Speaker Johnson vows to forge ahead with big beautiful bill vote with GOP budget hawks on fence

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) planned to move forward with a vote as early as Wednesday night on President Trump’s “big beautiful bill” following what Johnson called a “productive” meeting with Republican holdouts at the White House — despite several not committing to backing the legislation.“The plan is to move forward as expected,” Johnson told reporters after returning to Capitol Hill.“I think that all of our colleagues here will really like this final product and I think we’re going to move forward.”“We can resolve there concerns and it will be probably some combination of work by the president in these areas as well as here in Congress,” he added.

“There may be executive orders.”“The meeting was productive and moved the ball in the right direction,” agreed White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.“The president reiterated how critical it is for the country to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill as quickly as possible.”Members of the arch-conservative House Freedom Caucus have objected to Medicaid changes not taking effect until 2029 — and hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of green-energy tax credits from former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act not being put on the chopping block.Four Republicans — Reps.

Chip Roy of Texas, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Andrew Clyde of Georgia and Josh Breechen of Oklahoma — delayed the bill’s passage out of the House Budget Committee last week to make their complaints known before allowing it through two days later.Since then, many House conservatives have withheld their plans for the vote until a series of so-called manager’s amendments are introduced with their preferred adjustments, which House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) expected to take place later Wednesday.Other House Republicans have made their discontent public.“I am a ‘NO’ on the reconciliation bill in its current form,” Rep.John Rose (R-Tenn.) tweeted Thurs...