Top congressional Republicans are picking up the pieces in the wake of the House Budget Committee’s rejection Friday of leadership’s budget proposals.
If one thing’s clear, it’s that leadership will have to seek a compromise with fiscal hard-liners.
On Friday, the House Budget Committee voted against advancing the budget package with Republican fiscal hawks—specifically, Reps. Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Chip Roy of Texas, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, and Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma—joining all committee Democrats in voting it down. The vote was 21 against advancing the budget and 16 in favor.
Rep. Lloyd Smucker, R-Pa., switched his vote from yes to no at the last moment. The Lancaster, Pa.-based news site LancasterOnline.com reported that “Smucker said he flipped his vote for procedural reasons. Doing so ensures he can call for another vote on the more than 1,100-page legislation at a later date. House rules require that a motion to reconsider must be introduced by a member from the prevailing side of the vote—in this case, someone who voted against the bill.”
In response to the failure to pass the budget through the committee, the panel’s leadership stated that they would move to reconvene on Sunday.
“I am confident we will get to a good place this weekend and have the votes to pass it out of committee Sunday evening,” budget chairman Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, said in a statement.
Satisfying holdouts will take some concessions—namely, more aggressive reforms to benefits programs such as Medicaid.
On Thursday, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., told The Daily Signal that “everything is on the table” when asked if he would consider implementing Medicaid work requirements sooner than the bill currently calls for in order to satisfy holdouts.
Norman said in a statement after the vote, “My biggest priority in Congress is to STOP the bloated bureaucracy’s spending. Today, the budget committee marked up the One Big Beautiful bill that includes making President [Donald] Trump’s tax cuts permanent. That is INCREDIBLE!!”
He continued, “However, this bill is not serious about necessary reforms. It delays work requirements for able-bodied adults until 2029. It does nothing to combat Obamacare’s unfair Medicaid expansion that provides more federal funding for able-bodied adults than the truly disabled, pregnant mothers, and children the program was originally intended for.”
Norman and other fiscal hawks are seeking to implement proposed Medicaid “engagement requirements” immediately and limit the federal government’s matching of federal payments to Medicaid expansion enrollees.
“In addition to Medicaid reform, Biden’s ‘Green New Scam’ tax credits MUST be repealed. We’ll be working through the weekend to keep pushing for stronger reforms. No more SMOKE & MIRRORS.”
Rep. Ron Estes, R-Kan., told reporters, “I expect the next step is to work on addressing some of the concerns raised by the Republicans who voted no. These particularly include that the deficit reduction is not enough and that what deficit reduction there is included is so heavily weighted to the end of the 10-year window.”
Friday’s vote against the budget package was a reminder of disagreements within the GOP that House leadership will have to contend with in order to pass Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.”
Johnson has repeatedly said that Memorial Day, May 26, would make for a good deadline for passage, while major stakeholders such as House Ways and Means Chairman Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have suggested Independence Day, July 4.
Two natural incentives for accelerating the budgetary process are the expiration of Trump’s first-term 2017 tax cuts and the eventual running up against the federal government’s current debt limit.
Jacob Adams contributed to this report.
