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WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans narrowly approved their budget framework Thursday, a political turnaround after Speaker Mike Johnson worked into the night to satisfy GOP holdouts who had refused to advance trillions of dollars in tax breaks without deeper spending cuts.
Johnson stood with Senate Majority Leader John Thune early in the morning at the Capitol to shore up President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” and they committed to seeking at least $1.5 trillion in cuts to federal programs and services. The speaker had abruptly halted voting Wednesday night.
“I told you not to doubt us,” Johnson, R-La., said afterward.
He acknowledged the week’s economic turmoil with the financial markets “a little unstable.” But he said the House vote was a ”big day.”
The 216-214 vote pushed the budget plan forward, one more milestone for Johnson, and next step in a lengthy process to unlock the centerpiece to the president’s domestic agenda of tax cuts, mass deportations and a smaller federal government. A failed vote, particularly as the economy was convulsing over Trump’s trade wars, would have been a major setback for the party in power in Washington. Two conservative Republicans voted against it, as did all Democrats.
All four members of Iowa’s U.S. House delegation voted for the budget framework.
Iowa Republican U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson, of Marion, emphasized the importance of moving ahead with the process to extend and further tax cuts set to expire this year that Trump had approved in 2017 during his first term, including exempting taxes on tips, expanding the Child Tax Credit and providing small business tax relief.
“I look at this vote as being pretty simple. It’s about moving forward on the tax cut conversation, and again, some of these investments that we need to be making,” Hinson said Thursday morning during a weekly press call with reporters ahead of the House vote.
“If we don’t move forward, I think not only will Americans face a massive tax increase if those provisions are allowed to expire, but you know, I think Americans have made it very, very clear they want to see a more responsible federal government.”
Democrats argue the Republican plan will lead to massive cuts in entitlement programs such as Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.
“It’s clear they are more focused on giving billionaires and special interests giant tax breaks than they are about supporting regular Iowans,” Iowa Democratic Party Chair Rita Hart said in statement about Iowa Republican U.S. Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Zach Nunn, Randy Feenstra and Hinson.
Trump has insisted his administration will not cut benefits for Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, but will address eligibility to protect traditional Medicaid populations.
The Senate resolution requires the House Committee on Agriculture to pare $230 billion from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s budget.
Hinson, a member of the House Appropriations Committee’s agriculture subcommittee, said the House is not looking to cut benefits but to find savings with the elimination of duplicative programs and “waste, fraud and abuse” as well as “eligibility adjustments” for federal food assistance.
“So whether it’s Medicaid or SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), it shouldn’t be going to the 29-year-old guy who’s sitting on his couch playing video games,” Hinson said. “It should be going to the single mom who needs to feed her family, and I think we can all agree that able-bodied adults should be working, for example, if they’re receiving these benefits,” Hinson said of work requirements that could limit eligibility for benefits.
“Work requirements are not cuts,” she added.
In federal fiscal year 2024, about 260,000 Iowans, or about 8 percent of the state population, received SNAP food benefits each month, according to the USDA. Nearly two-thirds of SNAP enrollees live in families with children, and more than one-third in families with older adults or disabled members.
“I’m against cutting the benefits that people need and I want to make clear, too, the president has said that. He’s not going to sign a bill if we send it to him with cuts to Medicaid or SNAP benefits,” Hinson said. “But what really makes me mad, and I think Iowans have told me this, is that when people are abusing these programs, defrauding it — that’s what really ticks people off and that’s what also makes it unsustainable and really jeopardizes the benefits for those who need them.”
Religious and medical groups, community providers, disability rights and anti-hunger advocates, however, say past evidence in other states shows work requirements impose administrative barriers and red tape that lead to coverage losses among both people who are working as well as people who have caretaking responsibilities, disabilities or illnesses that keep them from paid work.
Moreover, research shows that work requirements do not increase employment, they argued.
The action still leaves weeks, if not months, ahead. House and Senate Republicans will have to turn their budget framework into bill text for a final product. Johnson can lose only a few detractors from his slim Republican majority at any vote along the way. Democrats, in the minority, lack the numbers to stop the package, but they promised to fight every step.
House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said the GOP budget plan was a “toxic scheme” that proposed the largest cuts to the Medicaid health care program and food assistance in the nation’s history, “all in service of enacting massive tax breaks to their millionaire donors, like Elon Musk” — referring to the billionaire businessman who is leading Trump’s cost-cutting efforts through the Department of Government Efficiency.
Jeffries said Democrats will push back until they “bury this budget resolution in the ground.”
‘The president is very anxious for us to get this done’
Late Wednesday, the outcome was in flux. At least a dozen conservative Republicans, if not more, were firmly against the plan. Several of them, including members of the ultraconservative Freedom Caucus, made the unusual move of walking across the Capitol to meet privately with Senate GOP leaders to insist on deeper cuts.
As night fell, Johnson pulled a group of Republicans into a private meeting room as House proceedings came to a standstill. They stayed into the night hashing out alternatives, and were back at it in the morning.
Johnson said he spoke with Trump for about five minutes while the GOP meeting was taking place.
“The president is very anxious for us to get this done,” Johnson said.
But House GOP conservatives, including several of those who met with Trump this week, were concerned that the Senate GOP’s blueprint, approved last weekend, did not cut spending to the level they believe necessary to help prevent soaring deficits.
“The Math Does Not Add Up,” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, had posted earlier on social media.
Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., the Freedom Caucus chair, led others to meet with the senators.
In the end, Harris, Roy and almost all the holdouts came on board. They said they were assured by Johnson, Thune and Trump that there would be steep cuts ahead. Republican Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Victoria Spartz of Indiana voted “no.”
“We got as much as we could,” said Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn. ”We realized it was bigger than us.”
Before the vote, Thune, R-S.D., tried to assure House conservatives that many GOP senators were aligned with their pursuit of spending reductions.
“We certainly are going to do everything we can,” Thune said.
A final product is expected later this spring or summer, with more voting to come.
