Key GOP holdout on Trumps big, beautiful bill calls for deeper cuts to Medicaid, Green New Deal spending

WASHINGTON — A key House Republican holdout on President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” to provide tax cuts, border security, defense spending and green energy clawbacks is still calling for deeper spending cuts to chip away at the national debt — as the legislation heads for a critical vote Sunday.Rep.Chip Roy (R-Texas), one of several GOPers who tanked the bill in the House Budget Committee on Friday, says he and other fiscal hawks are still hoping for hundreds of billions dollars more in savings to help reduce the nation’s $36 trillion debt.The Texas Republican huddled with White House officials and Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought on Saturday to voice those concerns — but didn’t commit to backing the legislation before the Budget panel reconvenes Sunday at 10 p.m.Afterwards, Roy told Trump ally Steve Bannon that the deficit hardliners still “think there ought to be work requirements that kick in immediately” for those on Medicaid — rather than delaying those until 2029 — and gutting $400 billion in green subsidies from former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.“We’re trying to move those up, so that would front load some of the savings.

More importantly, I think it would create economic growth by getting people in the workforce,” he said on an episode of “War Room” of the Medicaid work requirements.On the president’s pledge to eliminate the so-called “Green New Scam,” he added: “The President campaigned on terminating it, ending it right out of the gate.”House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), whose panel compiled the spending cuts to the Biden Energy Department programs and grants, wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last week that just $6.5 billion in unspent funds would be returned.House Republican leadership has touted the bill’s more than $1.5 trillion in total spending cuts, more than half of which — $900 billion — was achieved in the Energy pan...