Trump pressure fails to shore up House GOP support for his big agenda bill, negotiations drag on

President Trump’s plea for House Republicans to pass his “big, beautiful bill” this week without protracted squabbling fell on deaf ears from disparate corners of the conference, still demanding changes to the legislation before it hits the floor.

Instead of heeding the president’s call to drop their push for further tweaks, House Republicans opposed to the current version dug in.

“If they put the bill on the floor as is, I think there’s a lot of no votes,” said Rep. Andrew Garbarino, New York Republican.

Republican leaders cannot afford to lose more than three Republican votes on the bill, and they start with at least one, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who will not be swayed.

Mr. Trump called Mr. Massie a “grandstander” and said he should be “voted out of office.”

Mr. Massie said he is “not worried about losing.”

Republican leaders had hoped that Mr. Trump’s visit to the Capitol would sway more than a dozen other holdouts. Instead, they found themselves continuing negotiations that the president sought to end.

On two of the biggest outstanding issues — Medicaid and the state and local tax deduction, or SALT — Mr. Trump urged Republicans to accept what has already been agreed to and pass the bill.

The president left the meeting through one door, touting the Republicans’ “unbelievable unity” and predicting “a great victory,” while Republican holdouts flooded out through another exit, saying they were unmoved.

“The president, I don’t think, convinced enough people that the bill is adequate the way it is,” said House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris, Maryland Republican. “Look, the president called for eliminating waste, fraud and abuse in Medicaid, and we have not eliminated waste, fraud and abuse in Medicaid in the bill.”

Mr. Trump confirmed his message on finding “waste, fraud and abuse” in the program, telling reporters, “We want to strengthen Medicaid.”

Behind closed doors, however, the president offered a stronger warning: “Don’t f—- with Medicaid.”

The bill has already made some adjustments to Medicaid. Still, conservatives want to do more to reduce federal funding for states that expanded Medicaid under Obamacare to cover able-bodied adults.

Several Republicans are focused on eliminating Medicaid provider taxes that they call a “money laundering scam.”

States use taxes on hospitals and other health care providers to finance their share of Medicaid. However, some states use the tax revenue to increase Medicaid payments to the same providers, which inflates the total cost of their Medicaid programs and the share the federal government must contribute.

“The states are cooking the books,” said Rep. Victoria Spartz, Indiana Republican.

Mr. Harris wants to eliminate provider taxes for states that expanded Medicaid and receive a 90% federal share of funding, while keeping them in place for states that did not expand Medicaid as an incentive for them to remain opted out.

Mr. Trump also appealed to blue-state Republicans to drop their demands to further increase the SALT deduction, saying it would be a giveaway to Democratic governors. The bill triples the existing $10,000 SALT cap to $30,000, but a group of Republicans from New York, New Jersey and California say that’s insufficient to provide adequate relief for their constituents.

Mr. Garbarino and fellow New York Republican Reps. Mike Lawler and Nick LaLota all said they won’t vote for the deal on the table, as the president suggested.

“While I respect the president, I’m not budging on it,” Mr. Lawler said.

Mr. Trump called out Mr. Lawler, who represents one of only three Republican districts that Vice President Kamala Harris carried in the 2024 presidential election.

“He just said he loved Lawler. He thought he was a great guy. But the fact is … you’re not going to win or lose an election based on SALT,” said Rep. Beth Van Duyne, Texas Republican.

Mr. Lawler said while he respects Mr. Trump, he knows his district. Three of the four counties he represents are in America’s 16 highest property tax counties, and a $30,000 cap to cover both property and income taxes “is insufficient,” he said.

Mr. LaLota said he interpreted the president’s message as a directive “to figure it out,” not to stop negotiating.

“I hope the president’s presence here today motivates everybody, especially my leadership, to give the SALT caucus a number to which we can actually say yes,” he said.

Mr. LaLota said the pro-SALT group met with Republican leaders later Tuesday and received a “better offer,” but not one that was acceptable.

House Speaker Mike Johnson acknowledged “a number of loose ends to tie up” in negotiations set to stretch through the night as Republicans aimed to begin the floor process for the bill Wednesday.

“We’ve got some hours ahead of us to work this out, and I’m very confident we will,” he said.

Rep. Troy Nehls, Texas Republican, said he wished his leadership worked more like former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who knew how to muscle her Democratic Caucus into line.

“My experience is Republicans, we can screw things up very quickly and very easily, because in the end, we don’t stay united,” he said.

While the SALT Caucus members still said a quick deal and vote this week were achievable, some conservatives demanding further Medicaid changes believed more time would be needed.

“We ran out of runway this week,” Mr. Harris said, calling Mr. Johnson’s goal of passing the bill by Memorial Day “a self-imposed deadline.” He said the House could finish negotiations on the bill over the holiday break and pass it the first week of June.

Even if the House passes the bill this week or next month, the Senate has already started talking about changing it.

When he visited Senate Republicans over lunch on Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Johnson urged them not to make too many changes. He worries about maintaining his fragile House coalition, which has yet to come together.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, South Dakota Republican, said his members would like to eliminate some of the fiscal cliffs the House built into its bill, such as tax cuts with expiration dates.

“We believe that permanence is the way to create economic certainty and thereby attract and incentivize capital investment in this country that creates those good-paying jobs and gets our economy growing and expanding and generates more government revenue,” he said.

Despite urging the House not to spend more time changing the bill, Mr. Trump welcomed potential tweaks from the Senate.

“In some cases, they have things that I like even better,” the president said.