After hours of delays and uncertainty, House Republicans are, once again, full steam ahead on President Donald Trump’s reconciliation bill, with GOP leaders suddenly expressing confidence that they can pass the legislation in a matter of hours.
But if the rule vote setting up floor consideration for the reconciliation legislation is any indication, it will be close.
After holding multiple votes open for hours — the House has technically been voting nonstop since about 1 p.m. — the House adopted a rule early Thursday morning to put the Senate-passed reconciliation bill on the floor.
Following hours of delays, the rule for the reconciliation bill was adopted just before 3:30 a.m. by a vote of 219-213, with just one Republican, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, joining all 212 Democrats in opposing the rule.
Trending
Republicans have now moved on to debating the reconciliation legislation, with a final passage vote expected in a matter of hours.
Getting to this point hasn’t been easy. After opening the rule vote at 9:30 p.m. Wednesday evening, five Republicans — conservative Reps. Thomas Massie, Victoria Spartz, Keith Self and Andrew Clyde, as well as moderate Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick — voted against the rule. Eight other Republicans didn’t vote at all.
With Republicans only able to lose three votes, leadership left the vote open, spending more than four hours trying to convince holdouts to get on board. Johnson said he had Trump, Vice President JD Vance and agency employees fielding questions from the GOP opponents to the bill.
Those calls were apparently persuasive. One holdout, Rep. Tim Burchett, told reporters after midnight that conservatives were successfully “getting some things resolved,” joking that reporters should not “take a nap.”
He was right.
While final passage isn’t assured quite yet, Republicans appear to have the votes for the Senate-passed legislation.
And even though it’s been a slog to get to the point and the majority backing the bill is fragile, there’s still more than enough time for Republicans to pass the bill and meet Trump’s self-imposed July 4 deadline — even with Democrats planning some delays.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is expected to speak at length in opposition to the bill, using the so-called “magic minute” that is afforded to party leaders.
And Democrats may try to offer requests to chew up floor time, as they did earlier Wednesday as they tried to bring attention to the Medicaid cuts in the bill.
The reconciliation package would cut more than $1 trillion from Medicaid and would increase the deficit by a projected $4 trillion over the next 10 years. Most of that total is simply to extend current tax rates for individuals.
Democrats think the reconciliation bill will ultimately be politically toxic for Republicans, as 11.8 million Americans are projected to lose Medicaid coverage as a result of the legislation and many rural hospitals are expected to struggle with the loss of Medicaid money.
But polling shows that most Americans don’t know what’s in Trump’s self-described “One Big, Beautiful Bill.”
As of Wednesday afternoon, even Trump himself appeared not to know that the bill cut Medicaid.
He told lawmakers there are three things Republicans shouldn’t touch if they want to win elections: Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.
Authors
