Fiscal conservatives hope to meet with President Donald Trump before Wednesday to continue negotiations on the “big, beautiful bill,” Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., told The Daily Signal.
Reps. Norman, Chip Roy, Andrew Clyde, and Josh Brecheen voted “no” on the reconciliation package Friday, but they changed their votes to “present” on Sunday night.
The Daily Signal asked White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt if Trump was involved in the conservative members’ change of vote. She said the president “has been engaged in this process.”
“He spoke to the Speaker of the House,” Leavitt told The Daily Signal at a Monday morning briefing, “and he will continue to make those phone calls if it’s necessary for him.”
Norman said fiscal conservatives have been in conversations with White House staff about the bill, and he hopes to speak to the president about the bill’s provision on Inflation Reduction Act tax credits ahead of Wednesday’s Rules Committee meeting.
“We’re going to try to hopefully meet with him and say, ‘Can he help us between now and Rules on Wednesday, to get some more of these IRA credits,” Norman said. “The lobbyists are winning on this, and we stopped a lot of it, but we need to stop more.”
The budget gives clean energy developers and producers until 2028 to claim the full 45Y and 48E tax credits for clean energy investment and production. The credit values step down to 80% in 2029, 60% in 2030 and 40% in 2031 before zeroing out in 2032.
The president campaigned on zeroing out IRA credits on day one, not by 2032, Norman said.
“We weren’t gonna kill it, there’s a time, but we just needed some changes that would financially help young people like you to avoid a disaster in this country,” Norman said. “And we got the work requirements, we got a lot of the IRA credits scaled back. Is it enough? No, but we weren’t going to kill the bill.”
Norman hopes his “present” vote sends the message of “let’s keep working” on the budget.
“Let’s get the changes, and let’s hopefully avoid the disaster that’s coming if we don’t,” he said.
The House Freedom Caucus released a statement after the vote, saying that the bill “does not yet meet the moment.”
“As written, the bill continues increased deficits in the near term with possible savings years down the road that may never materialize,” the caucus said on X.
Still, Norman says today is “a good day for the country.”
“We fought,” Norman said. “I never thought I would have had to fight to stop your tax dollars and my tax dollars from going to illegals. I never thought I’d have to fight to stop healthy Americans who choose not to go to work and eat Cheetos on their couch from collecting the government paycheck, but we won on it and that’s the good news.”
