Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday was forced to delay vote on the Republican budget blueprint to unlock President Trump's domestic agenda after conservatives balked on a plan that said the country was too much in debt.
In a dramatic scene of Capitol Hill, which built a naked Republican division, Johnson wore a holdout of a room away from the house's floor for more than an hour before the vote began, shattering activity in the chamber to halt when the fate of the measure was balanced.
This was a proven tactic for Johnson, who previously managed to equip the House floor with conservative opposition by essentially boldly becoming an exile to derail the planned votes for Trump's priorities.
But Wednesday night was a rare example of a hard-working Republican refusing to blink — at least for now — and that dealt with a speaker who he confidently predicted would hit the ballot with the move.
Johnson emerged from the closure meeting Wednesday night and told reporters that the House would vote for the measure “probably tomorrow, in some way.”
He said there was still a “small subset of members who weren't completely satisfied.” Lawmakers who kept private after Johnson delayed the vote said they wanted more assurances that the Senate would ultimately bring deeper spending cuts than the resolution needed.
Johnson said he stepped out of the floor of the house to update Trump about the situation, but the president had not spoken to individual members.
“He wants us to do this right and do it well, and sometimes we want it to take a little longer to do it,” he said.
Still, Trump worked hard for the measure, hosting some of the holdouts at the White House on Tuesday, ensuring the final budget law includes much deeper spending cuts at levels that could be supported. He repeatedly pushed them to back it up.
On Wednesday, he declared on social media on social media: “Now is more important than ever, and it's more important for us to pass on a big, beautiful bill.”
But as of Wednesday night, his pleading failed to shake up a small but lasting band of ultra-conservative Republicans who saw the issue of suppressing the country's debt and federal spending as their most important priorities and who argued that the laws Trump supported didn't require sufficient cuts.
“We can't have one-way ratchets on tax cuts and ignore the ledger spending side,” said Texas representative Chip Roy. “And my colleagues in the Senate, and certainly, some of the homes on this side of the aisle, want that exactly. The Senate budget is all tax cuts, and there are no spending cuts. Now we're told, 'Trust us, we have a promise.' ”
Holdout also met with South Dakota leader Sen. John Tune, about an hour before the vote began. Some sounded temporarily optimistic when they came out of his office.
Maryland President Andy Harris, chairman of the Freedom Caucus, said: “So, if someone shows me the eyes and they have a pretty good reputation, I usually trust him.”
But negotiation time didn't result in a breakthrough, and the measure still lacked the votes Republicans needed to push through it.
The House and Senate must adopt the same budget resolution to move along the settlement process Republicans plan to use to promote spending and tax laws through Congress strictly along party lines.
The Senate passed over the weekend plan, which the Chamber of Commerce's directive committee made it to find spending cuts of around $4 billion over a decade. That's a small portion of the $2 trillion spending cuts approved by the House, where conservatives fear that if they agree to the Senate action they will ultimately be forced to accept much less spending cuts than they would like.
They were also skeptical of the Senate's claim that extending the tax cuts Trump signed into law in 2017 would cost nothing. Senate Republicans have adopted that approach to allow tax cuts to be extended indefinitely without inflated the deficit.
Texas Representative Keith Self proposed in a lengthy statement that he does not believe the Senate would approve greater spending cuts, referring to the efficiency of the government on the opposition of that room.
“Should I trust the Senate?” Self wrote. “Who recently passed the bill to block Trump's tariffs in Canada? With Republican senators who voted for an amendment that reversed the important Doge cuts?”
Others have proposed adding language to resolutions, like Pennsylvania's representative Lloyd Smacker, to ensure lawmakers enact deep spending cuts like the ones that home conservatives were demanding.
“I think we can take a little time to ensure we have guardrails to achieve this responsibility that many of us want to see,” Smacker said.
But if you change your budget plan, the Senate will have to approve it again. And with both Chambers scheduled to begin a two-week break this weekend, GOP leaders are not in the mood to slow down progress in their biggest legislative priorities.
