House Stuck in Limbo as Republicans Rush Back to Washington for Vote on the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’

The House of Representatives is hanging in state of delay for the time being, as Republicans are unable to move forward on a number of procedural votes due to attendance issues. A summer storm on Tuesday night forced several lawmakers to take planes back late Wednesday, or drive themselves from several states away. Speaker Johnson was already having problems with conservatives who are upset about having to vote for a deficit-busting piece of legislation that the Senate sent over to them on Tuesday morning. Moderate lawmakers, too, have raised their objections, and even went so far as traveling to the White House on Wednesday to express their concerns there. As the speaker is trying to hold hands and move the bill through the House, the chamber is stuck on a procedural vote that would allow leadership to speed up the process. The five-minute vote began just after 2 p.m. on Wednesday. It has been open for more than two hours. “There’s still a few members who couldn’t get flights in,” the majority leader, Steve Scalise, told reporters off the House floor on Wednesday. “We need their votes,” he added, as the procedural vote was tied, 212 to 212, with all Democrats voting and eight Republican absences. “When they get here … we’ll come back, finish this vote, then go straight into the rule vote,” Mr. Scalise said, referring to the next procedural step that is needed to advance the bill. Once the House approves the “rule” for the “big beautiful bill” it can begin debate for several hours, before finally voting on the legislation. Deficit hawks have been the most ardent critics of the bill in the last 36 hours, since the Senate amended the House-passed version and sent it back. The Senate bill adds hundreds of billions of dollars more to the deficit than the House’s version did, which is giving them pause. “There are probably 10 NO’s at the moment, but I don’t speak for them or vouch for them,” Congressman Thomas Massie wrote on X on Wednesday afternoon. He is firmly opposed to the bill, meaning Republican leadership can afford to lose only two additional Republicans for the legislation to pass. About a dozen conservative House members have been meeting privately in a conference room just off the floor since the procedural vote began, though it isn’t just the typical Freedom Caucus hardliners who are trying to get the bill changed. The vice chairman of the Budget Committee, Congressman Lloyd Smucker, has been in the meeting with Freedom Caucus members, other debt hawks, and lawmakers who signed on to his letter in June urging the Senate to be fiscally responsible with its version of the big beautiful bill. Mr. Smucker demanded at the time that the Senate bill comply with the House’s version of the budget framework, which allowed for up to $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, but only if $2 trillion in spending cuts were made. The Senate version fell far short of that, cutting only about $1.4 trillion from the budget, while including nearly $4.5 trillion in tax reductions. The way senators were able to get around the budget framework and Senate rules was to use something known as a “current policy baseline” to craft their bill, which is essentially an accounting gimmick that allows them to make the permanence of Mr. Trump’s 2017 tax cuts cost zero dollars. Congressman Chip Roy, a member of the Freedom Caucus who says he cannot vote for the legislation, said on Tuesday night that senators are obviously trying to force the House to accept a bad bill. “My colleagues in the Senate failed us. They sent us a bill knowingly, using a policy baseline gimmick,” Mr. Roy said. “They sent it knowing it was gonna have increased deficits.”

House Stuck in Limbo as Republicans Rush Back to Washington for Vote on the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’

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