Senate’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Faces Uncertain Path in the House, Though Dissenting Lawmakers Have a History of Backing Down
The same House members who said they would vote against the original bill only to come around and support it in the end are now saying they do not like the Senate’s work product.

The House will vote on the revised Senate version of President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, possibly on Wednesday even though some lawmakers are saying they cannot stomach the reforms their Senate colleagues made. It may all be just hot air, however, as Speaker Johnson has faced similar threats in the past, only to come out victorious.
The Senate passed its version of the bill on Tuesday morning after Senator Murkowski withheld her vote for hours in order to get in some new provisions that would benefit her home state. Vice President Vance was forced to cast the tie-breaking vote after Senators Tillis, Paul, and Collins all voted against it.
“Do I like this bill? No,” Ms. Murkowski told reporters after the vote. “I try to take care of Alaska’s interests. You can either say, ‘I don’t like it’ and not try to help my state, or you can roll up your sleeves.”
The Senate bill adds hundreds of billions of dollars more to the deficit than the House bill, because lawmakers cut less spending and cut taxes even further, leading to a larger reduction of revenues. Some House conservatives who were already upset with the deficit projections in their own version, which they voted for in May, are making it clear that the Senate’s changes are not acceptable.
“It’s hard for me to conceive that it’ll pass as is,” Congressman Andy Biggs told a local Arizona radio station, KTAR News, on Tuesday. “There’s some amazingly bad stuff in here.”
He listed his grievances, mentioning a change in how the Senate is phasing out green energy tax credits by taking a less aggressive approach than the House; the defunding of Planned Parenthood for just one year; and migrants getting access to Medicaid.
“I’ve talked to [my] colleagues and I don’t know anybody who’s happy on the House side,” he added.
Congressman Chip Roy has been posting on X all day about how the Senate changes are unacceptable to him and his colleagues. As the bill was was making its way through the upper chamber’s amendment process, he said he could not see himself backing the proposal once it came back to the House.
On Tuesday, he said the lack of aggressive phase-outs for green energy credits “is a deal-killer of an already bad deal.”
“I am tired of swamp creatures — including so-called conservative ones — gaslighting America when it’s politically convenient for them to do so,” Mr. Roy said Tuesday.
“The Senate’s BBB EXTENDS the Green New Scam. This is NOT what the American people voted for,” Congressman Keith Self, another Freedom Caucus member, wrote Tuesday. “This is NOT President Trump’s BBB — this is a swamp creation!”
Some members are taking issue with certain pet projects they had in the original House version. Congressman Andrew Clyde had a provision added to the House bill that would terminate some taxes on firearms, among other gun rights-related issues. The Senate parliamentarian, in going through her process, struck those sections of the bill and they were ultimately not included in the Senate version.
“I just introduced an amendment to the Senate-passed budget reconciliation bill to remove the [National Firearms Act] registration requirement for suppressors” and certain firearms, Mr. Clyde wrote on X on Tuesday. “I’m fighting til the very end to get as many 2A wins in the OBBB as possible.”
Mr. Clyde withheld his vote during the House’s process in May until he secured his Second Amendment victories, though if his provisions were re-added the bill would have to be sent back to the Senate where, again, his policy goals would likely be struck from the bill.
One member of the Rules Committee, Congressman Ralph Norman, said at a committee meeting on Tuesday that he cannot back the legislation. “I’m against this, because of what the Senate did. I’ll vote against it here, and I’ll vote against it on the floor until we get it right,” the South Carolina lawmaker told colleagues.
Speaker Johnson had been urging the Senate to leave the vast majority of the House-passed bill untouched, though those pleas largely fell on deaf ears among most Republican senators. The good news for the speaker is that all of the above-mentioned House members previously threatened to kill their version of the bill in May, only to back the legislation once it came up for a vote.
Only two House Republicans voted against the bill at that time. If all members are present and voting, then the speaker can afford to lose only three of his GOP colleagues on the final vote.