Editor’s note, 5/19/2025: The committee held a second vote Sunday evening and the bill advanced by a slim 17-16 margin. Roy, Norman, Brecheen, and Clyde voted “present” and Smucker voted “yes.” The House Rules Committee is expected to consider the bill next at a markup May 21, starting at 1:00 a.m. ET. Trump and Republicans still aim for House passage before Memorial Day weekend.
Several Republicans on the House Budget Committee voted against the majority’s budget reconciliation bill at a markup Friday, dealing a blow to party leadership and complicating the bill’s chances of advancing by key deadlines.
Republican ‘no’ votes.
The House Budget Committee voted 21-16 on May 16 to not advance the “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” the fiscal year 2025 budget reconciliation package comprised of titles from about a dozen other committees. The tax portion, which extends or makes permanent several expiring provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, cleared the Ways and Means Committee two days prior.
Representatives Chip Roy (R-TX), Ralph Norman (R-SC), Josh Brecheen (R-OK), and Andrew Clyde (R-GA) joined Democrats in voting “no” on the budget, each with their own policy non-negotiables and concerns about the bill’s costs — including $3.8 trillion for tax cuts.
House Budget Vice Chair Lloyd Smucker (R-PA), who supports the bill, was initially recorded as a “yes.” Smucker switched his vote at the end of the markup when the other votes were cast. According to Smucker, this was done to satisfy a “procedural requirement to preserve the committee’s opportunity to reconsider the motion to advance,” as he clarified on social media website X shortly after the hearing.
During the markup, Roy stressed that his objections were not related to the budget’s tax proposals as a matter of policy. Contrary to claims by Democrats, he said, the “vast majority of Americans will get tax benefits,” and not just wealthy individuals and large corporations.
But Roy said the bill “profoundly falls short” of addressing the federal budget deficit. The tax provisions come with “a massive, front-loaded deficit increase,” he said. “Deficits will go up in the first half of the 10-year budget window.”
The bill writes “checks we cannot cash and our children are going to pay the price,” Roy told his Republican colleagues. “I am a no on this bill unless series reforms are made … something needs to change or you’re not going to get my support.”
Norman took issue with budget’s inclusion of government “handouts” for the “able-bodied” over the “vulnerable” and “sick.” He also pushed back against federal funds reaching illegal immigrants “who don’t pay taxes,” as well as “subsidies that go to corporations that shouldn’t get them.”
For Brecheen, the tax package needs revisions to aspects of the various terminations and limitations of energy tax credits as enacted under the Inflation Reduction Act. For example, some business credits for energy projects would be phased out, but “as it currently stands … you can enter a project in 2031 as a wind production entity and still be receiving taxpayer subsidies by 2040.”
Brecheen said taxwriters need to “get these timelines corrected” and consider “a true repeal of wind and solar” benefits that are “undermining our electric grid.” He stated that the majority of new electricity generation over the past two years was from wind and solar, but the “super-majority of those components are coming from China,” to the detriment of “natural gas jobs all over this country.”
“We have to fix this,” said Brecheen.
Clyde said the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion sees the government pay “$9 for every $1,” much of which goes to “able-bodied, working-aged adults that simply will not work,” echoing Norman. “That’s unacceptable,” Clyde continued. “Unfortunately, the current reconciliation package fails to reverse this misguided funding scheme that undermines care for the most vulnerable — the very people Medicaid was originally intended to help.”
More on Medicaid.
Leading up to the Budget Committee vote, the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap was a much-discussed potential hangup. However, some policy experts also had hesitations about the Medicaid provisions in the bill.
Those concerns bore out, with multiple Republican “no” votes in the House Budget Committee Friday based, at least partially, on the bill’s Medicaid provisions.
A day earlier McDermott Will & Emery’s David Noren noted that “supposedly, you have some House Republicans who are dissatisfied that there hasn’t been enough savings found from Medicaid.” Noren, during a May 15 Tax Council Policy Institute panel, said some Republicans want “work requirements to kick in faster” and “be more real.”
Meanwhile in the Senate, Noren explained, Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) and others “want nothing to do with these Medicaid changes.” Hawley has been particularly vocal about Medicaid cuts, cautioning that “workers and their children will lose their health care. And hospitals will close.”
Washington Council Ernst & Young’s Lisa Wolski told Checkpoint she finds it “interesting” that we’re talking about the House bill as cutting Medicaid. “Actually, Medicaid is going to continue to grow, it’s just not going to grow as fast,” said Wolski. The proposed cuts are “actually still something like a 3% growth,” she explained, they are “really just a slowing in the rate of growth.”
Timeline concerns.
Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (R-TX) seemed to be caught off-guard when his colleagues voted down the reconciliation bill Friday. But experts seem confident that some version of the bill will eventually pass.
“I think this bill gets over the finish line,” Anna Taylor, of Deloitte’s Washington National Tax, said a day before the Budget Committee vote. It’s “a tax increase on pretty much every American taxpayer,” Taylor explained, so “they’re gonna find a way to get it done.”
“This is not a process that is optional,” said Adam Francis, of Washington Council Ernst & Young. “This is a process that Republicans need to continue, need to engage in, and need to get over the finish line,” he added.
But ultimately passing legislation to address TCJA expiring provisions isn’t the only issue, said experts. “They don’t really have a backup plan on the debt limit,” Wolski noted. Francis, too, said the debt limit will be “playing a large role” in the timeline.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said the debt ceiling X date could fall sometime in August.
Some Republicans have suggested the Fourth of July as a goal for bill passage — and it’s unclear after Friday’s Budget Committee vote if that’s still possible. However, Wolski thinks the July date is intended to give Republicans a buffer before the August recess — which she views as the true deadline.
K&L Gates LLC Partner Michael Evans said at a webinar hosted by the firm last Thursday he also believes Bessent’s X date is “the real” deadline. “Reading between the lines, I think that probably means that the debt limit needs to be increased before Congress leaves for the August recess.”
“I put that real deadline at August 8 or so,” said Evans.
On Wednesday, EY Principal Ryan Abraham at a similar virtual event offered that “it may very well take longer” for the budget to pass in both chambers and reach President Trump’s desk by July 4. However, “unless corporate receipts or other revenues” are “extraordinary,” the “mid-August” deadline is crucial. Abraham then added “the end of September” is “the other action-forcing date,” which marks the end of the fiscal year.
Next steps.
The House Freedom Caucus, which advocates for fiscal responsibility, said after the vote that it would “continue negotiations to further improve the reconciliation package.” The group — which includes Brecheen, Clyde, Norman, Roy, and others — had plans to “work through the weekend.”
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