House Republicans approved a budget framework for President Donald Trump’s sweeping domestic policy agenda Tuesday — a major victory for Speaker Mike Johnson who worked with Trump and fellow leaders in a chaotic last-ditch effort to win over naysayers within the GOP ranks.
The vote went almost entirely along party lines, 217-215, with every Democrat voting against the measure and only GOP Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky joining them. Adopting the budget measure is a key step toward passing the “big, beautiful bill” that Trump and Johnson have called for — one that includes border security, tax and energy provisions that the president campaigned on.
The Senate passed a competing plan last week, and the Republicans in the two chambers must now reconcile the significant differences between the two fiscal blueprints.
“We’re going to celebrate tonight,” Johnson told reporters after the vote, adding that House Republicans will “roll up their sleeves” as they prepared to reconcile their plans with the Senate.
Tuesday night’s vote came after a wild scene on the House floor that played out over the course of hours. Around 6:30 p.m. members were called to the floor to begin voting on an unrelated measure, with the budget plan to follow. But that unrelated vote was held open for more than an hour as the GOP whip team worked to win over the holdouts.
Democrats screamed “regular order” as the planned 15-minute vote stretched on and on. Shortly after 7:30 p.m., the vote was closed and members were informed the budget vote was canceled. Minutes later, leaders sent out another alert saying the vote was back on.
The holdouts included Reps. Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Warren Davidson of Ohio, and Victoria Spartz of Indiana, as well as Massie. All four voiced public opposition to the budget plan Tuesday and could be seen on the House floor during the evening vote series speaking to various Republican leaders.
The fiscal hawks all raised objections about inadequate spending cuts in the measure; Davidson also aired concerns about how Republican leaders plan to handle the impending March 14 government funding deadline.
Trump spoke over the phone at various points with several of the holdouts, according to two Republicans familiar with the whip effort — Johnson later said the calls were “a big help.” Because of the House GOP’s tiny majority and the united opposition of Democrats, those four members could together block action.
But Johnson and Trump managed to win them over, one by one.
Spartz said in a online post that she came around because Trump had a “personal commitment to save healthcare and make it better for physical and fiscal health for all Americans. … I trust his word.”
Davidson said in his own post that he “finally received the assurances I needed that there will be cuts to discretionary spending” ahead of the March funding deadline “and that we will work together to develop a plan for further discretionary spending cuts that could survive passage in the Senate.”
And Burchett told reporters that Trump “committed to me that he is going to go after the spending in a lot of these big departments” and that more generally Republicans are “going in the right direction.”
“It’s not everything I wanted, but in this game, you’re either at the table or on the menu,” he said. “It’s time to get at the table.”
Only Massie remained unconvinced.
Meanwhile, a different faction of the GOP conference — moderate Republicans, many representing swing districts — had aired qualms about the scale of the Medicaid cuts implied by the budget plan.
That group, however, quickly softened: On Monday night, some said that a presentation from House leaders had moved them closer to supporting the budget plan, and by midday Tuesday, House leaders were confident enough to move toward a final vote.
After it was all over, top Democratic leaders said Republicans had betrayed Americans by advancing a plan that they said would cut taxes for the richest while cutting benefits for the poor and middle class.
“They chose their billionaire puppet masters over the American people,” said Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. “Democrats were unified, and we will remain unified throughout this process, because this reckless Republican budget will bring nothing but destruction to the American people.”
Several Democrats who have faced health challenges and missed recent House votes rushed back to Washington for the budget showdown. That forced Johnson to scrounge up every vote he could.
Tuesday’s vote sets up a harsh reality check between House and Senate Republicans, who all want to push the president’s agenda forward but still have profoundly different approaches to key issues.
The Senate, for instance, is looking to avoid the deep cuts to Medicaid that the House is leaning on for significant cost cutting. Senate Republicans are also insisting that they won’t support a final measure that only extends Trump’s 2017 tax cuts temporarily. That could require making significant changes to the House blueprint, putting the fragile GOP support for the measure in jeopardy.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune congratulated the House GOP “for moving our team one step closer to advancing the president’s agenda” while also calling for a permanent extension to the Trump tax cuts — a goal that will be difficult to carry out under the House budget plan.
The House and Senate must adopt identical budget resolutions to unlock the power of reconciliation — which allows parties with unified control of Congress and the White House to pass massive policy bills along party lines, sidestepping the Senate filibuster.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this report misstated the vote tally on the budget resolution.
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