Donald Trump’s signature tax-and-spending bill is hanging in the balance as Republicans struggle to muster sufficient votes in the US House of Representatives.
A five-minute procedural vote remained open and tied for more than an hour on Wednesday as Republican leaders told members they could leave the floor, suggesting they still do not have the numbers they need.
Trump, JD Vance and the House speaker, Mike Johnson, had spent much of the day trying to pressure conservatives to support the bill despite changes made by the Senate.
A preliminary motion on the sweeping tax-and-spending bill did gain approval on party lines with 214 in favor and 212 against, setting the stage for another vote later on Wednesday afternoon to adopt the rule. If that is successful, the chamber will debate the bill, then vote on its final passage.
But with the House at a standstill, the timing of the all-important rule vote was uncertain. “Either you vote on the rule or you go home,” said the conservative Tennessee representative Tim Burchett as he exited the Capitol.
The Senate passed the bill, with Vance casting the tie-breaking vote, on Tuesday, after a record-setting all-night session. Now the chambers must reconcile their versions: the sprawling mega-bill goes back to the House, where Johnson has said the Senate “went a little further than many of us would have preferred” in its changes, particularly to Medicaid, a program that provides healthcare to low-income and disabled Americans.
But the speaker vowed to “get that bill over the line”. Trump has set a Fourth of July deadline for Congress to send the bill to his desk.
According to CNN, Johnson told reporters: “When you have a piece of legislation that is this comprehensive and with so many agenda items involved, you’re going to have lots of different priorities and preferences among people because they represent different districts and they have different interests.
“But we can’t make everyone 100% happy. It’s impossible. This is a deliberative body. It’s a legislative process. By definition, all of us have to give up on our personal preferences. [I’m] never going to ask anybody to compromise core principles, but preferences must be yielded for the greater good, and that’s what I think people are recognizing and come to grips with.”
Early on Wednesday morning, the House rules committee advanced the measure, sending it to the floor for consideration. On their way into the Capitol, two conservative Republicans signaled optimism that the bill would get through the House.
Congresswoman Nancy Mace told reporters: “I think these votes will take a little bit or a lot longer than usual. But that’s Washington. You guys are watching how the sausage is made, and that’s how business is run.”
Like several other members, Mace wound up driving from her South Carolina district to Washington after a flurry of thunderstorms yesterday prompted major flight delays and cancellations around the capital.
Smoking a cigar, Congressman Troy Nehls of Texas said: “There’s things in the bill I don’t like, but would I change the bill because I didn’t get what I wanted? I don’t think that would be good for America.”
The House approved an initial draft of the legislation in May by a single vote, overcoming Democrats’ unanimous opposition. But many fiscal conservatives are furious over cost estimates that project the Senate version would add even more to the federal deficit than the House-passed plan.
But Johnson’s wafer-thin Republican majority risks losing decisive votes from rightwing fiscal hardliners demanding steep spending cuts, moderates wary of dismantling safety-net programs and Republicans from Democratic-led states expected to make a stand on a contentious tax provision. Any one of these groups could potentially derail the bill’s passage through a chamber where the GOP can afford to lose no more than three votes.
Trump celebrated the Senate’s passage of the bill as “music to my ears”. He has described the bill as crucial to his second-term agenda, and congressional Republicans made it their top priority.
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the bill in its current form would add $3.3tn to the US budget deficit through 2034.
It will extend tax cuts enacted during the president’s first term in 2017, and includes new provisions to cut taxes on tips, overtime and interest payments for some car loans. It funds Trump’s plans for mass deportations by allocating $45bn for Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities, $14bn for deportation operations and billions of dollars more to hire an additional 10,000 new agents by 2029.
It also includes more than $50bn for the construction of new border fortifications, which will probably include a wall along the border with Mexico.
To satisfy demands from fiscal conservatives for cuts to the US’s large federal budget deficit, the bill imposes new work requirements on enrollees of Medicaid. It also imposes a limit on the provider tax states use to fund their program, which could lead to reductions in services. Finally, it sunsets some incentives for green-energy technologies created by Congress under Joe Biden.
In a floor speech on Wednesday, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, warned: “This bill is a deal with the devil. It explodes our national debt. It militarizes our entire economy, and it strips away healthcare and basic dignity of the American people.
“For what? To give Elon Musk a tax break and billionaires, the greedy, taking of our nation. We cannot stand for it and we will not support it. You should be ashamed.”
Speaker emerita Nancy Pelosi said of the policy bill: “Well, if beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then you, GOP, you have a very blurred vision of what America is about.
“Is it beautiful to cut off food from seniors and children? Is it beautiful to cut off 17 million people from healthcare? Is it beautiful to do this? To give tax cuts to billionaires in our country? Is it beautiful to take money from education and the rest? The list goes on and on.”
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
