Passage of the House GOP’s reconciliation bill is in peril after House Budget Committee members Reps. Ralph Norman (R-SC), Chip Roy (R-TX), and Josh Breechen (R-OK) said that they planned to vote against advancing the bill out of the Committee to the full House after learning that the Congressional Budget Office will not have cost estimates for the Energy and Commerce Committee’s portion of the bill ready until early next week.
The lawmakers’ announcement came after Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) promised more changes to the bill after emerging from negotiations with House GOP SALT caucus members seeking a higher cap on state and local tax (SALT) deduction and House Freedom Caucus members demanding higher spending cuts in the bill. Johnson said changes will include a higher SALT cap than the $30,000 limit approved by the Ways and Means Committee and steeper spending cuts than currently in the text approved by various committees. GOP SALT caucus members want a deduction cap closer to $40,000. House GOP budget hawks have said they want to accelerate the phase out for Inflation Reduction Act clean energy credits and also want to revise the bill so Medicaid work requirements begin immediately instead of being delayed until 2029.
Even if the bill makes eventually makes it out of the House, there are already problems with the legislation in the Senate where Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) said this week that he thinks House Republicans’ reconciliation bill is “going down,” because he has enough colleagues in the Senate who want “to return to reasonable pre-pandemic spending.” On Tuesday, Johnson also published a Wall Street Journal editorial entitled, “The Ugly Truth About the Big Beautiful Bill,” saying “it’s essential that Congress deviate from its current path” because “under every scenario now being considered, federal debt continues to skyrocket from its current level of almost $37 trillion.”