House adopts budget blueprint for Trump's agenda

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Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., muscled a revised budget blueprint needed to advance President Donald Trump’s agenda through the House on Thursday, beating back a conservative rebellion that had threatened to sink the measure just a day earlier.

The razor-thin tally was 216-214, with just two Republicans — Reps. Thomas Massie, of Kentucky, and Victoria Spartz, of Indiana — joining all Democrats in opposition. Trump had endorsed the budget plan, which the Senate adopted last weekend on a narrow 51-48 vote.

“It’s a good day in the House. I told you not to doubt us,” Johnson told reporters after the vote. “We’re really grateful to have had the big victory on the floor just now. It was a big one, a very important one.”

Johnson abruptly scrapped a vote on the budget plan Wednesday night after he and the conservative holdouts privately huddled for more than an hour off the House floor but failed to come to an agreement. Fiscal conservatives in the House, including several House Freedom Caucus leaders, had vowed to vote down the budget unless they got guarantees for deeper spending cuts.

The discussions continued into Thursday morning, when there appeared to be a breakthrough in the standoff. Shortly before the vote, Johnson appeared alongside Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., at a rare joint news conference and projected confidence.

Johnson said leaders were “committed to finding at least $1.5 trillion in savings for the American people” — a figure spelled out in the original House budget framework that seemed to win over many of the holdouts. The Senate-passed budget blueprint had called for a minimum of just $4 billion in spending cuts, which the conservatives scoffed at, and led to the impasse.

"Our first big, beautiful reconciliation package here involves a number of commitments, and one of those is that we are committed to finding at least $1.5 trillion in savings for the American people while also preserving our essential programs," Johnson told reporters.

Thune, who hosted several of the House Republican holdouts in his office Wednesday night, said the Senate is “aligned with the House in terms of what their budget resolution outlined in terms of savings.”

“We have got to do something to get the country on a more sustainable fiscal path, and that entails us taking a hard scrub of our government figuring out where we can find those savings,” Thune said. “The speaker’s talked about 1½ trillion dollars. We have a lot of United States senators who believe that is a minimum, and we’re certainly going to do everything we can to be as aggressive as possible to see that we are serious about the matter.”

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, one of the holdouts, said receiving commitments on spending cuts from the White House, Johnson and Thune secured his vote.

"We did not have those 48 hours ago," Roy said. We do now."

The budget’s passage represents a major victory for Johnson, Thune and Trump just as lawmakers are set to depart for a planned two-week recess.

But Thursday’s successful vote in the House is just the first step in a lengthy process to fulfill Trump’s agenda to pass trillions of dollars in tax cuts and hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending on immigration enforcement and military expansion. Republicans also want to use the package to raise the debt ceiling by as much as $5 trillion. They are using the "reconciliation" process, which allows them to bypass the 60-vote threshold in the Senate and cut out Democrats from the process.

In the coming weeks, Republican lawmakers will undertake the politically daunting task of identifying specific cuts without alienating moderates who are protective of government programs on which their constituents rely.

It's unclear how lawmakers will achieve those savings without targeting those popular entitlement programs. But Johnson on Thursday reaffirmed that Trump and the Republicans won't touch Americans' benefits, and has said in the past that they will go after fraud and abuse in those programs.

Democrats "have said that we're going to gut Medicaid; it is not true. We're going to protect the benefits that everyone is legally entitled to, the beneficiaries who have a legal right to that it will be preserved. Those are essential safety net programs that Republicans support," Johnson said.

"The president has made clear — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid — will not take a hit," he added.

Underscoring the pressure Johnson is also receiving from the moderates, a group of swing-district Republicans surrounded him on the floor before casting their "yes" votes. The group included Reps. Nick LaLota, Mike Lawler and Nicole Malliotakis, all of New York; Juan Ciscomani of Arizona; and Thomas Kean of New Jersey. LaLota said the group received assurances from the speaker.

"After confirming directly with Speaker Johnson, I’m confident that the Medicaid reforms in the One Big Beautiful Bill will be both compassionate and responsible. The plan will remove illegal immigrants from the rolls, implement work requirements for able-bodied adults, and increase the frequency of eligibility checks from every 12 months to every 6 months," LaLota said in a statement. "These are commonsense steps to ensure Medicaid remains sustainable and focused on those who truly need it."

Massie, one of the two Republican "no" votes, took a shot at some of the conservatives who folded at the last minute and backed the budget plan. He suggested they shouldn't have trusted GOP leaders that they will follow through on steeper spending cuts in the reconciliation package.