House Speaker Mike Johnson remained confident Thursday that the House will pass President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” next week, despite unresolved issues Republicans have raised with the bill.
“We are moving the ball forward,” the speaker said after what he described as a “productive” meeting with Republicans from different cross sections of his conference.
“We are still on path to pass this bill next week,” said Mr. Johnson, Louisiana Republican. “That’s always been the plan and I don’t see anything that would impede that right now.”
Mr. Johnson’s Thursday morning meeting, which lasted a little more than two hours, included members of the so-called SALT Caucus who are pushing for a higher cap on the amount of state and local taxes that can be deducted from federal taxes and tax writers from the Ways and Means Committee.
Conservative fiscal hawks who are pushing for greater spending cuts in the package were also present, including leaders of the House Freedom Caucus and the Republican Study Committee.
Mr. Johnson acknowledged that the SALT issue is one of the biggest hangups to earning enough support to pass the bill.
“It’s one of the key pieces of this equation to sort of meet the equilibrium point that everybody can be satisfied with,” he said. “Not everybody is going to be delighted with every provision in a bill this large, but everyone can be satisfied. And we’re very, very close to that.”
The Ways and Means Committee has proposed tripling the current $10,000 SALT cap to $30,000 for most taxpayers, with the maximum amount phasing down for anyone earning above $400,000 a year.
SALT Caucus members from New York, California and New Jersey have said that’s not enough to provide meaningful relief for their constituents. But conservatives counter that $30,000 is a more than generous subsidy for high-tax blue states.
Mr. Johnson acknowledged that any further increase to the SALT cap would require Republicans to find more savings to offset its cost.
“I am convinced that we’ll be able to adjust the dial, so to speak, so that we can come to an agreement that will meet the criteria that everybody has, and that we can move this thing forward,” Mr. Johnson said of the SALT provision.
The speaker pledged to work through the weekend on SALT and other concerns members have raised about the bill.
He did not specify how Republicans who are demanding more spending cuts, in particular a reduction in federal funding for states that expanded Medicaid, might be accommodated. But he reiterated his pledge that the package will be deficit neutral when factoring in an estimated $2.5 trillion in revenue from economic growth impacts.
That issue could come to a head on Friday, when the House Budget Committee is scheduled to meet to package together the different pieces of the bill approved by 11 other committees. Several conservatives demanding further Medicaid changes sit on that panel, and there are enough of them to prevent the bill from advancing if they choose.
Reps. Chip Roy of Texas and Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma are among the Republicans on the budget panel raising reservations about supporting the bill.
“We should kill all the scams the blue states are using to launder federal money to all of their ridiculous programs,” Mr. Roy said on CNBC. “Republicans should lead to support the president. They’re not right now. I can’t support the bill as it is.”
Mr. Breechen said Republicans may need to delay further consideration of the measure until they have full cost estimates from the Congressional Budget Office needed to evaluate the impact of the legislation on the deficit.
“We have a duty to know the true cost of this legislation before advancing it,” he said on X. “If we are to operate in truth, we must have true numbers — even if that means taking some more time to obtain that truth.”
Another issue that some Republicans have raised with the bill is the phase-out of clean energy tax credits. Many of the credits were Democratic proposals enacted during President Biden’s tenure through the Inflation Reduction Act, but have helped fund energy projects in Republican districts across the country.
Rep. Jen Kiggans of Virginia and 13 other moderate Republicans have requested three changes to the clean energy credit provisions: relaxing “overly prescriptive” provisions designed to target foreign entities of concern to give companies more time to reorganize their supply chains; replacing standards that kick in benefits once projects are placed in service with ones that rely on construction start dates; and lengthening the amount of time the energy credits can be transferred to provide businesses with more flexibility to make long-term investments.
Mr. Johnson, when asked about potential changes to the energy tax credits, demurred.
“The bill is almost in final form,” he said. “There’s a lot of things on the table, a lot of ideas, a lot of possibilities that we have, and we will work through those things together deliberately, as we always do.”
