GOP dissent over Trump tax bill mounts as deadline draws nearer

Internal dissent is mounting among Republicans over how President Donald Trump’s mammoth tax and immigration legislation would cut health care funding, even as the GOP’s self-imposed deadline nears.

The GOP has hopes to put the One Big Beautiful Bill Act – a $3.3 trillion measure to extend tax cuts, add some new tax breaks, boost immigration enforcement, begin building Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defense program and more – on the president’s desk by Independence Day.

To offset the cost, Republicans proposed steep cuts to Medicaid, the state-federal health insurance program for low-income individuals and disabled people, and SNAP, the anti-hunger Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program formerly known as food stamps.

The Medicaid cuts, though, have sparked a revolt among some Senate Republicans, and have left some House members leery of changes the upper chamber could pursue.

The Senate still hasn’t finished writing its version of the legislation, which would also have to go back to the House for approval if it passes.

Now the GOP is in an uneasy position – lawmakers are overhauling the legislation with little time to spare, in hopes that it will pay economic and electoral dividends.

“It’s a big, big, big gamble in a lot of different ways,” Sen. Jim Justice, R-W.Va., said. “It is a bold step by primarily our president to lead America in a way that gets us into a more solid economic position than we are today.”

Senate tax-writers hope to impose strict limits on Medicaid provider taxes, duties that states charge medical providers as a roundabout way of collecting more federal Medicaid dollars. Some in the GOP wish to use that policy to force states to jettison immigrants from benefits rolls, leaving other lawmakers concerned about the finances of rural hospitals, which rely heavily on Medicaid patients.

But the Senate parliamentarian, the nonpartisan official charged with enforcing the chamber’s legislating rules, held Thursday that the provider tax policy violated the strict guardrails that define budget reconciliation. Republicans are using that process to bypass a potential Democratic Senate filibuster and adopt the measure by a simple majority.

Democrats unanimously opposed the bill in the House and are expected to do the same in the Senate. Senate leaders haven’t said exactly when initial procedural votes on the measure might begin, but they have indicated they hope to start over the weekend.

The ruling forced the GOP’s steady march toward passing the bill to a near standstill.

Republicans have jostled for weeks about the legislation’s sizable debt impact; when conservatives starting charting a course for the legislation shortly after November’s elections swept them to power, many pledged their tax bill would be deficit-neutral.

The legislation is far from that mark, and the parliamentarian’s ruling on the health care provisions probably increased the price by $250 billion. That’s spooked some House lawmakers wary of increasing the national debt, which already exceeds $36 trillion.

“They’re profoundly unserious about spending,” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, a leading budget hawk, said Thursday about Senate Republicans. “The majority leader ought to honor his commitment to actually match what we’re doing on the spending levels in the (bill).”

Trump on Thursday afternoon tried to keep the pressure on lawmakers to push the legislation through the Capitol.

“The day I sign this bill into law, almost every major promise made in the 2024 campaign already will have become a promise kept,” he said at a White House rally.

Surrounded by service industry workers and almost a dozen Cabinet officials, Trump framed the measure as imperative for national defense and the economic security of working people.

And he was not subtle about calling out – and attempting to woo – the bill’s GOP opponents.

He identified Rep. Rob Bresnahan, R-Pa., a freshman lawmaker from a Scranton, Pennsylvania-area swing district who attended the rally, telling the crowd, “He’s done a fantastic job.”

Bresnahan was one of more than a dozen lawmakers who wrote to House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune , R-S.D., to oppose the Senate’s Medicaid proposals.

In front of Bresnahan stood a DoorDash driver who the president said supports her son with tipped income – which the bill would exempt from taxes – and a mother who praised the bill for a first-of-its-kind tax credit for home schooling or private school tuition.

If lawmakers stood in the way, the president signaled, there’d be political consequences.

“We don’t need grandstanders,” Trump said. “Not good people, they know who I’m talking about.”