House GOP pulls budget vote amid conservative rebellion
Johnson says the House will try again Wednesday, but the delay has scrambled Republicans’ timeline for advancing Trump’s reconciliation agenda.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) abruptly canceled Wednesday evening's planned vote on the Senate’s budget blueprint, a sign that internal divisions could derail President Donald Trump’s reconciliation agenda before it begins.
Allow me to explain: The delay stalls progress for Trump’s second-term agenda and raises fresh questions about whether House Republicans can govern, even when they agree on the substance of the policies.
Democrats were quick to pounce, calling the move another example of performative rebellion turning into real dysfunction—proof that the speaker still can’t deliver his conference.
What they’re saying: “I actually expected them to fold. Really, I did,” Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) told me, referring to a group of hardline conservatives who oppose the blueprint. “We’ve seen this movie over and over again. But it looks like they're pretty rock solid against it for now.”
“Goodness gracious,” Rep. Mark Takano(D-Calif.) said to himself moments after the ordeal.
One House Democrat just walked out of the chamber shaking their head, seemingly at a loss for words.
Even if House Republicans eventually pass the resolution, Democrats say that the final reconciliation bill will be meaningfully reshaped later in negotiations is wishful thinking—especially given how fragile the House majority has proven to be. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) pointed to her experience during the Build Back Better talks as a cautionary tale.
“If they think they’re going to rely on the Senate to do something different than what it says in the resolution, I saw what happened when we tried to do Build Back Better,” Jayapal told me. “So I would just say they should all be careful.”
How we got here: For months, House conservatives have staged noisy rebellions—against the speaker vote in January, against their budget framework in February, and now against the reconciliation pathway itself.
Each time, the threat of defection has thrown House business into disarray. This time, Democrats argue, the rebellion wasn’t just for show. It was a failure to govern.
In this round, fiscal hawks like Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) balked at the Senate’s budget blueprint, arguing it didn’t go far enough in cutting federal spending.
In a letter to members Saturday, House GOP leaders emphasized that the Senate resolution wouldn’t override the House’s reconciliation instructions—and insisted the final bill would be shaped collaboratively with the Senate and the White House.
Speaker Johnson huddled with both wings of his conference on Monday: so-called moderates worried about cuts to the social safety net and the far-right House Freedom Caucus, which demanded even deeper reductions.
A group of GOP holdouts met with Trump at the White House on Tuesday, where he privately framed the resolution as a vehicle for the sweeping cuts they wanted.
But later that night, at a black-tie NRCC fundraiser, Trump dropped the sales pitch and turned up the pressure: “Close your eyes and get there. It’s a phenomenal bill,” he said. “Stop grandstanding.”
Johnson ushered the remaining holdouts into his ceremonial office off the House floor during the vote series, where they received a final full-court press from Trump to flip their votes. The preceding, unrelated vote was held open for nearly an hour as the scene unfolded—but by evening, leadership abandoned the effort entirely.
“Speaker Johnson is pretty good at counting to 200,” House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) told me on Tuesday. “But he clearly can’t count much beyond that without Donald Trump putting his thumb on the scale.”
Through it all, Johnson projected confidence. Moments before the chamber narrowly cleared a test vote by a single vote, the speaker said he was optimistic the bill would pass.
In the know: The 70-page resolution cleared the Senate last Saturday in a 52-48 vote, with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) joining all Democrats in opposition.
The measure calls for making the 2017 tax law permanent and introduces new tax breaks, including exempting tips and overtime pay from taxation.
It directs congressional committees to identify at least $1 billion in spending cuts each. Some panels face far steeper targets—like House Energy and Commerce, the committee tasked with reducing federal programs by $880 billion, which is likely to hit Medicaid, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
It would lift the debt ceiling by as much as $5 trillion to sidestep a default fight before the 2026 midterms.
The resolution also proposes a $150 billion increase in defense funding over ten years and allocates $175 billion for border enforcement.
Fiscal watchdogs are uneasy, though. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget projects that the plan could increase the deficit by $6.9 trillion by 2035.
The resolution’s math depends on a controversial assumption: that tax cuts set to expire won’t count against the bottom line—a move critics, including some Republicans, say hides the true cost.
Not so fast: As Republicans move forward with their budget blueprint, Hill Democrats are rolling out a trio of counterproposals aimed at shielding safety net programs and reclaiming ground with working-class voters—a bloc that shifted toward Trump in 2024.
House Democrats introduced legislation Wednesday to block major cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, two programs Republicans have targeted to help offset the cost of extending Trump’s tax law.
The Senate resolution instructs the committee overseeing Medicaid to cut $880 billion and the panel with jurisdiction over SNAP to find $230 billion in savings.
In the Senate, a group led by Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) introduced a bill to permanently expand the Child Tax Credit—reviving a centerpiece of the American Rescue Plan that temporarily cut child poverty nearly in half in 2021.
Sen. Catherine Cortez-Masto (D-Nev.) introduced a separate bill that would permanently expand the Earned Income Tax Credit by tripling the benefit for childless workers. The proposal would also broaden eligibility to include low-income workers under age 25 and over age 64—two groups currently excluded from the credit.
Reps. Dwight Evans (D-Pa.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) are the lead sponsors of the House companion to Cortez-Masto’s bill.
Looking ahead: Johnson said the House will try again to pass the budget proposal Thursday morning, but it’s unclear whether a few late-night phone calls—or Trump’s personal pressure campaign—will be enough to flip the holdouts.