The Republicans who could derail reconciliation
Reconciliation talks are beginning to boil over as Republican factions begin attacking the "big, beautiful bill" from all angles.
Up until this week, critics have been relatively quiet about reconciliation while the majority of Republicans embraced the bill, meant to codify President Donald Trump's agenda.
To be clear, the bill does so to an extent. The tax policy is studded with pro-family provisions and includes the incredibly popular "no tax on tips" policy Trump floated during his campaign. There are Medicaid reforms intended to trim the fat and reduce fraud by enforcing work requirements. It even increases the endowment tax on elite universities like Harvard, subjecting the largest endowments to the 21% corporate rate.
But what was supposed to be the centerpiece in the Republican-led Congress has become a focal point for conflict, and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is doing what he can to plug as many leaks as possible.
'I understand that we have a thin majority, but we should deliver.'
RELATED: Vance tells Glenn Beck Congress needs to 'get serious' about codifying DOGE cuts
Some defectors who have been the most difficult to please are the SALT Caucus, a bipartisan bunch pushing to eliminate the $10,000 cap on state and local tax deductions. The blue-state Republicans in the caucus, like Rep. Mike Lawler of New York, have been particularly stubborn during these closed-door negotiations.
During one of their many meetings this week, the members even threw out their colleague Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis of New York because she supported the proposed $30,000 cap increase that came out of the Ways and Means Committee. Notably, Malliotakis is the only SALT Caucus member on the committee and therefore the only member with direct influence over tax policy, the very thing the SALT Caucus is trying to change.
Even after holding several meetings throughout the week, Johnson said that he will likely have to work through the weekend to strike a deal with SALT Caucus Republicans.
RELATED: Big, beautiful bill advances after 18-hour markup marathon while SALT talks go south
Predictably, Johnson is also facing an uphill battle against conservatives on Capitol Hill, most notably those on the Budget Committee. The committee is the last to hold a markup on Friday morning, which consists of piecing together all the reconciliation portions that have come out of the 11 House committees' markups.
There are no amendments allowed in the Budget Committee. They will simply vote to advance the bill in its entirety.
The problem is that several Republicans on the committee have already committed to voting against the bill's advancement. There are 21 Republicans and 15 Democrats on the House Budget Committee, meaning Republicans can afford to lose only two votes if they want to get the bill across with a simple majority. Yet among those 21 Republicans, four of them said they are willing to tank the bill.
Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas told Blaze News earlier in the week that he couldn't get behind the bill because it doesn't do enough to rein in spending and address fraud in the Medicaid system.
"It has to be amended," Roy told Blaze News. "I'm not going to be able to support it as it's currently drafted, and those amendments are going to need to be, you know, relatively significant."
"I didn't come here to perpetuate a broken system," Roy added. "I understand that we have a thin majority, but we should deliver."
Republican Reps. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Andrew Clyde of Georgia, and Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma echoed Roy's concerns, saying they too intended to vote against the bill in committee.
Despite these naysayers, leadership is pushing on, with Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) saying he is confident the bill will pass committee on Friday.
"We did the hard work of setting real targets to restore fiscal sanity, and I’m confident we will have the votes in the Budget Committee tomorrow," Arrington said in a statement. "The Republican conference is working in good faith through a few scoring and policy clarifications. With something this big and beautiful, you’ve got to get it right."
If the bill manages to scrape by in the Budget Committee, it will be headed to the Rules Committee on Monday before eventually being put up for a vote on the floor before the Memorial Day target. Unlike the Budget Committee, the Rules Committee allows amendments, which Johnson, who has a historically narrow House majority, will likely need to make if he wants to get enough votes to pass the bill.
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Vance tells Glenn Beck Congress needs to 'get serious' about codifying DOGE cuts
While President Donald Trump greenlit a flurry of executive orders in the first 100 days of his second term, Congress has been struggling to keep up.
In the first few months of his presidency, only five bills from Congress have made it to Trump's desk and been signed into law. Meanwhile, Louisiana Republican Speaker Mike Johnson's "big, beautiful bill" has been the focal point of Capitol Hill drama with promises to codify the MAGA mandate Trump was overwhelmingly elected for.
Although the mandate is reflected in certain provisions in the bill, Vice President JD Vance himself said that Congress needs to do more to codify DOGE cuts and rein in spending.
'We're going to have to do it and get serious about it.'
.@VP Vance assures me major spending cuts are coming in the FINAL “Big, Beautiful Bill”:
“We’ve already had conversations with House leadership that we want to see some more significant efforts to rein in spending.”
“When I talk to @elonmusk and I talk to the DOGE folks, where… pic.twitter.com/CyyJRt1zZ4
— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) May 15, 2025
"I will say the big, beautiful bill text just came out last week," Vance told Glenn Beck on "The Glenn Beck Program" Thursday. "That's going to change a lot from now until then. We've already had conversations with House leadership that we want to see some more significant efforts to rein in spending here."
"The president also believes, Glenn, and he's right about that, that if you cut the trade deficit or you raise revenue through tariffs, that you actually go a long way to making the country on a more sustainable fiscal pathway as well," Vance added. "But you're right. You can't do it without cutting domestic spending."
Up until this point, the United States has racked up over $36 trillion in national debt. Despite the desire from certain Republicans to actually control spending, Johnson's bill is expected to add roughly $3.3 trillion to the deficit through fiscal year 2034.
"We're going to have to do it and get serious about it," Vance told Beck. "We're making that as clear to congressional leaders as possible. But look, knock on wood here, I think that once we get the final package out of the House and the Senate, we're going to have something that's serious on budget-cutting."
Vance noted that one of the easiest ways to chip away at the nation's mounting debt is to begin by eliminating mismanaged spending and fraudulent benefits.
"What no one talks enough about, and when I talk to Elon, and I talk to the DOGE folks, where they think they're going to get the most cuts is in taking people, illegal aliens and other people, who are defrauding the Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security system," Vance added.
"Think about two people, right? A guy who's paid into Social Security for 40 years. Obviously we want that guy to get his Social Security benefits," Vance told Beck. "You compare that person to an illegal alien who's engaged in Medicaid fraud. Obviously we don't want that person to get their benefits."
RELATED: Big, beautiful bill advances after 18-hour markup marathon while SALT talks go south
Medicaid reform has been a hot-button issue as reconciliation talks escalate. In its current state, the bill amended work requirements so that ineligible recipients would have a harder time defrauding the Medicaid system, protecting vulnerable people the service was intended for. Although this is a step in the right direction, some Republicans say it doesn't go far enough and have pointed out that the changes won't be enforced until 2029, after Trump has left office.
"I think Democrats are going to fight us on this, but this is such an important point," Vance added. "We cannot allow people to defraud the Medicare and Medicaid system, or it's going to bankrupt this country. It's also just fundamentally unfair."
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Exclusive: Why Chip Roy can't support the 'big, beautiful bill': 'The swamp does what the swamp does'
As reconciliation talks ramp up, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is doing what he can to reel in Republican defectors.
Johnson can afford to lose only three Republican votes and still get reconciliation out the door, which is shaping up to be a tall task as more and more Republicans take issue with different aspects of the "big, beautiful bill." Among them is Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, who outlined his grievances in an exclusive interview with Blaze News.
'I didn't come here to perpetuate a broken system. I understand that we have a thin majority, but we should deliver.'
"Reconciliation is all about balancing our current priorities to make sure that our spending and our tax policy results in something that could be remotely described as deficit-neutral or reducing the deficit," Roy told Blaze News. "So that's kind of the first, you know, measure of whether you're going to do something successfully or not."
RELATED: Big, beautiful bill advances after 18-hour markup marathon while SALT talks go south
As Roy noted, codifying President Donald Trump's campaign promises is the unofficial measure of success on the Hill. While Trump himself has greenlit 151 executive orders as of this writing, only five bills from Congress have actually been signed into law.
"We need to deliver on the tax policy that President Trump ran on, and that would extend what he did in 2017," Roy added. "We need to deliver on spending restraint. We need to deliver on the priorities that the American people sent us here to deliver on."
"The problem is the swamp does what the swamp does," Roy told Blaze News.
Although reconciliation covers some of the MAGA mandate, Roy says it is still too flawed in its current state for him to throw his support behind the bill.
'It's a broken system, and this bill doesn't make it better,' Roy added. 'It frankly, arguably, makes it worse.'
"The problem is we've got a flawed bill. That's the bottom line," Roy added. "It has some good tax policy and some not-so-good tax policy. Some of it is not extended as it should be. We've got some good spending restraint and some bad spending policy."
RELATED: SALT sellouts: GOP dumps red-state voters for New York Democrats
Roy used the proposed Medicaid reforms as a case study. One tool Republicans have used to trim down Medicaid costs and uproot fraud has been to enforce work requirements so that fewer people are able to take advantage of the system, allowing vulnerable and disabled people Medicaid was intended for to have access to the resources they need.
But as Roy pointed out, these so-called reforms have flaws of their own.
"They put the work requirements in, and they said, 'Oh, we've got work requirements,' but they don't take place until 2029, after the Trump presidency," Roy told Blaze News. "They have waivers to the work requirements even when they kick in in 2029. They do not address all the ridiculous federal funding of certain states at the expense of other states."
"It's a broken system, and this bill doesn't make it better," Roy added. "It frankly, arguably, makes it worse."
RELATED: House Republicans to hike up Harvard endowment tax in reconciliation
Roy said that unless the bill was significantly amended to rein in spending and actually reform Medicaid, he wouldn't be able to support it.
"It has to be amended," Roy told Blaze News. "I'm not going to be able to support it as it's currently drafted, and those amendments are going to need to be, you know, relatively significant."
"I didn't come here to perpetuate a broken system," Roy added. "I understand that we have a thin majority, but we should deliver."
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Big, beautiful bill advances after 18-hour markup marathon while SALT talks go south
The House's big, beautiful bill passed through the Ways and Means Committee Wednesday morning along party lines after an 18-hour overnight markup. While this is a win for House Republicans, additional roadblocks appeared after negotiations with SALT Caucus members took a turn for the worse.
The SALT Caucus' primary advocacy focuses on increasing and even eliminating the federal deduction cap on state and local taxes. The deduction was capped at $10,000 by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017. While codifying many of President Donald Trump's campaign promises, like no tax on tips and overtime, the GOP tax bill also raises the SALT cap to $30,000.
'They can sit and negotiate with themselves all they want, but there will be no changes unless I and the committee agree.'
Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis of New York, the only SALT Caucus member who sits on Ways and Means, was also the only SALT Caucus member who supported the committee bill.
RELATED: House Republicans to hike up Harvard endowment tax in reconciliation
"These provisions will save individuals and families thousands of dollars annually, and with today's passage out of committee, we are a step closer to delivering relief," Malliotakis said.
However, other SALT Caucus members continue to dig their heels in as the tension ramps up behind closed doors.
During a late-night meeting with leadership and SALT Caucus members, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) attempted to negotiate a deal with Republicans in the SALT Caucus, all of whom represent blue states. The negotiations went south after the members booted Malliotakis from the meeting even though she is the only member with direct influence on tax policy.
“As the only SALT Caucus member on Ways and Means, all I know is they can sit and negotiate with themselves all they want, but there will be no changes unless I and the committee agree," Malliotakis said.
RELATED: Exclusive: House Republicans debunk Medicaid misconceptions as reconciliation talks resume
Johnson, who initially went into the meeting hoping to strike a deal that night, later said he expects negotiations to continue through the weekend.
"This bill, as written, with a $30,000 cap for those making under $400,000, is just woefully inadequate," Republican Rep. Mike Lawler of New York said Wednesday of the bill. "So no, this does not have my support, it will not have my support, and if this bill comes to the floor for a vote, I will vote no."
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