House meets for debate on Trump budget, legislative agenda bill
· UPIJuly 2 (UPI) -- House members are meeting to debate U.S. President Donald Trump's key Senate-passed domestic policy bill, with lawmakers still aiming for a July 4 deadline to pass it.
Members went over over a key procedural vote Wednesday morning after the House Rules Committee pushed the Senate version overnight, setting the stage for a possibly dramatic and uncertain floor vote to pass Trump's broad tax and spending bill.
On Tuesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said in a joint statement with House GOP leaders that they will "work quickly" to pass the bill and put it on Trump's desk "in time for Independence Day."
"Don't let the Radical Left Democrats push you around," Trump posted Wednesday morning on social media. "We've got all the cards, and we are going to use them."
The new version of the legislation, titled the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" includes steeper cuts to Medicaid, a debt limit increase, rollbacks to green-energy policies, and changes to local and state tax deductions.
"All legislative tools and options are on the table," House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said Tuesday after the Senate vote.
It extends trillions in dollars in tax cuts, largely for the wealthiest Americans, but substantially cuts healthcare and other nutritional programs in order to partially beef-up border security and defense spending.
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Trump's Senate-passed bill would add at least $3.3 trillion to America's debt over the next decade, which is a trillion-dollar increase from the bill's last version.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has accused GOP lawmakers of "trying to rip away healthcare from 17 million Americans" with Medicaid cuts stemming from Republicans' legislation.
Meanwhile, provisions stripped from the House included the sale of public land in over 10 states, a 10-year moratorium for states to regulate AI and an excise tax on the renewable energy industry.
"Every single House Democrat will vote 'hell no' against this one, big ugly bill," Jeffries wrote.
On Wednesday, a GOP fiscal hawk was critical of the Senate's new product.
It "violated both the spirit and the terms of our House agreement" in attempts to reduce the national debt, Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, told USA TODAY.
Any newer alterations in the House will again require Senate approval or force a committee conference of both the Senate and House to hash out a final version.
The initial version passed the House in a 215-214 vote in May and the Senate on Tuesday after a four-day "vote-a-rama" in a 51-50 vote that saw three GOP defections in the tie-breaker vote cast by Vice President JD Vance.
Meanwhile, the president is expected to meet at the White House with a handful of House Republicans to help bring his tax bill to the finish line. The hardline conservative House Freedom Caucus members also are expected to meet with Trump.
Rep. Mike Lawler, a moderate New York Republican, was seen Wednesday with other colleagues entering the West Wing, but it was not immediately clear which GOP lawmakers arrived.
It arrives in the face of what former White House adviser Elon Musk called in a June 30 X post "the biggest debt increase in history," saying members of Congress who campaigned on spending reductions, "should hang their head in shame!" and added "they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth."
"It's unconscionable, it's unacceptable, it's un-American and House Democrats are committing to you that we're going to do everything in our power to stop it," according to Jeffries.
He called out Pennsylvania Republicans Rob Bresnahan, Scott Perry and their California House colleagues David Valadao and Young Kim, whose districts in particular will be hard hit by Trump's medicaid cuts.
"All we need are four Republicans, just four," added New York's Jeffries.