The U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., is pictured on Wednesday, May 7, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

This report has been updated.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House early Thursday approved the “big, beautiful bill” that Republican leaders spent months negotiating with centrists and far-right members of the party — two distinct factions that hold vastly different policy goals — over intense opposition from Democrats.

The 215-214 vote ships the package to the Senate, where GOP lawmakers are expected to rewrite much of it, before sending it back across the Capitol for final approval, a process likely to stretch through the summer.

President Donald Trump, who said he backed the House version, would then need to sign the legislation, which under the complicated process being used by Republicans can pass with just a majority vote in the GOP-controlled Senate.

Trump called on the Senate to pass the legislation as quickly as possible, writing in a social media post that “(t)here is no time to waste” and that the bill is “arguably the most significant piece of Legislation that will ever be signed in the History of our Country!”

Speaker Mike Johnson said minutes before the vote that he expects lawmakers to give the measure final approval before the Fourth of July.

“Now, look, we’re accomplishing a big thing here today, but we know this isn’t the end of the road just yet,” Johnson, R-La., said. “We’ve been working closely with Leader (John) Thune and our Senate colleagues, the Senate Republicans, to get this done and delivered to the president’s desk by our Independence Day. That’s July 4. Today proves that we can do that, and we will do that.”

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., argued against the legislation, saying it “undermines reproductive freedom, undermines the progress that we have made in combating the climate crisis, undermines gun safety, undermines the rule of law and the independence of the federal judiciary. It even undermines the ability of hard-working and law-abiding immigrant families to provide remittances to their loved ones, who may just happen to live abroad.”

Jeffries raised concerns with how the proposals in the bill would impact the economy and the federal government’s financial stability.

“Costs aren’t going down. They’re going up. Inflation is out of control. Insurance rates remain stubbornly high,” Jeffries said. “Our Moody’s rating, our credit rating, has been downgraded, and you’ve got people losing confidence in this economy. Republicans are crashing this economy in real time and driving us toward a recession.”

Ohio’s Warren Davidson and Kentucky’s Thomas Massie were the only Republicans to vote against passing the bill, which members debated throughout the night prior to the vote just after daylight in the nation’s capital. All Democrats, who dubbed it “one big ugly bill,” were opposed. Maryland GOP Rep. Andy Harris, chairman of the Freedom Caucus, voted “present.”

Massie spoke against the bill overnight, calling it “a debt bomb ticking.”

“I’d love to stand here and tell the American people: We can cut your taxes and we can increase spending, and everything’s going to be just fine. But I can’t do that because I’m here to deliver a dose of reality,” Massie said. “This bill dramatically increases deficits in the near term, but promises our government will be fiscally responsible five years from now. Where have we heard that before? How do you bind a future Congress to these promises?”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a briefing later in the day that Trump wants Davidson and Massie to face primary challenges next year during the midterm elections.

“I believe he does,” Leavitt said. “And I don’t think he likes to see grandstanders in Congress.” 

In the works for weeks

The 1,116-page package combines 11 bills that GOP lawmakers debated and reported out of committee during the last several weeks.

The legislation would:

• Extend the 2017 tax law, including tax cuts for businesses and individuals;
• Bolster spending on border security and defense by hundreds of billions of dollars;
• Rework energy permitting;
• Restructure higher education aid such as student loans and Pell Grants;
• Shift some of the cost of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program food aid program for low-income Americans to state governments; and
• Overhaul Medicaid, the nation’s program for health care for low-income people and some people with disabilities.

The bill would make deep cuts to Medicaid spending, reducing the program by $625 billion over 10 years under the latest estimate by the Congressional Budget Office.

The budget measure would also raise the debt limit by $4 trillion.

A new Congressional Budget Office analysis released late Tuesday showed the package tilted toward the wealthy, projecting it would decrease resources for low-income families over the next decade while increasing resources for top earners.

Republicans hold especially thin majorities in the House and Senate, meaning that nearly every GOP lawmaker — ranging from centrists who barely won their general elections to far-right members who are more at risk of losing a primary challenge — needed to support the bill.

Balancing the demands of hundreds of lawmakers led to nearly constant talks during the last few days as Johnson struggled to secure the votes to pass the bill before his Memorial Day deadline.

Any deal Johnson made with far-right members of the party risked alienating centrist GOP lawmakers and vice versa.

An agreement finally came together Wednesday evening when GOP leaders released a 42-page amendment that made changes to various sections of the package, including the state and local tax deduction, or SALT, and Medicaid work requirements and nixed the potential sale of some public lands.

Tax cuts

House debate on the package fell largely along party lines, with Democrats contending it would benefit the wealthy at the expense of lower-income Americans, including millions who would lose access to Medicaid.

Republicans argued the legislation is necessary to avoid a tax hike at the end of the year, when the 2017 GOP law expires, and to curb government spending in the years ahead.

Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., said the tax section of the package would halt a tax increase for many that would have taken place after the vast majority of the provisions in that law expire at the end of this year.

“Working families, farmers and small businesses win with this bill,” Smith said. “We expand and make permanent the small business deduction and increase the child tax credit, the standard deduction and the death tax exemption.”

The legislation would increase the tax rate for colleges and universities with substantial endowments, which would match the corporate tax rate, he said.

Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Richard Neal, ranking member on that tax-writing committee, said the legislation would lead the United States to “borrow $4 trillion and with interest payments over the next 10 years, $5 trillion, to justify a tax cut for the billionaire class.”

Neal said that the wealthy would see a greater benefit from the GOP tax provisions than working-class Americans.

“If you made a million dollars last year, you’re going to get $81,000 of tax relief. If you made less than $50,000 Guess what? Not quite so lucky,” Neal said. “But you know what? $1 a day goes a long way, because that’s where the numbers land.”

Neal said Democrats would have worked with Republicans to extend the 2017 tax cuts if the GOP had capped them for those making less than $400,000 a year, with people making more than that going back to the higher rate. 

Child tax credit

The child tax credit will increase to $2,500, up from the $2,000 enacted under the 2017 tax law. The refundability portion of the credit, or the amount parents could receive in a refund check after paying their tax liability, will remain capped but will increase with inflation by $100 annually. As of now, the amount a parent could receive back per child stands at $1,700.

While Republicans hailed the increase as a win for families, critics say it continues to leave out the poorest families as the refund amount is dependent on how much a parent earns. The credit phases in at 15 cents per income dollar, one child at a time.

“The Republican bill will leave out 17 million American children who are in families that don’t earn enough to receive the full child tax credit,” Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington said Wednesday in the House Committee on Rules. Her amendment to make the tax credit fully refundable was rejected.

On the House floor Thursday morning, DelBene criticized the bill as a “big, broken promise.”

SALT

Republicans from high-tax blue states declared victory on the increase in the SALT cap, or the amount of state and local taxes that can be deducted from federal taxable income. After long, drawn-out disagreement, Republicans representing districts in California, New Jersey and New York secured a bump to $40,000, up from the $10,000 cap enacted under Trump’s 2017 tax law.

However, the cap comes with an income limit of $500,000, after which it phases down. Both the $40,000 cap and the $500,000 income threshold will increase annually at 1% until hitting a ceiling of $44,000 and $552,000.

Rep. Mike Lawler of New York said during debate that he “would never support a tax bill that did not adequately lift the cap on SALT.”

“This bill does that. It increases the cap on SALT by 300%,” Lawler said. “And I would remind my Democratic colleagues, when they had full control in Washington, they lifted the cap on SALT by exactly $0, zilch, zip, nada.”

Medicaid work requirements 

Energy and Commerce Chairman Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., said his panel’s bill would ensure Medicaid coverage continued for low-income families, individuals who are disabled and seniors through new work requirements and other changes.

“This bill protects coverage for those individuals by ensuring ineligible recipients do not cut the line in front of our most vulnerable Americans,” Guthrie said. “The decision by left-leaning state governments to spend taxpayer dollars on people who are ineligible for the program is indefensible. Medicaid should not cover illegal immigrants, deceased or duplicative beneficiaries, or able-bodied adults without dependents who choose not to work.”

The policy change would require those who rely on the state-federal health program, and who are between the ages of 19 and 65, to work, participate in community service, or attend an educational program at least 80 hours a month.

The language has numerous exceptions, including for pregnant people, parents of dependent children, people who have complex medical conditions, tribal community members, those in the foster care system, people who were in foster care who are below the age of 26 and individuals released from incarceration in the last 90 days, among others.

New Jersey Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone, ranking member on the committee that oversees major health care programs, said the Republican bill would not only cut funding for Medicaid, but also for Medicare, the program relied on by seniors and some younger people with disabilities.

“Republicans are stripping health care away from people by putting all sorts of burdensome and time-consuming road blocks in the way of people just trying to get by,” Pallone said. “The vast majority of people on Medicaid are already working. This is not about work. It’s about burying people in so much paperwork that they fall behind and lose their health coverage, and if someone loses their health coverage through Medicaid, this GOP tax scam also bans them from getting coverage through the ACA marketplace.”

While the GOP bill doesn’t directly address Medicare, he said, a federal budget law, known as the Pay-As-You-Go Act, would force spending cuts called sequestration to that health program.

“The Medicare cuts will lead to reduced access to care for seniors, longer wait times for appointments, and increased costs,” Pallone said.

States to share in food aid costs

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson, R-Pa., pressed for support for his piece of the legislation, saying changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, are needed.

“SNAP is the only state-administered welfare program that does not have a cost-share component, and while the federal government funds 100% of the benefit, states are tasked with operating it,” Thompson said. “The only problem: They aren’t operating it well.”

He also cheered several of the package’s tax provisions, saying they would benefit farmers.

“The one big, beautiful bill makes permanent and expands the Trump tax cuts. It also prevents the death tax from hitting over 2 million family farms,” Thompson said. “It locks in the small business deduction, helping 98% of American farms stay afloat.”

Minnesota Democratic Rep. Angie Craig, ranking member on the panel, wrote in a statement that the proposed changes would “make America hungrier, poorer and sicker.”

“At a time when grocery prices are going up and retirement accounts are going down, we must protect the basic needs programs that help people afford food and health care,” Craig wrote. “As a mother and someone who needed food assistance at periods in my own childhood, I condemn this attempt to snatch food off our children’s plates to fund tax breaks for large corporations.”

Border security, air traffic control, EV fees

House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Sam Graves, R-Mo., said his piece of the package would combine “critical investments in border security, national defense and modernization of America’s air traffic control system, while eliminating wasteful spending and other deficit reduction measures.”

“Specifically, this bill addresses long overdue needs in the United States Coast Guard, which for over two decades has received less than half of the capital investment necessary to effectively carry out its critical missions,” Graves said.

The transportation section of the package, he said, includes $21 billion for the Coast Guard and $12.5 billion to modernize the air traffic control systems while establishing a $250 annual fee for electric vehicles and a $100 annual fee for hybrid vehicles that would go toward the Highway Trust Fund. That account has traditionally been funded through a gas tax. 

Washington Democratic Rep. Rick Larsen, ranking member on the transportation panel, said he wanted “to continue historic funding for transportation, infrastructure, and stronger and healthier communities.”

“Unfortunately, this reconciliation package leaves very little room for those investments,”  Larsen said.

“This bill causes immediate harm by yanking money from locally selected projects that our constituents in Republican and Democratic districts alike are counting on,” he added. “And for what? To help pay for the tax cuts for the richest Americans and largest and largest corporations.”

Student loan overhaul, medical research

House Education and Workforce Committee ranking member Bobby Scott, D-Va., urged opposition to what he called the “big, bad billionaires bill,” saying it would lead to a massive reshaping of higher education aid.

“The bill not only can increase the deficit, it has 4 million students who will lose their Pell Grants, 18 million children could potentially lose their free school lunch, 13.7 million people are set to lose their health care and everybody loses when the National Institutes of Health research is cut,” Scott said.

Natural Resources Committee Chairman Bruce Westerman, R-Ark., said his portion of the legislation would “generate over $20 billion in savings and new revenue for the federal government, primarily by direct royalty and lease fees from the sale of oil, gas, timber and mine resources, while curbing wasteful spending.”

“Our title reinstates onshore and offshore oil and gas lease sales, holds annual geothermal lease sales and ensures a fair process for critical mineral development nationwide,” Westerman said. “We’ve also directed the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to utilize long-term timber sale contracts.”

The Trump administration released a Statement of Administration Policy on Wednesday urging GOP lawmakers to approve the legislation, when it still appeared several members of the party might delay or even block the bill in the House. 

“The One Big Beautiful Bill Act reflects the shared priorities of both Congress and the Administration,” the SAP states. “Therefore, the House of Representatives should immediately pass this bill to show the American people that they are serious about ‘promises made, promises kept.’

“President Trump is committed to keeping his promises, and failure to pass this bill would be the ultimate betrayal.”

U.S. House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris, R-Md., center, speaks to reporters on Wednesday, May 21, 2025 at the U.S. Capitol. From left are Republicans Keith Self of Texas, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Chip Roy of Texas. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

This report has been updated.

WASHINGTON — U.S. House Republican leaders released changes to their “one big beautiful bill” late Wednesday after marathon negotiations with conservatives demanding deeper cuts to safety net programs, teeing up debate and a final vote likely sometime Thursday.

The alterations, which will have to be adopted later, moved up implementation of work requirements for Medicaid by at least a couple of years and tossed out plans to sell some public lands. The new language also tightened the timeline for clean energy tax breaks and raised the ceiling for taxpayers who deduct state and local taxes.

The package of adjustments — the manager’s amendment — was incorporated into the larger reconciliation bill, which was approved by the House Rules Committee just before 11 p.m. Eastern on an 8-4 party-line vote. Far-right holdout Rep. Chip Roy of Texas was absent.

Next, the package must pass a procedural vote on the House floor before lawmakers can debate and take a final vote.

With a razor-thin margin, House Speaker Mike Johnson can only lose a handful of members on each vote. Democrats are expected to uniformly vote “no” in the procedural and final votes.

Medicaid

Republicans moved up implementation of work requirements for Medicaid enrollees from taking effect after January 1, 2029 to no later than December 31, 2026. That could mean some states will make the changes before next year’s midterm elections.

The provision would require those who rely on the state-federal health program for lower-income Americans and some people with disabilities, who are between the ages of 19 and 65, to work, participate in community service, or attend an educational program at least 80 hours a month.

The language has numerous exceptions, including for pregnant people, parents of dependent children, people who have complex medical conditions, tribal community members, people in the foster system, people who were in the foster system who are below the age of 26 and people released from incarceration in the last 90 days, among others.

The GOP changes also would bar Medicaid from covering gender transition procedures for anyone in the program. The bill previously barred that type of treatment for anyone below the age of 18.

Clean energy tax credits

Republicans also tightened the timeline on the termination of clean energy tax credits enacted under President Joe Biden. Hardliners focused on reducing the deficit had demanded a quicker phase-out for the credits.

The new language would accelerate phase-outs for clean energy investment tax credits to 2028, up from 2031, with special carve-outs for nuclear facilities. Companies that break ground on new facilities 60 days after the bill is enacted, if passed, will not qualify for the tax credits. The same applies to any facility placed into service after 2028.

State and local taxes

A separate contingent of Republican holdouts reached a deal with Johnson to raise the SALT cap to $40,000, up from the $10,000 lid enacted under the 2017 tax law. The SALT cap  — the amount of state and local taxes constituents can deduct from federal taxable income — is a top issue for Republicans who represent districts in high-tax blue states, including California, New Jersey and New York.

The amount of SALT taxpayers can deduct decreases for those making more than $500,000 annually. The SALT cap and the income cut-off will increase by 1% each year from 2027 until 2033.

Public lands sale

The amendment removed language that would have allowed the sale of public lands in Nevada and Utah.

The National Wildlife Federation credited Montana Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke with removing the provision.

“Thank you to Rep. Ryan Zinke and his colleagues who listened to their constituents and worked with House leaders to eliminate the provision from the budget reconciliation bill,” NWF Associate Vice President for Public Lands David Wilms said in a statement. “We urge all members of Congress to refrain from similar attacks on America’s public lands.”

Jessica Turner, president of the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable, wrote in a statement that “Congress avoided setting a dangerous precedent that lands can be sold anytime the U.S. Treasury needs a budget ‘pay-for’ and threatening outdoor recreation businesses and rural communities alike that need certainty, access, and long-term infrastructure.”

The Center for Biological Diversity’s Great Basin Director Patrick Donnelly wrote in a separate statement that it was “appalling that GOP leaders tried to get away with auctioning off some of our country’s most beautiful landscapes to fund tax cuts for billionaires and make developers richer. This is Gilded Age-level stuff, and I hope people remember it the next time Republicans try to pretend they care about public lands.”

A separate provision in the amendment appeared to narrow the federal authorizations energy projects could bypass by paying a $10 million fee. The section had been attacked by environmental groups as a “pay-to-play” for energy companies.

White House meeting

The changes come after Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, and far-right holdouts huddled with President Donald Trump at the White House Wednesday afternoon.

Johnson, speaking to reporters at the Capitol following the meeting, said that lawmakers had “a good discussion” and that he believes the GOP is “in a very good place.”

“I think that all of our colleagues here will really like this final product, and I think we’re going to move forward,” Johnson said.

Johnson said members of the Freedom Caucus, who previously argued the legislation doesn’t go far enough to restructure Medicaid and reduce federal spending, may end up supporting the bill, in part because Trump plans to address their other concerns through unilateral actions.

“You will see how all this is resolved. But I think we can resolve their concerns and it’ll be probably some combination of work by the president in these areas as well as here in Congress,” Johnson said. “So there may be executive orders related to some of these issues in the near future.

“And, you know, this is a commitment the president has made. He wants to go after fraud, waste and abuse.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt released a written statement saying the “meeting was productive and moved the ball in the right direction.

“The President reiterated how critical it is for the country to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill as quickly as possible.”

Complex process

Republicans are using the complex reconciliation process to move the package through Congress with simple majority votes in each chamber, avoiding the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster, which would otherwise require bipartisanship.

Reconciliation measures must address federal revenue, spending, or the debt limit in a way not deemed “merely incidental” by the Senate parliamentarian. That means the GOP proposals must carry some sort of price tag and cannot focus simply on changing federal policy.

Republicans are using the package to extend the 2017 tax law, increase spending on border security and defense by hundreds of billions of dollars, overhaul American energy production, restructure higher education aid and cut spending on Medicaid.

A new Congressional Budget Office analysis released late Tuesday projected the massive reconciliation package would decrease resources for low-income families over the next decade while increasing resources for top earners.

Freedom Caucus

Earlier Wednesday, members of the Freedom Caucus told reporters following a different meeting with Johnson that they believed negotiations were moving in the right direction, but were skeptical of trying to approve the entire package this week.

Maryland Republican Rep. Andy Harris, chairman of the group, said they wanted the legislation to go further in terms of addressing “waste, fraud and abuse” within Medicaid, though he declined to elaborate.

The Medicaid proposals in the version of the bill prior to the negotiated changes would cut $625 billion in federal spending during the next decade, under a CBO analysis. Democrats have warned the result would be millions of vulnerable people losing access to the health program for lower income people and some people with disabilities.

Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy said during that same impromptu press conference that leadership and members of the Freedom Caucus had made “significant progress” toward a final agreement.

“We’re trying to deliver so that the people who are actually out there working hard can actually get the health care that they want to get, that they can get, and get it the best way possible,” Roy said. “That’s what this is all about; changing a broken system, making sure we’re saving taxpayer dollars and being able to provide a better environment for people to be able to thrive.”

Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Scott Perry, who used to chair the Freedom Caucus, said that holding a House vote before Memorial Day was a made-up timeline and that if negotiations needed to last longer, they should.

“This is a completely arbitrary deadline set by people here to force people into a corner to make bad decisions,” Perry said. “It’s more important to get this right, to get it correct, than to get it fast. We are sitting at the table to do that.”

Jacob Fischler contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump arrives with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., for a House Republican meeting at the U.S. Capitol on May 20, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House Republicans who have yet to rally behind the party’s “big, beautiful bill” huddled in the speaker’s office Tuesday as different factions tried to hash out agreement on taxes, Medicaid and a few other outstanding issues.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters before those meetings began there were “a number of loose ends to tie up” with deficit hawks and members from high-tax states, who are pressing to raise the state and local tax deduction, also known as SALT.

“We got some hours ahead of us to work this out, and I’m very confident we will,” Johnson said. “I’m going to have a series of meetings that will begin right now in my office to try to tie up the final loose ends. This is a 1,100-page piece of legislation. We’re down to a few provisions so we are very confident, very optimistic we can get this done and stay on our timetable.”

Johnson hopes to pass the legislation this week, though he didn’t appear to have the votes as of Tuesday afternoon.

Trump pays a House call

The smaller meetings followed a closed-door huddle between all the chamber’s GOP lawmakers and President Donald Trump earlier in the day that didn’t quite have the intended effect of immediately convincing holdouts to vote for the bill.

Trump, however, appeared to declare victory before leaving the Capitol.

“I think we have unbelievable unity. I think we’re going to get everything we want,” Trump said after the morning meeting. “And I think we’re going to have a great victory.”

House Republicans have an extremely thin 220-213 majority, requiring nearly every GOP lawmaker to support the 1,116-page package in order for it to reach the Senate.

Getting SALT-y

The reconciliation bill currently proposes lifting the SALT cap from $10,000 to $30,000 for married couples filing jointly, with a phase-down for those earning $400,000 or more, but that’s not enough for Republicans from states most impacted by the aspect of tax law.

New York Republican Rep. Nick LaLota told reporters in the early afternoon that he would likely lose reelection if he can’t secure a better SALT agreement than what was on the table.

“If I do a bad deal, I would expect my constituents to throw me out,” LaLota said. “If I did a deal at $30,000, my own mother wouldn’t vote for me.”

LaLota said Republicans leaders should prioritize a deal that benefits swing voters to avoid the party losing centrist members and possibly the House majority in the 2026 midterms.

“If we win that one issue, they’ll have a much easier November of 2026. And thus we’ll be able to keep the House and do other fiscally responsible things for the next couple of cycles here, if we get this one issue right,” LaLota said. “Conversely, you get this issue wrong — you vote for a bad bill and you keep the cap low — those folks are getting thrown out of office, we lose the majority, and then we have an open border, then we have an impeached president, and then we have all the other things that America voted against.”

LaLota said later Tuesday, after GOP leaders proposed different SALT cap numbers, that there was still “no accepted deal, yet the parties are talking a little more with an understanding of each other’s position.”

“Leadership understands better what our pain threshold is,” LaLota said. “We clearly rejected the $30,000 number that’s in the Ways and Means bill.” 

He declined to say if the SALT Caucus was prepping a counteroffer for leadership, but said that staff were conducting “some research on some of the mixes of income caps and what SALT cap there would be and how much that would be valued at relative to the entire $4 trillion package.”

‘Bad faith negotiation’

Rep. Mike Lawler, a staunch supporter of raising the SALT cap for his constituents north of New York City, would not comment to reporters outside the speaker’s office about a specific dollar amount but said there’s an “improved offer” on the table.

“We’re waiting on more details. We’ll have more to say later,” Lawler said.

Speaking to Fox News in the hallway, he said, “I’m not going to sacrifice my constituents and throw them under the bus in a bad faith negotiation, which is what this has been by leadership and Jason Smith,” he said referring to the chair of the House Committee on Ways and Means.

“We need to come to an agreement. We need to provide real and lasting tax relief, and that’s what I’m fighting for, for my constituents. I respect the president … but I’ll respectfully disagree,” Lawler said.

Trump urged House Republicans Tuesday morning that raising the SALT cap benefits Democratic governors.

Conservatives still unhappy

Complicating negotiations, some far-right House Republicans remain opposed to the bill, saying it does not go far enough.

Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, who did not support the bill during a committee vote Sunday night, told States Newsroom Tuesday afternoon that his “concerns and problems still exist.”

Roy argues the massive reconciliation deal does not reduce deficit spending enough, particularly with respect to Medicaid and clean energy tax credits.

When asked whether lawmakers were approaching an agreement, Roy said “Not sure. We’re still talking. We’ve had literally like five meetings today already.”

Thune predictions

The House passing the package this week would only be one of many steps in the long, winding process.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said during a press conference Tuesday afternoon, just after Johnson spoke during a closed-door lunch, that changes to the package are expected in the upper chamber.

Thune said one of the major questions for GOP senators is whether the legislation holds “sufficient spending reforms to get us on a more sustainable fiscal path.”

“I think most of our members are in favor of a lot of the tax policy and particularly those portions of the tax policy that are stimulative, that are pro-growth, that will create greater growth in the economy,” Thune said. “But when it comes to the spending side of the equation: This is a unique moment in time and in history where we have the House and the Senate and the White House, and an opportunity to do something meaningful about government spending.”

Thune said that GOP senators would likely make “tweaks” to the tax provisions once the House sends over a package, especially around how long certain tax policy lasts.

“They have cliffs and some shorter-term timeframes when it comes to some of the tax policies,” Thune said. “We believe that permanence is the way to create economic certainty and thereby attract and incentive capital investment in this country that creates those good-paying jobs, and gets our economy growing and expanding, and generates more government revenue.”