Johnson scraps vote on Trump budget blueprint in face of conservative opposition
by Mychael Schnell
J. Scott Applewhite, Associated Press
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) pauses before talking to reporters at a news conference, at the Capitol, in Washington, on April 1, 2025.
House Republican leaders on Wednesday scrapped plans to vote on the Senate’s framework to advance key parts of President Trump’s legislative agenda, a major setback that came in the face of opposition from hardline conservatives.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said the chamber would “probably” vote on the measure Thursday.
“We are working through some good ideas and solutions to get everybody there; it may not happen tonight but probably by tomorrow morning,” Johnson told reporters. “This is part of the process, this is a very constructive process, I’m very optimistic about the outcome of this one big, beautiful bill, and this is just one of the steps in getting there.”
Still, the delay marks a blow to both Johnson, who pushed for a speedy adoption of the measure, and President Trump, who endorsed the legislation and lobbied those in the right flank to get on board. The chamber was initially scheduled to vote on the measure at around 5:30 p.m. Wednesday.
But a number of lawmakers in the party’s right flank remained entrenched in opposition to the measure, unwilling to waver from that resistance despite intense pressure from Trump himself.
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Johnson officially announced plans to yank the vote after he huddled in a room off the House floor with more than a dozen conservative holdouts for over an hour, as the Speaker made a last-minute push to rally his ranks around the legislation. House GOP leaders kept an unrelated vote open for more than an hour to allow for the conversation.
In the end, however, the conversation was not enough. The Speaker said the conservative critics still had qualms with the budget resolution.
“We want everybody to have a high degree of comfort about what is happening here, and we have a small subset of members who weren’t totally satisfied with the product as it stands,” Johnson said.
The delayed vote is a gut punch to Trump who, unlike previous high-profile votes this Congress, was unable to cajole the House GOP conference around the budget resolution — despite his best efforts.
The president hosted hardline Republicans for a meeting at the White House Tuesday afternoon; fired off a series of Truth Social posts urging Republicans to get in line with the measure; and offered a no-words-minced order to holdouts during the National Republican Congressional Committee’s (NRCC) fundraiser Tuesday night.
“They have to do this. We have to get there. I think we are there. We had a great meeting today,” Trump said at the dinner in Washington, which some of the opponents of the resolution attended. “But just in case there are a couple of Republicans out there. You just gotta get there. Close your eyes and get there. It’s a phenomenal bill. Stop grandstanding. Just stop grandstanding.”
The hardliners, many of whom are in the House Freedom Caucus, remained firm in their criticism. They are incensed that the Senate’s budget resolution includes different spending cut minimums for each chamber.
The measure, for example, directs House committees to find at least $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, while Senate panels are mandated to slash at least $4 billion of federal spending — a fraction of the upper chamber’s amount.
Concerned that the final package would end up closer to the Senate number than the House, conservatives dug in.
“$4 billion in cuts over 10 years is a joke. House Republicans already passed $2 TRILLION in real cuts. We can support President Trump and fight for fiscal sanity,” Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) wrote on X.
Some Republicans also voiced opposition to the Senate using the budgetary gimmick known as current policy baseline to permanently extend the 2017 Trump tax cuts. That theory assumes that the extension of the cuts would not add to the deficit, despite the Joint Committee on Taxation estimating it could cost around $4 trillion.
After his hour-plus meeting with hardliners Wednesday night, Johnson floated creating a conference committee with the Senate to hash out their differences, or amendment the budget resolution — two ideas that would throw a wrench into GOP leadership’s ambitious timeline to get a package to Trump’s desk.
“We’re gonna talk about maybe going to conference with [the] Senate or adding an amendment, but we’re gonna make that decision,” he told reporters. “We are gonna continue to move forward. This is all positive, this is part of the process. So don’t make too much of this.”
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