() A major setback has occurred to President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.”
Five Republicans joined with Democrats, insisting on steeper spending cuts to Medicaid and other oppositions, halting its advancement out of the House Budget Committee.
While a blow, the outcome wasn’t a major surprise given the presence of fiscally conservative Republicans concerned that spending cuts do not go far enough.
Chairman of the House Budget Committee, Jodey Arrington of Texas, told reporters that this will be a positive step toward making substantive changes.
“We’ve got work to do. There are many of us who wish that we could have found better savings,” Congressman Chuck Edwards, R-N.C., who voted for the bill, told .
“My philosophy is you take what you can get, when you can get it, and then you come back and fight for more.”
Congressman Lloyd Smucker, R-Pa., told reporters they have been working closely with the White House and President Trump.
“This is a great bill. It’s going to advance the president’s agenda, as well as the mandate that the American people gave to us in November,” he told reporters.
“And so we will get there. I’m quite confident that we’re going to get this done. We’ll vote this out of budget, ideally on Monday.”
The challenge for House Republicans is that if they do make some concessions to appease more hard-line fiscal conservatives, they risk potentially losing support for the bill among some Republicans who had concerns that Medicaid cuts went too far.
GOP leadership will be working through the weekend to try to appease all sides of the conference and get enough support for this bill to advance out of this committee.
