As Donald Trump wraps up his Middle East trip, he will be coming home to one of the biggest challenges of his presidency: getting his "Big, Beautiful Bill" passed by Congress.
“Republicans MUST UNITE behind, ‘THE ONE, BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL!’” Trump said in a Truth Social post.
“Not only does it cut Taxes for ALL Americans, but it will kick millions of Illegal Aliens off of Medicaid to PROTECT it for those who are the ones in real need. The Country will suffer greatly without this Legislation, with their Taxes going up 65%. It will be blamed on the Democrats, but that doesn’t help our Voters.”
Various Republican factions, including hard-line budget hawks, moderate Northeasterners who want a bigger deduction for state and local taxes, and worried swing-district Republicans fearful of large Medicaid cuts, all need something out of the bill they aren't likely to get.
Only the party leader can unite the factions in the House and get a bill passed.
The Senate poses its own hurdles that Trump will have to deal with if the huge 1,100-page bill passes the House. Even before his plane touches down at Andrews Air Force Base, Trump is already knocking heads together.
After several of the hard-line budget hawks expressed their intention not to vote for the bill, Trump let them have it on Truth Social.
"We don't need 'GRANDSTANDERS' in the Republican Party. STOP TALKING, AND GET IT DONE!" Trump posted.
Part of the problem is that because the bill's language hasn't been finalized, no one knows how much the legislation is going to cost. Oklahoma Republican Rep. Josh Brecheen was wondering about that, too.
As a member of the House Budget Committee, I share @RepChipRoy’s concerns. Further, after a meeting with the CBO this morning, it’s clear we don’t know the true cost of this bill or whether it adheres to the Budget blueprint. We have a duty to know the true cost of this… https://t.co/00CaTNVTPg
— Congressman Josh Brecheen (@RepBrecheen) May 15, 2025
Another crucial issue, vital to several Northeastern Republicans, is the deduction for state and local taxes (SALT). The 2017 bill capped deductions on federal taxes at $10,000. Republicans in New York and other Eastern states want that substantially increased.
They are also working to strike a consensus on the SALT caps -- the amount of state and local taxes that can be written off on federal tax returns -- as moderates draw a red line opposing the proposed $30,000 cap on those deductions.
On Thursday, Johnson spoke with the holdouts and said budget negotiations are still ongoing.
"Keep this thing moving forward," he said.
Johnson said Friday that he is keeping President Donald Trump up to date with the latest developments with the massive package and that the president is excited about the House's "forward progress."
The problem the rest of the GOP caucus has with increasing the SALT deduction is that unless there are corresponding cuts somewhere else, it will add to the deficit, already inching toward $3 trillion for FY 2025.
Speaker Mike Johnson, already trying to fit square pegs into round holes on renewing Trump's 2017 tax cuts, is trying to thread the needle between pro-SALT members and budget hawks. He held a meeting on Thursday to try to bring the two sides together.
“I am convinced that we’ll be able to adjust the dial, so to speak, so that we can come to an agreement that will meet the criteria that everybody has and that we can move this thing forward,” he said after the meeting.
"If you do more on SALT, you have to find more savings. So these are the dials, the metaphorical dials, that I’m talking about," he said. "We are trying to do this in a deficit-neutral way — that was the commitment that we made all along."
"Deficit neutral" left the building long ago, but the most important part of these negotiations is to get everyone working in the same direction. Johnson can't do it alone.
Trump's negotiating style with Congress involves publicly calling out recalcitrant members and shaming them, and private arm-twisting that involves aweing them with the majesty of the presidency and some old-fashioned cajoling. We can expect some unpublicized invites to meetings in the Oval Office for a few key holdouts.
The goal is to get the bill passed by the House by the Memorial Day recess beginning May 26.
