Vice President JD Vance revealed that efforts to delay the vote by Democrats had actually helped boost Republican support for the bill among GOP dissenters.
“GOP congressman just texted me,” Vance said Thursday in a social media post on X. “‘I was undecided on the bill, but then I watched (House Minority Leader) Hakeem Jeffries’ (D-NY) performance and now I’m a firm yes.’”
Members of the House have been debating the OBBBA, Trump’s budget reconciliation package that extends corporate tax cuts and slashes funding to social safety net programs like Medicaid, since early Wednesday, and continued debates through the night. Democrats have united against the bill, as have a handful of Republican holdouts, who took issue with either the bill’s cuts to Medicaid, or its impact on the national debt.
With Republicans’ slim majority in the House, the party could afford no more than three dissenting votes on the OBBBA for it to pass, and with several GOP holdouts remaining as of late Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) had worked through the night to persuade the remaining GOP holdouts to vote in favor of the bill.
Johnson had ultimately convinced all but one of the GOP holdouts to fall in line, with the House voting early Thursday morning 219-213 to advance the OBBBA to its final vote, with the lone dissenting Republican being Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), who took issue with the Trump administration withholding military aid to Ukraine.
It remains unclear, however, whether those GOP dissenters will ultimately back the OBBBA in its impending final vote, though it appears at least one dissenter has been swayed by Democrats’ delay tactics, especially Jeffries’ early-morning filibuster, according to the V.P.