House GOP stalls ahead of key vote Clutch Fire

Negotiations among House Republicans over President Donald Trump’s megabill reached a stalemate on Wednesday, as more than a dozen rank-and-file members dug in on their opposition to the tax-and-spending package.

The fate of the massive bill was uncertain Wednesday evening, as both moderates and conservative hardliners demanded changes to a Senate passed bill.

Republican leaders in the House have so far been unable to corral enough votes to move Trump’s marquee domestic policy package forward to a final vote.

House Speaker Mike Johnson spent the day working to win over the holdouts in his conference. “I’m hopeful we can proceed tonight, get this done,” he told reporters Wednesday in the Capitol.

But a key holdout, Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, told reporters he still had a lot of issues with the bill late Wednesday.

“I got problems with all this bill,” he said. “There’s two options: vote it down and send it back, or get our questions answered and support” it.

Asked whether he thought his questions could get answered before Thursday, Norman replied, “Probably not. I can’t predict that.”

Another hardline opponent of the bill, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., indicated earlier Wednesday that there were still “probably 10 NO’s at the moment.”

Massie was one of two Republicans — along with Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio — who voted against Trump’s bill in May, before the Senate implemented its own broad changes to the package.

Davidson said late Wednesday that he would be voting “Yes” this time around, Punchbowl News reported.

This means Johnson can only lose two more votes in addition to Massie and still pass the package on a party line, assuming every Republican member is present for the vote.

A key step in helping skeptical Republicans get to yes is direct intervention from Trump himself.

The White House hosted several groups of House Republicans for talks earlier in the day Wednesday, including hardliners who oppose the final bill.

Trump also deployed Russ Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget to travel to Capitol Hill and meet with holdouts.

The House cannot begin debating a final bill until it votes to approve the rules that will govern that debate. Every vote on a bill in the House has its own rules, which need to be passed independently.

While conservative holdouts to Trump’s bill have drawn the most attention, there is also a group of moderate Republicans who have big problems with the Senate’s cuts to Medicaid.

Those cuts were even deeper than the ones originally passed by the House.

Many of these Republicans are like Rep. David Valadao of California, who represents a district typically carried by Democrats in presidential elections. This gives the White House fewer leverage points over someone like Valadao than Trump might have for a member whose constituents voted Republican.

The Senate squeaked out passage of its version of Trump’s megabill on Tuesday, with Vice President JD Vance required to come in and cast the tie-breaking vote. Now lawmakers in the lower chamber must approve the Senate’s revisions.

In May, Johnson was at least able to offer last-minute concessions to the skeptical members in his conference to get them on board.

Now, any last minute changes automatically would send the bill back to the Senate for another vote, which would make the self-imposed July 4 deadline nearly impossible to reach.

— CNBC’s Greta Reich contributed reporting

This is developing news. Please check back for updates.