‘We can’t make everyone 100% happy,’ says Johnson as it remains unclear if he has the numbers to pass bill
Speaker Mike Johnson has said “very positive” progress has been made toward passing Donald Trump’s megabill, but acknowledged that “we can’t make everyone 100% happy” with the final package, CNN reports.
It quotes Johnson as telling reporters:
When you have a piece of legislation that is this comprehensive and with so many agenda items involved, you’re going to have lots of different priorities and preferences among people because they represent different districts and they have different interests.
But we can’t make everyone 100% happy. It’s impossible. This is a deliberative body. It’s a legislative process. By definition, all of us have to give up on our personal preferences. [I’m] never going to ask anybody to compromise core principles, but preferences must be yielded for the greater good, and that’s what I think people are recognizing and come to grips with.
It remains unclear if he has the numbers needed to pass the bill as the House prepares to take a key procedural vote to get the bill closer to final passage.
Johnson said he – and Trump – have been speaking to conservative hardliners and swing-district Republicans all day about their concerns, adding that “there’s more conversations to be held”.
We’ve had lots of great conversations. I’ve met with individuals and groups all day long, as has the president – who’s fully engaged as well – trying to convince everybody this is the very best product that we can produce. There’s more conversations to be held.
Key events
Five Republicans have joined with the Democrats to vote against a procedure that would open the measure up for debate and set the stage for the bill’s eventual passage. The Republican leadership can only afford three no votes, but voting remains open and it’s thought speaker Mike Johnson is seeking to persuade some of those no’s to change their position.
In the past hour, Republican Thomas Massie switched his vote to “no” from a “yes”. According to the New York Times, Massie – who has consistently voted against the bill over his deficit concerns – changed his vote because “if this ends up being the only vote on the domestic policy bill, he does not want to be on the record supporting it”.
It’s past midnight in Washington but Donald Trump is clearly still tuned in to the progress of his signature bill as it struggles to pass a procedural vote in the House.
The president has just posted to Truth Social, excoriating his Republican colleagues and warning that their failure to pass the bill will cost them votes.
Largest Tax Cuts in History and a Booming Economy vs. Biggest Tax Increase in History, and a Failed Economy. What are the Republicans waiting for??? What are you trying to prove??? MAGA IS NOT HAPPY, AND IT’S COSTING YOU VOTES!!!”
It is now a few minutes past midnight in Washington and the procedural vote that would open final debate on the tax-and-spending bill has been going for two-and-a-half hours.
A reminder, Donald Trump set a deadline of 4 July to pass the bill into law.
Earlier on Wednesday the House broke the record for the chamber’s longest vote in history, with more than seven hours of voting. The current vote still has some way to go to beat that record.
Mike Johnson has said there is “no pressure” to speed up the House’s procedural vote and “we’re allowing these conversations to continue” as the vote is kept open.
The House speaker also told Fox News he was “absolutely confident” Trump’s bill would pass.
Johnson said it had taken a while to go through the Senate’s changes to the bill and for House members to “figure out what that means for them and their districts – and that’s part of the process”’.
So no huge pressure here, we’re allowing these conversations to continue… among those ‘no’ votes I’ve got a couple of folks that are actually offsite right now, had to attend to family affairs or events this evening, so some of them are on their way back, and then a couple of others we’re having still some conversations…
I’m absolutely confident we are going to land this plane and deliver for the American people.
Johnson will keep vote open ‘as long as it takes’
Mike Johnson has told Fox News he’ll keep the vote open for “as long as it takes” as the House holds a key procedural vote on Donald Trump’s big bill.
The House speaker told the outlet:
I’ll keep it open as long as it takes to make sure we’ve got everybody here and accounted for and all the questions answered – I made that commitment to my members.
We’re in an era of Congress where we have small margins, small majorities, and that makes it by necessity a bottom-up institution – y’know, it’s not a couple leaders in a backroom like the old days where two or three people decide the agenda and it’s hoisted upon everyone else and they take orders and follow. It really is a fully participatory, deliberative body.
Passage of the procedural vote would pave the way for a final debate on the president’s tax and spending bill.
Donald Trump has said the US is poised to break all growth records as he urges Republicans to “beat” the Democrats and pass his big bill.
The president posted on his Truth Social platform:
The USA is on track to break every record on GROWTH. Go Republicans, beat the Crooked Democrats tonight! PRO-GROWTH Tax Cuts never fail. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
House speaker Mike Johnson has insisted “we’re in a good place” as the House Republican leadership moves ahead with a key procedural vote on Donald Trump’s megabill, CNN is reporting.
Johnson and his leadership team are currently pressing members to back the procedural vote in a furious last-minute scramble as the vote is under way, the news outlets reports.
About 45 minutes into the vote, Johnson still has four members voting against bringing Trump’s bill to the floor — enough to sink the procedural vote and prevent a vote on final passage. That many “no” votes is also enough to tank the bill: He can afford to lose three.
The no votes are: Reps Andrew Clyde, Keith Self, Victoria Spartz and Brian Fitzpatrick – the latter a surprise to some in GOP leadership.
Johnson said earlier:
Well, it’s been a long, productive day. We’ve been talking with members from across the conference and making sure that everyone’s concerns are addressed, and their questions are answered, and it’s, it’s been a good day.
We’re in a good place right now. This is the legislative process, this is exactly how I think the framers intended for it to work. We feel very good about where we are and we’re moving forward.
CNN reported a short while ago that Republican representative Ralph Norman – who has previously said he was opposed to the Senate-passed version of Trump’s sweeping tax and spending bill – now says he will back the bill in the procedural vote and final passage, after receiving assurances from Trump that his concerns will be addressed.
“It’s the right thing to do at the right time,” Norman told reporters.
House voting on rule to pave the way to final debate on Trump’s tax-and-spending bill
After a day-long delay, the House has started a procedural vote on a rule that would open final debate on the tax-and-spending bill Donald Trump wants to sign into law, but the measure has already been voted against by enough Republicans to have it fail.
The vote is still open, but four Republicans have voted against the rule so far, which means that the measure will fail if all Democrats vote against it as well and no one changes their vote.
Trump attacks Raskin shortly after Democrat told MSNBC Trump ‘might not even understand what’s in the bill’
Donald Trump is apparently whiling away the hours as the House Republican leadership tries to convince its members to vote for the tax and spending bill he wants to sign by watching television.
That seems likely because he just posted a blistering attack on Democratic congressman Jamie Raskin, calling him “a third rate Democrat politician, has no idea what is in our fantastic Tax Cut Bill, nor would he understand it if he did. This DOPE has been consistently losing to me for YEARS”.
As he has so often during Trump’s years in the White House, the president appears to be effectively using social media to type out what he is shouting at the TV. In this case, what seems to have triggered his rage is Raskin’s appearance on MSNBC in the last hour.
When the host Chris Hayes asked Raskin to comment on a report from the outlet NOTUS that Trump told House Republicans on Wednesday not to “touch” Medicaid, despite the fact that the bill includes over $900bn in Medicaid cuts, Raskin said: “There’s a lot of discussion on the floor about whether or not Trump really understands what’s in this bill or not, and whether he’s out of it.”
“The extraordinary thing about that is of course all of these people have gotten in line despite their own misgivings because Trump is leading the way, but Trump might not even understand what’s in the bill. So it’s a very dangerous moment when you think about what democracy is, and it doesn’t speak well for what has become of the Republican party”, Raskin added.
Representative Chip Roy of Texas, a member of the House Freedom Caucus of hard-line fiscal conservatives, told Lisa Desjardins of PBS Newshour within the last hour that he will not vote on the rule to move his party’s massive tax and spending bill forward on Wednesday night. “He was clear,” Desjardins reports, “he does not think that vote should happen tonight and if it does, he is not voting on it.”
Earlier on Wednesday, Donald Trump met on with the Freedom Caucus, whose members say the Senate-passed version of the bill adds too much to the federal deficit, to try to win their support.
Another member of the Freedom Caucus, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, told Laura Weiss of Punchbowl News that the caucus told Republican leaders that they will not vote for the rule on the bill tonight and are prefer to return on Thursday morning.
Trump also met with more moderate Republican House members, who have a nearly opposite objection: that cuts to health and nutrition assistance are too steep.
Despite White House access, Dr Phil’s pro-Trump cable network files for bankruptcy
Merit Street Media, the new conservative cable TV network founded by Phil McGraw, aka Dr Phil, filed for bankruptcy on Wednesday, and sued its partner Trinity Broadcasting, one of the nation’s largest Christian broadcasters.
McGraw’s openly partisan coverage of the Trump administration has included friendly, soft-focus features on the White House border czar, Tom Homan, and “behind the scenes” reports on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) raids in Chicago and Los Angeles this year.
That coverage, as the Hollywood reporter observed, effectively made Dr Phil “an unofficial spokesperson for President Trump in advocating for the raids”.
McGraw was clearly stung by the criticism of his pro-Trump coverage, and devoted a recent segment of his show to defending it.
Reuters reports that House speaker Mike Johnson still hopes to convince the holdouts in his party to back Trump’s signature tax-and-spending bill, telling reporters: “We’re planning on a vote today.”
With a narrow 220-212 majority, Johnson can afford no more than three defections from his ranks, and skeptics from the party’s right flank said they had more than enough votes to block the bill.
“He knows I’m a no. He knows that I don’t believe there are the votes to pass this rule the way it is,” Republican representative Andy Harris of Maryland, leader of the hardline Freedom caucus, told reporters.
Representative Lisa McClain, who chairs the House Republican Conference, told the news agency that she expects her colleagues to work through procedural votes and bring the bill to a vote before the full House on Wednesday night. “I think we’ll put it on the floor tonight. It may be 10 or 11 o’clock,” McClain said.
House Republicans echo Trump’s false claim that ‘we’re not cutting Medicaid’ as they push for more than $900bn in Medicaid cuts
When the Republican representative Gabe Evans of Colorado was confronted in the Capitol rotunda on Wednesday by Greg Casar, a progressive Democrat from Texas, about his support for a bill that cuts more than $900bn spending in Medicaid, Evans had a simple reply: “We’re not cutting Medicaid.”
In fact, according to an analysis this week by the non-partisan Penn Wharton Budget Model, the Republican tax-and-spending bill would cut Medicaid spending by more than $900bn “by imposing work requirements, restricting state-level taxes on healthcare providers that draw federal matching funds, increasing the frequency of eligibility checks, changing Medicaid eligibility requirements based on immigration status, and phasing down state-directed payments to providers under managed care organizations to be in line with Medicare rates”.
But the Republican party line, dictated by Donald Trump, is simply to deny that reality and claim that the changes to Medicaid are simply about cutting “waste, fraud and abuse”.
Trump’s repeated denials that the big tax-and-spending bill he wants to sign includes sweeping cuts to Medicaid has apparently confused even some members of his own party.
The news site NOTUS reported on Wednesday that Trump “doesn’t seem to have a firm grasp” on what is in the bill, because he told moderate Republican House members he met with in urgning them to support the legislation that the party should not touch Medicaid.
“But we’re touching Medicaid in this bill,” one member responded to Trump, three sources told the outlet.