President Donald Trump showed up on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to try to convince warring factions in the Republican Party to get onboard with his “one big, beautiful bill.”
The president spoke with House Republicans at their morning conference meeting. He called it a “meeting of love” departing the Capitol, but headaches remain for House Republicans.
The president’s clear message to his party, according to those in the meeting: get it done.
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“I think we’re a very unified party,” Trump claimed while standing beside House Speaker Mike Johnson before the meeting. “It’s the biggest bill ever passed, and we’re going to get it done.”
However, the president acknowledged that there were a few grandstanders. He warned that the alternative to passing their bill would be a tax hike. Provisions of his 2017 tax law are set to expire if not extended in the legislation.
“We only have one or two, but we have tremendous support,” he argued.
Trump said after the meeting that they will get “everything they want” and have a “great victory.”
Coming out of the basement meeting, GOP members offered praise for the president but some remained uncommitted on where they stood on the bill while others said there is still a ways to go to get them to “yes.”
Johnson wanted a full vote on the bill in the House by Memorial Day, but it’s become messy. The House is scheduled to go on recess for the holiday on Thursday.
The Speaker insisted Republicans are still on track this week, but he did not answer reporters’ questions after the meeting.
Hard-line conservatives are trying to extract changes to the bill and have taken issue with it raising the deficit.
Among the revisions being pushed by members including Reps. Chip Roy and Ralph Norman are accelerating the Medicaid work requirements and changing the formula used to pay for it. They also want a rollback of the Inflation Reduction Act passed under President Biden.
House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris said after the meeting that there was still a way to go.
Asked whether Trump had convinced him to vote yes, Norman said only “he did a great job,” a notable change from being a clear no.
“We have an incentive to really make this happen,” he said.
Millions of people would become uninsured with the Medicaid reforms currently in the legislation, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Trump insisted, contrary to analysis, that they were only going to cut “waste, fraud, and abuse” and claimed that Americans wouldn’t lose health insurance.
In the closed-door meeting, the president told House members directly, “Don’t f*** around” with Medicaid, according to those inside.
Lawmakers said the comment in their meeting suggested no further changes from what is already in the legislation, but the president did not get into specifics.
Centrist Republicans have pushed back on Medicaid changes being demanded by the right-wing members.
Some moderate lawmakers are also demanding an increase in the state and local tax (SALT) deduction.
Trump tried to claim that only Democratic governors wanted the SALT limit increased before heading into the meeting, but it has been a sticking point for Republicans in states like New York.
GOP lawmakers said the president indicated he did not want the SALT cap increased during their gathering, but he did not provide specific numbers.
There has been haggling in recent days with holdouts over raising the SALT cap from $10,000 to $40,000, up from an offered increase to $30,000.
Despite pressure from Trump not to derail the bill, Reps. Mike Lawler and Nick LaLota of New York said they were still “no” votes on the current bill and plan to keep pushing.
The next hurdle for the legislation is a vote in the House Rules Committee. They will meet at 1am on Wednesday prompting accusations from Democrats that they are moving forward in the dead of night.
