House Republican leaders said early Thursday morning they have made a breakthrough with the megabill holdouts and are preparing to advance the legislation in the coming hours.
Speaker Mike Johnson, heading onto the House floor around 2 a.m., said he had secured the votes to proceed and that final passage of the GOP’s domestic policy bill will follow later in the morning. A vote on the procedural measure setting up final consideration remains open after several hours of voting. “Hopefully in the next hour we get that done,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said of completing that vote.
Once the House approves the procedural measure, it will debate the bill before moving to a final vote, which could take multiple hours.
Earlier Thursday morning, Johnson said, “This is going to end well.”
“We’re going to meet our July 4 deadline, which everybody made fun of me for saying,” he added, holding a can of Celsius energy drink after a full-day blitz of discussions with the skeptical lawmakers that he said involved the help of the attorneys, Cabinet secretaries, and President Donald Trump himself.
The negotiations were not aimed at cutting a deal with the holdouts “because then you open Pandora’s box,” Johnson said. “We just deal with everybody in truth, and we find out where the red lines are, and we try to navigate around them and get a product that everybody can buy into.”
