The House adopted its GOP budget resolution after leadership briefly pulled it from the floor Tuesday night, a dramatic win for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) after hard-line conservatives seemed poised to sink the vote.
In a 217-215 vote, only Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) joined all Democrats in voting “no” on the measure, allowing the resolution to survive. It now heads to the Senate, where intense negotiations will begin as the upper chamber already adopted part one of its two-bill reconciliation plan.
An earlier vote was left open for over an hour as leadership attempted to sway holdouts like Reps. Victoria Spartz (R-IN), Warren Davidson (R-OH), and Tim Burchett (R-TN) on the measure. Those three Republicans eventually changed their votes to “yes,” allowing the floor math to work in Johnson’s favor.
Democrats had repeatedly called for the House to come to order and vote on the resolution, with multiple members yelling, “Do you have the votes or not?” or “You don’t have the votes.”
GOP leadership briefly pulled the resolution from consideration, allowing a different measure to be voted upon. Members from both parties left the chamber, but within 20 minutes, the vote was back on.
Democrats avidly stressed attendance in a call with members last week, hoping to keep the margin as slim as possible. Rep. Brittany Pettersen (D-CO) arrived in the House just moments before the vote, keeping the two-vote margin of error in place. She was on maternity leave after giving birth to her son last month.
Rep. Kevin Mullin (D-CA), who recently had knee surgery, also arrived last-minute to cast a “no” vote on the resolution, bringing Johnson’s margin to one single vote. The sole Democratic absence was Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), who has been diagnosed with cancer.
The budget delay would have been a severe setback for House Republicans, who are determined to pass one “big, beautiful bill” under reconciliation — a move that President Donald Trump himself endorsed despite Senate Republicans arguing a two-bill approach would allow the GOP to get border and defense wins on the board faster.
The budget resolution battle presented Johnson with his latest stress test: let the measure go to the floor and potentially fail, or pull it from consideration. The speaker had faced immense pressure from some on his right flank, which is typical for contentious bills, but also centrists — who typically back leadership on spending and governing issues.
The House budget resolution is a blueprint to unlock future spending legislation that would enact Trump’s border, energy, and tax cut agenda. The framework calls for up to $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and up to $2 trillion in spending cuts, as well as a $4 trillion debt ceiling increase.
While it doesn’t prescribe specific spending cuts, the resolution directs the Energy and Commerce Committee to slash $880 billion — which Democrats have warned would likely mean cuts to Medicaid healthcare services for lower-income people. Republicans point to work requirements as a way to reduce costs.
The hardline Freedom Caucus took a break from being a thorn in Johnson’s side and backed the resolution, largely after the caucus successfully pushed for steeper spending cuts than leadership’s originally proposed $1 trillion.
Spartz and Massie are not in the Freedom Caucus and typically break from their conservative colleagues on several issues.
Prior to the vote, Spartz and Massie had both said that they were against the resolution because it does not go far enough to address the deficit.
Spartz, who reportedly spoke with the president while on the House floor during the vote, said she appreciated Trump’s “personal” commitment to “save healthcare and make it better for physical and fiscal health for all Americans.”
“He is the only person who is able to accomplish it and I trust his word. We will Make America Healthy Again! #MAHA Therefore, I voted for these budget instructions to move forward,” she wrote.
Davidson said earlier on Tuesday that he wanted to see a plan of action on appropriations, given that government funding runs out on March 14. He said having a “whole spending” plan would give Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency the ability to fight against court cases.
“The judge is simply going to say, ‘Well, Congress just funded the very thing that you’re trying to defund.’ How in the world are we going to be that tone deaf to not actually lock some of this in? I don’t have to get everything, but play a little bit of offense,” Davidson said.
In a post following the vote, he said he voted yes because he “finally received the assurances I needed” regarding cuts to discretionary spending.
Many rank-and-file members who had reservations about the budget resolution represent battleground districts, and several of those districts encompass communities that heavily depend on Medicaid. After meeting with leaders Monday and Tuesday, however, a handful of the holdouts, such as Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY), were swayed to vote for the resolution.
As a way to win them over, leadership continuously pushed that the word “Medicaid” is not written in the resolution, encouraging GOP lawmakers on the fence to understand that all the resolution will do is unlock the process.
Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) said Trump made calls to members regarding the budget resolution, adding that the president’s been “tremendously helpful.”
Burchett had noted earlier ahead of the vote that if he had gotten some commitments from the speaker, he would have considered voting for the resolution. He later said in a video leaving the Capitol after voting “yes” that he had a “great conversation” with the president and Trump answered all his questions.
“Look, it’s not everything you want, but I’m a believer that if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu,” Burchett said. “The American taxpayers have been on the menu a whole lot…We’ll see what happens” when the Senate is thrown into the mix.
“Wasn’t pretty, but we started in the right direction tonight,” he added.
Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) had warned against “echoing Democrats’ hysteria on where savings will come from” in a press conference on Tuesday. Other GOP lawmakers insisted that the resolution was a “blueprint” and nothing more.
The debate over possible Medicaid cuts and renewing the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will be two of the hardest policies to negotiate with the Senate.
The upper chamber wants to see a permanent extension of the tax cuts in its two-part budget plan. The first part that cleared the Senate already would authorize $340 billion for border security and defense, but doesn’t address tax cuts or Medicaid.
However, the House budget resolution only allocates $4.5 trillion in tax cuts — $200 billion less than what it would take to fully renew Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, not to mention his additional demands to eliminate taxes on tips.
“Many of us have been very clear: we’re not going to cut Medicaid benefits to our constituents, period,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) said ahead of the final passage vote. “But this is a negotiation. The budget resolution is simply about unlocking the ability to negotiate a bill.”
“Everybody wants the process to be finished today,” Lawler added. “That’s not the way this works. This is opening up the negotiations to actually get to a bill that will implement the president’s priorities.”
While Republicans battled internally, House Democrats took to the Capitol steps on Tuesday to protest the budget resolution. The caucus focused solely on Medicaid, pushing the narrative that the resolution could result in millions of Americans losing healthcare benefits.
Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) previewed that Johnson wouldn’t get “a single Democratic vote.”
Jeffries added that Democrats will push back against Republicans’ budget plans “today…tomorrow…until it’s buried deep in the ground” — previewing Democratic messaging for the 2026 midterm elections, where the House historically flips to the party opposite of the White House.
Successfully using the reconciliation process to codify much of Trump’s agenda will be a key factor in whether Republicans maintain and expand their majority in the House, with early tests coming this fall in a handful of state legislature and gubernatorial contests.
Johnson took a victory lap after his dramatic win late Tuesday night, calling it the “first important step” to unlocking reconciliation — indicating that the one-bill approach will be the winner in the tug-of-war with the Senate.
MEDICAID CUTS PUT GOP ON COLLISION COURSE IN RACE TO PASS TRUMP BUDGET
“We have a lot of hard work ahead of us,” the speaker told reporters. “We’re going to deliver the American First agenda. We’re going to deliver all of it, not just part of it, and this is the first step in that process.”
“We’re going to celebrate tonight, and we’ll roll up our sleeves and get right back at it in the morning,” Johnson added.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
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