Megabill Teeters After Hard-liners Make Their Stand

House Republican leaders are having to salvage their party-line megabill a lot sooner than they thought.

A surprise holdout by ultraconservative members of the House Budget Committee Thursday is forcing Speaker Mike Johnson to entertain significant changes to the GOP sweeping domestic policy bill, endangering his ambitious Memorial Day timeline for House passage.

The hard-right objections surrounded missing fiscal scores for the legislation and ongoing concerns about the depth of Medicaid cuts that Republicans are prepared to make. One option under serious discussion as a concession to fiscal hard-liners is moving up the onset of work requirements for Medicaid beneficiaries by two years — from 2029 to 2027.

Three Republicans granted anonymity to discuss the negotiations confirmed the possible change, and Johnson himself was overheard discussing the proposal with House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington as the two left a Capitol Hill meeting Thursday.

“We’re working to settle all the pieces, so stay tuned,” Johnson said. He later promised the package would clear the Budget panel.

The urgency of addressing the hard right’s concerns was heightened when several conservative members of the Budget Committee suggested they would withhold their votes at a scheduled Friday meeting. The panel needs to package up various pieces of the bill advanced by other committees and send it to the floor, a perfunctory but necessary step toward passage that is now threatened by the holdouts.

Johnson huddled with several of them just off the House floor Thursday evening, including GOP Reps. Chip Roy of Texas and Ralph Norman of South Carolina. Both said they would vote no in the Budget Committee on the existing bill. Reps. Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma and Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin also declined to commit to supporting the bill.

The group demanded three key changes, according to two Republicans granted anonymity to discuss the closed-door negotiations: speeding up the phase-out of clean energy tax credits enacted under former President Joe Biden; immediately removing immigrants in the country illegally from any Medicaid access, rather than allowing states several years to comply; and moving up the Medicaid work requirement start date.

“We’ll kill it,” Norman said leaving the meeting. “I don’t want to. But I will.”

Norman and Roy both said they were pushing for the work requirements to hit as soon as possible, in the fall of 2026. Hardliners and GOP leaders are expected to hold a call late Thursday evening, with just hours to spare before the Budget panel meeting Friday.

Such a move could create tens of billions more savings for Republicans’ megabill, the centerpiece of President Donald Trump’s agenda on taxes, energy and the border, while helping satisfy conservatives’ demands for deeper cuts. It would also create deeper coverage losses more quickly, potentially ahead of the 2028 presidential election.

Crucially, Republican moderates appear to be on board with the accelerated timeline, which could give leaders more space to address their own concerns — including the highly contentious state-and-local-tax deduction, or SALT.

Several moderate Republicans huddled separately with Johnson throughout the day Thursday, raising concerns about shifting Medicaid and SNAP food aid costs to states, changes to a federal pension program and other issues they want changed before the bill hits the House floor, according to three other Republicans with direct knowledge of the talks.

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said in an interview he was promised that a controversial change to ban legal immigrants from accessing federal food assistance would be stripped before the bill hits the floor. Senior Republicans added the provision from Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.) to the Agriculture panel’s portion of the bill this week.

As for moving up the start date of some Medicaid changes, House Majority Whip Steve Scalise told reporters to expect the requirements to come sooner than originally planned and that Republicans would revise the bill. He said the change could help leaders address the SALT demands from a separate group of Republicans.

“I think everybody in the room wants that,” Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-Wis.) said leaving a briefing Thursday afternoon, and asked if he wants work requirements moved up. “I think they’re going to move it up.”

Bacon, a key moderate, also said in an interview that he’s comfortable moving the timeline up. Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) told reporters that when the requirements begin is “not that consequential.”

Still, the White House would still need to sign off on the move; Trump and most of his senior aides have been in the Middle East this week, leaving Johnson and other GOP leaders to settle the various policy skirmishes themselves. But the speaker has remained in contact with the president while he’s been overseas.

Quickly implementing the Medicaid changes could be difficult. Most states will have to update their systems to incorporate the new work requirements, which they will be responsible for enforcing. The bill includes $100 million in federal grants to help update those systems; only Georgia currently has a work requirement program in place.

Arrington said Thursday afternoon that a committee markup Friday is “absolutely” possible but separately told reporters it wasn’t clear that the meeting could continue as scheduled given the sheer scale of issues raised inside the closed-door meeting.

Even if GOP leaders agree to tweak the package before passage, it can’t be amended during the Budget meeting Friday. The next opportunity for changes would come in the House Rules Committee, which Johnson wants to meet Monday to prepare the bill for floor debate.

“It’s what we do around here,” Johnson said. “We’re working to settle all the pieces.”

Robert King, Jennifer Scholtes and Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.