GOP hardliners defy party leaders and Trump as they vote to block agenda

By Sarah Ferris, Lauren Fox and Haley Talbot, CNN

(CNN) — President Donald Trump’s agenda has been thrown into chaos after a group of GOP hardliners blocked the bill in a key committee vote on Friday – dealing a major embarrassment to House Republican leaders and Trump himself.

Speaker Mike Johnson and his leadership team will now spend the weekend trying to win over those Republicans before attempting to take that vote again, potentially as soon as Monday. But it will be a tough task to flip the right-wing Republicans, who are demanding more spending cuts from Medicaid and from federal clean energy programs, especially as Johnson must also be careful not to alienate moderates whose votes he also needs with any changes to the bill.

A core of right-wing Republicans had warned Johnson and his leadership team, both privately and publicly, that they planned to oppose the vote in the House budget panel meeting on Friday. But GOP leaders took the gamble, and went ahead with the vote anyway.

Five Republicans opposed the bill in the Budget Committee’s meeting on Friday to stitch together the various pieces of Trump’s sweeping tax and spending cuts bill. The panel is not empowered to make substantial policy changes during its meeting, but the bill needs to be advanced out of the committee to make it to a full floor vote. The no votes were: Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Chip Roy of Texas, Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma, Andrew Clyde of Georgia and Lloyd Smucker of Pennsylvania.

Their opposition enraged many of their fellow Republicans, many of whom have spent months helping to draft the bill, which includes trillions of dollars in tax cuts and a big boost to the US military and to national security — largely paid for by overhauls to federal health and nutrition programs and cuts to energy programs.

“These are people who promised their constituents not to raise their taxes. And those five no votes just voted for the biggest tax increase in American history,” GOP Rep. Tom McClintock of California, who voted to advance Trump’s bill, said after it failed.

Negotiations with leadership are still ongoing. The GOP hardliners have demanded stricter overhauls for Medicaid — specifically, putting work requirements into effect immediately, rather than waiting until 2029 — and deeper cuts to a clean energy tax program.

But any changes to the bill could upset Johnson’s fragile coalition in the House, where he can’t afford any big changes that would upset the GOP’s more moderate members. And Trump himself — who is closely watching any changes to Medicaid — also needs to sign off on changes.

Johnson and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise will continue to work furiously to try to assuage the conservatives, efforts that included late-night negotiating on Thursday. Roy and other GOP hardliners repeatedly urged Johnson to delay the vote. They warned party leaders both privately and publicly that they planned to oppose the vote in the House budget panel meeting on Friday.

But GOP leaders refused to bend to hardliners’ demands to delay the vote, eager to quickly advance the bill. Johnson has said he wants to pass the bill next week on the floor, though that prospect is now uncertain.

“We’re working on answers. Some of them, we need to get answers from the Trump administration. But we got a pretty clear idea of what the final pieces are, and we’re working through those right now,” Scalise said.

Scalise said they’re all in agreement about changes they want to make but said they’re working through timing implementation. The work requirements for able-bodied adults enrolled in Medicaid, for instance, would not go into effect until 2029, after Trump has left office. And some of the clean energy subsidies — which were enacted under Biden — wouldn’t be phased out for years after that.

Scalise said Trump, who is returning from an overseas trip, has been keeping track of the bill’s progress. Norman, however, said he has not heard from the president directly.

Trump posted to Truth Social on Friday, “We don’t need ‘GRANDSTANDERS’ in the Republican Party. STOP TALKING, AND GET IT DONE!”

“Republicans MUST UNITE behind, ‘THE ONE, BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL!,’” he said.

Another one of the holdouts, Clyde, had another issue with the bill — its failure to remove gun suppressors, also known as silencers, from regulation under the National Firearms Act. It’s not clear if this policy change would make it into the final bill, however. GOP leaders must follow strict budgetary rules as they draft the package because they plan to pass it without using Democratic votes — forcing the party to comply with Senate rules that allow a bill to bypass a filibuster.

House budget chief, Rep. Jodey Arrington, could only afford to lose two GOP votes in the committee vote.

In a sign of the gravity of the vote, GOP leaders pushed to have Rep. Brandon Gill, whose wife just had their second child, return to Washington on Friday morning for the vote.

Two GOP sources previously told CNN on Thursday that Gill would not be in attendance — which would have meant House leaders could only lose a single vote.

CNN’s Veronica Stracqualursi and Morgan Rimmer contributed to this report.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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