House Speaker Mike Johnson is facing a last-minute rebellion from conservatives on Republicans’ megabill, with a deal on a key tax deduction with blue-state Republicans and a lack of progress on settling other key provisions frustrating hard-liners.
“I think actually we’re further away from a deal because that SALT cap increase, I think, upset a lot of conservatives,” Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), the House Freedom Caucus chair, said in an interview on Newsmax Wednesday morning, referring to the state-and-local-tax deduction. “The conservatives are pushing for some balancing spending reductions.”
Johnson signaled Tuesday he wanted to call a vote on the bill as soon as Wednesday evening. A person with direct knowledge of the talks who was granted anonymity to describe them candidly said “there is currently a zero percent chance this thing moves today,” saying leaders “walked away from a deal last night and even rolled back progress made over the weekend.”
In a brief interview Wednesday morning, Johnson said “there is a chance for a vote today” when asked about the comments by Harris and other conservatives. He said he continues to talk with the conservative holdouts.
Johnson and a group of blue-state Republicans reached a critical but tentative deal Tuesday night to boost the cap on the state-and-local-tax deduction to $40,000 in the GOP domestic-policy bill that at the center of President Donald Trump’s agenda on taxes, energy and the border. Conservatives have strongly opposed further increasing the SALT cap.
Harris said that hard-liners stopped negotiating just before midnight Wednesday, saying there was a deal but it was “pulled off the table.” He suggested that the deal would make further cuts to Medicaid and take more aggressive action to pull back on Inflation Reduction Act subsidies for clean energy development, saying those two issues are “pretty essential” to get his support.
“This bill actually got worse overnight,” Harris said. “There is no way it passes today. … We may need a couple of weeks to iron everything out.”
Another key GOP hard-liner, Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, was more measure in his dismay Wednesday morning, telling Fox News he remained concerned about the deficit impact of the legislation.
“It is the math that bothers a lot of us,” he said, adding “we’re going to get there” and that the bill is “heading in the right direction.”
House GOP leadership has made concessions to hard-liners in recent days, agreeing to move up the implementation of Medicaid work requirements by two years, but conservatives have been pushing for deeper spending cuts that moderates have been wary of.
Johnson can only afford to lose a few GOP votes ahead of a potential House floor vote Wednesday. The House Rules Committee is debating the legislation, which is expected to be amended before it makes it through the committee on Wednesday. It’s not clear when that will happen.
“When it comes to the floor, it’s going to fail,” Harris said. “Hopefully it will fail in a way that keeps the negotiations and the bill alive.”
