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The last time one party tried cramming all of its priorities into one bill was four years ago, when the Democratic “Build Back Better” plan sank under its own weight.
Some Republicans are starting to worry that their own BBB — President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” — could face the same fate.
One week away from a possible House floor vote, the GOP’s massive tax and spending bill is facing opposition from enough lawmakers to defeat it and criticism from senators eager to rewrite it.
The party doesn’t have to look back far for its nightmare scenario. Former President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better proposal passed the House only to collapse in the Senate and ultimately become a far more modest law than its trillion-dollar-plus price tag.
To avoid an implosion, House Speaker Mike Johnson needs near-unanimous support from his members for legislation touching everything from tax cuts to the debt ceiling to border security to health care. He doesn’t have it yet — and it’s not clear what will happen if he can’t get it.
“I’m hopeful we can get there in the timeframe — but if not, I’d be really seriously concerned on what the actual Plan B is, because I haven’t heard about it,” said Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla.
The next few weeks present a potent test of one-party rule in Trump’s Washington: With little room for error, Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune have to somehow forge a deal that unites 217 House Republicans and 50 GOP senators while also pleasing Trump.
And the bill’s catch-all design adds its own risk: With each tweak to one section, Republicans risk denting their whip count elsewhere. Conservatives want more spending cuts, which might lose moderate votes. Some Republicans want more aggressive changes to Medicaid; others say those changes amount to benefit cuts that can’t pass.
Then there’s the precarious House talks about ending Trump’s 2017 cap on state and local tax deductions, where an agreement that might bring on blue-state House Republicans would likely lose GOP senators.
“I’m not investing anything in it until we see it,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, a key swing vote. “I’m not going to get too excited about what’s happening there until you see the final.”
It’s a messy equation that will almost certainly require Trump’s intervention — and already has some Republicans grumbling about a need to change their tactics. The House Freedom Caucus wants to break out the bill’s national security provisions, along with a debt ceiling increase; Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., wants to go back to his chamber’s original two-bill approach.
Meanwhile, Democrats are dangling a bipartisan fallback plan. They already support provisions in the bill like tax breaks for tipped workers and boosts to the child tax credit, plus tax credits for child care, paid leave and low-income housing.
“It’s a fair bet that [Republicans are] not going to be able to get there. Then they have a choice,” said Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Ill., who serves on the House Ways and Means Committee and chairs the moderate New Democrat Coalition.
“Would they rather sink in the middle of the ocean and bring us all down together? Or look to Democrats and say, ‘Hey, let’s row together,’” he added.
The top Democrat on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, Richie Neal of Massachusetts, said this week that his party agrees with Republicans on “probably 98% of” what’s in the bill, save for increasing taxes on the wealthy.
Plenty of Democrats doubt they’ll ever get a chance to work with Trump’s party.
“They don’t want to work in a bipartisan way … I’ve seen no evidence. None,” scoffed Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.
Yet Freedom Caucus member Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., said he would “be open to” collaborating with Democrats on some of the bill’s tax provisions.
“We all knew this was going to happen: It was probably too much to do in one bill,” Burlison said.
Know More
There’s emerging unity on the right in favor of boosting the bill’s spending cuts beyond the current $1.5 trillion level — which doesn’t exactly help GOP leaders.
“It’s not just me, there’s a lot of us” pushing for that, said Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla.
“In its current form, I can’t support it,” echoed Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris, R-Md.
GOP tax writers pushed through the bill’s tax provisions Wednesday morning, but Johnson still hasn’t struck a deal with House Republicans who are insisting on a SALT cap higher than the $30,000 the Ways and Means Committee approved.
The party’s SALT advocates have another problem: no big allies in the Senate.
Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, called Republicans’ SALT push “stupid,” adding that “I don’t think we need to be giving rich people tax breaks.”
Moreno previously warned against benefit cuts to Medicaid but seemed open to the House’s slimmed-down changes, which include requiring copayments from some beneficiaries and limiting states’ use of provider taxes on hospitals.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., however, said the House changes still go too far.
“That’s not going to pass. … I have serious concerns about the co-pay. It’s like a sick tax on poor people,” Hawley told Semafor.
Perhaps the biggest problem for Johnson and Thune right now, though, is conservatives pushing for deeper spending cuts — when the existing bill’s cuts inordinately hit Medicaid.
One House Republican described “a huge delta here” and expressed skepticism leadership could close the gap in time.
“If they don’t want to cut spending, it’s going to be hard to support,” fiscal hawk Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, said. “It’s not even remotely in the range of what we should be talking about.”
Eleanor, Burgess, and Kadia’s View
Some of the GOP talk about tanking the bill is surely bluster. But party-line budget reconciliation bills are not guaranteed wins: Eight years ago, the GOP failed to repeal Obamacare even after its proposal passed the House’s brawnier majority.
Then, four years ago, the Build Back Better bill failed (though a slimmed-down version did eventually pass).
Even during those failures, plenty of lawmakers who talked tough eventually fell in line. It was singular political figures like John McCain and Joe Manchin who stopped Obamacare repeal and the Democratic BBB.
It will take a similar show of force, and the moxie required to stand up to one’s own leaders, for critics of the “big, beautiful bill” to truly stop it.
Room for Disagreement
Trump is widely expected to strong-arm Republicans into backing the bill, even if it doesn’t check all of their boxes.
And the Senate’s pushback could end up helping: Some Republicans said colleagues argued on the House floor Wednesday that they may as well vote yes if the upper chamber is going to change the bill anyway.
“They wrote me off a long time ago,” but “they’ll eventually get most of the people in the Freedom Caucus,” said fiscal hawk Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky. “How do you vote against the wall, and the Golden Dome, and tax breaks for seniors? Think about all those ads.”
But almost a year and a half into Johnson’s speakership, members are watching closely to see if he can pull this off without Trump.
“It’s the speaker’s job to get this done,” Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, said. “It’s not somebody else’s job.”
Notable
- Most of the bill’s new tax cuts will last only through 2028, creating a new cliff, per the New York Times.
- More than 20 House Republicans told the Wall Street Journal that they are questioning whether they can trust Johnson as he looks to steer the conference.