By Jacob Bogage, Marianna Sotomayor — Republican budget hard-liners rebelled Friday to block President Donald Trump’s massive tax and immigration package over concerns the legislation did not impose deep enough spending cuts.
Five fiscal hawks in the House Budget Committee joined Democrats to sink a procedural vote that would have advanced the measure – formally called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act – to the House floor, where Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) hoped to push it through the chamber next week.
The vote is a significant, but not fatal, setback to the legislation that Trump hopes will define his second term. It includes trillions of dollars in tax cuts, plus Trump’s campaign promises to end taxes on tips, overtime wages and auto loan interest, plus hundreds of billions of dollars of spending on the administration’s immigration crackdown and defense priorities.
But the measure would add more than $2.5 trillion to the national debt, which already exceeds $36.2 trillion, an amount that conservative penny-pinchers found intolerable.
It’s unclear when the committee will reconvene to consider the bill again.
The delay is a significant rebuke to Johnson and Trump, who earlier Friday demanded the “grandstanders” against the legislation “MUST UNITE behind, ‘THE ONE, BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL! … STOP TALKING, AND GET IT DONE!”
It is possible to hold another vote later Friday if a compromise is reached. But to avoid further delays, leadership aides are talking about postponing it until Monday so that all corners of the House GOP conference can seek a resolution through the weekend.
