Republicans scramble to corral support for Trump megabill ahead of House vote
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WASHINGTON — House Republican leaders acted swiftly on Wednesday to advance their extensive domestic policy package after the Senate’s approval, launching an all-out effort and involving President Donald Trump to persuade a diverse group of undecided members.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., faces the challenge of keeping defections to only three to ensure the legislation passes with his slim majority, contingent on full attendance and Democratic opposition. Johnson held private discussions near Capitol Hill with the hard-line House Freedom Caucus members who are pushing for more significant spending reductions.

Over at the White House, Trump conducted multiple meetings with undecided members, according to one GOP lawmaker, including engagements with moderates from the Republican Main Street Caucus.

The bill must pass the House before Trump can sign it into law, which he wants to do by Friday, July 4.

Within hours of it narrowly passing the Senate on Tuesday, House Republicans advanced the bill through the Rules Committee in a 7-6 vote, with Reps. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Ralph Norman, R-S.C., voting “no” due to concerns that it would add to the debt.

Several House conservatives complained that the spending cuts were insufficient after shrinking in the Senate package. They raged against the fact that various provisions were stripped out due to budget rules in the chamber, including immigration-related restrictions they strongly support.

But nearly all of those lawmakers have developed a track record of folding and voting in alignment with Trump when the pressure is on them. GOP leaders are counting on them to do so again.

One House Republican lawmaker said conservatives in the Freedom Caucus used to get political cover from groups like Club for Growth, but Trump has scrambled the calculus on the right. The Club for Growth is backing the bill, and conservative figures like Russell Vought and Stephen Miller are in Trump’s inner circle and some of the loudest cheerleaders for the package.

Freedom Caucus members “have no cover” if they vote no, the lawmaker said Wednesday. “Who’s going to protect them from Trump? Thomas Massie?”

Trump has been in a bitter feud with the conservative Massie, a Republican congressman from Kentucky, threatening to recruit a primary challenger against him after he was one of just two Republicans to vote against the bill in the House in May. Massie, who walks around Capitol Hill wearing a live debt clock, has said the legislation would make the deficit worse and has railed against it.

And politically vulnerable Republicans were unhappy with the more aggressive Medicaid cuts in the Senate bill, along with a series of clean energy funding rollbacks that they warned against.

The Senate-passed bill would add $3.3 trillion to the national debt over 10 years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which found that the loss of revenue from tax cuts would outstrip the spending cuts in the legislation.

The legislation would extend the tax cuts Trump signed into law in 2017 while boosting funding for immigration enforcement and the military. It would also makes significant cuts to Medicaid, food stamps and clean energy funding, while raising the debt limit by $5 trillion.

On the Capitol steps Wednesday morning, Democrats blasted the legislation as a massive tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, paid for by slashing programs that help the working class.

“It is the cruelest bill that I’ve ever seen in my tenure in the House of Representatives,” said Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., the ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who has served in the House since 1988.

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