Adam Pack
President Donald Trump gave Senate Republicans permission to make major changes to the House-passed “one big, beautiful bill” Sunday evening, throwing a wrench in Speaker Mike Johnson’s efforts to persuade his upper chamber colleagues to refrain from significantly rewriting the legislation.
Trump’s approval of Senate Republicans making “the changes they want” in the sweeping tax and spending bill comes as some GOP senators are warning that the package is dead-on-arrival without major reforms. Johnson has been urging the Senate to alter the legislation as little as possible given the “delicate” consensus House GOP leadership crafted on the president’s landmark bill, which passed the House by a narrow one-vote margin Thursday.
“I want the Senate and the senators to make the changes they want,” Trump told reporters Sunday evening. “It will go back to the House and we’ll see if we can get them. In some cases, the changes may be something I’d agree with, to be honest.”
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“We’ve had a very good response from the Senate and I don’t know how Democrats can’t vote for it,” Trump continued. “I think they [Senate Republicans] are going to have changes. Some will be minor, some will be fairly significant.”
Congressional Republicans are moving quickly to meet the White House’s July 4 deadline to pass Trump’s domestic policy agenda in the budget reconciliation bill. Assuming the Senate modifies the House-passed legislation, House Republicans will have to vote on the bill for a second time before sending the package to the president’s desk.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Johnson in a May 9 letter that GOP lawmakers have little time to waste to pass the president’s tax and spending bill because Congress must raise the statutory debt limit by mid-July to avert the government defaulting on its $37 trillion debt. House and Senate Republicans are incorporating a debt ceiling hike in the bill, but disagree over the amount Congress should borrow thus far.
Senate Republicans are suggesting they will take a red pen to major portions of the House-drafted bill, including provisions that significantly raise the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap, aggressively phase out tax breaks for green energy projects and fail to make certain tax cuts permanent.
Republican Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, a leading deficit hawk, is also warning that he has the votes to stop the momentum on quickly passing a Senate-amended package if the upper chamber does not consent to steeper spending cuts.
However, Speaker Johnson is warning that significantly changing the legislation’s text could jeopardize the amended-bill’s passage in the House.
“I think we reached a good equilibrium point over more than a year of discussion and negotiation and planning for our big reconciliation bill,” Johnson told Fox News’ Shannon Bream on Sunday morning. “We balanced the interest of a very diverse Republican caucus.”
“We’re one team here — House and Senate Republicans —working together because we must. We have small margins in both chambers,” Johnson added. “I encourage them to modify the package that we’re sending over there as little as possible, because we have to maintain that balance, and it’s a very delicate thing.”
Several groups in the House Republican conference, including the House Freedom Caucus, claimed they only supplied the votes to pass the budget reconciliation bill after House GOP leadership signed off on last-minute changes to the package incorporating key conservative policy wins. The conservative flank is signaling that they “will not look kindly” on the Senate stripping those provisions out of the bill.
Trump has remained publicly upbeat about his landmark bill’s advancement through Congress, even as lawmakers engage in heated debates over the granular details of the legislative package.
“I think it’s going to get there,” Trump told reporters Sunday.” [Senate Majority Leader] John Thune and Mike Johnson have done a fantastic job.”
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