Johnson and Trump pull off surprising win to advance GOP agenda after vote whiplash in the House
Speaker Mike Johnson pulled off a stunning turnaround Tuesday night to rescue a critical vote to advance President Donald Trump’s agenda that had seemed doomed just moments earlier.
Surprising even some of his critics, Johnson and his leadership team capped hours of drama in the Capitol by successfully flipping multiple Republican holdouts to pass a budget blueprint that will mark the first step toward moving Trump’s ambitious agenda forward. With help from last-minute phone calls from Trump, GOP leaders spent all of Tuesday in a furious pressure campaign to win backing for their plan.
“The world didn’t end today. But I do see the edge,” Rep. Pat Fallon, a Texas Republican, said of the whiplash in the House.
Republicans had punted the vote Tuesday night only to turn around minutes later to call fleeing members back to the floor to muscle through the plan.
In the end, Johnson lost just a single vote — fiscal hawk Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky — which was all he could afford. The Democrats’ whip team scrambled to get near-full attendance on their side: Rep. Brittany Pettersen flew with her 4-week-old baby to make it in time for the vote and Rep. Kevin Mullin, who is recovering from complications from knee surgery, flew with an IV from California.
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But the drama won’t end there: Johnson and his allies acknowledge that what comes next will be much more difficult. Tuesday night’s vote itself was procedural and GOP leaders from the House and Senate will need to agree on how exactly to move ahead with Trump’s sprawling legislative package now that they have adopted divergent plans. The days-long saga over the House budget blueprint laid bare bitter divisions among Republicans that will make it extraordinarily difficult to pass that package in both chambers.
Still, the win comes at a critical time for Trump and Johnson as their party faces crushing deadlines ahead, including avoiding a government shutdown next month and the threat of an economic default later this spring. As with Tuesday night’s vote, navigating those political landmines will require near total unity from the GOP.
GOP leaders will now get to work on exactly what will make it into Trump’s first legislative package. The newly passed House GOP plan calls for sweeping tax cuts, steep spending cuts and a two-year debt limit hike, as well as new money for border security and energy production. The Senate’s plan, however, contains only national security and energy money, while punting on the more contentious items for later.
The stakes are high for GOP leaders: Trump is eager to pass his agenda as quickly as possible, even as party leaders must comply with the extremely strict constraints of the budget powers that allow their party to pass a package without Democratic votes. And Republicans will need to tread carefully on reforms to popular programs like Medicaid, food assistance and Pell grants — concerns that nearly sunk the budget plan this week.
The successful vote capped a dramatic 12 hours for Johnson. In the morning, he held a tense meeting with House Republicans to convince his members to back the budget blueprint or risk forgoing key parts of Trump’s agenda.
But by the afternoon, House GOP leaders were still struggling to lock down the votes, and even the relentlessly upbeat Johnson acknowledged he may need to pull it.
The votes weren’t there around 7:30 p.m., when the speaker moved to scrap plans to hold the vote at all. But then his leadership team — with help from a Trump call to Rep. Victoria Spartz — was able to win over the last holdouts. So, just moments after dismissing members, Johnson called them back to vote and passed the GOP’s budget blueprint.
Rep. Warren Davidson, an Ohio Republican, said he decided to change his vote after he received “assurances” of a future plan that could survive the Senate to trim discretionary spending, though he offered no specifics.
And Spartz added that she spoke with Trump on health care issues, saying, “He’s on board to get some great things done on health care. … I trust his word.”
“I think the last few weeks are showing us how difficult it is to move any package through the House,” Rep. Dusty Johnson, a leadership ally, acknowledged earlier Tuesday. “This is a motley crew.”
Hours before the scheduled vote, hardline conservatives insisted there weren’t enough spending cuts in the plan, even as centrist-leaning Republicans remained uneasy about the size of those cuts and whether they could impact popular programs like Medicaid. And Johnson’s efforts to win support even backfired in some corners. Massie said he left a meeting Tuesday morning even more dug in against the budget than before.
“They convinced me in there, I’m a no,” the Kentucky Republican said, holding up a thick packet of leadership talking points and railing against their plans line by line. By the time of the vote, Massie remained the only GOP “no.”
Johnson and his whip team had spent the last several days trying to win over their more moderate members, many of whom had raised concerns that the budget plan could ultimately lead to cuts to the low-income health program Medicaid.
Ahead of the vote, Republicans from northeastern states were particularly wary of plans to cut $880 billion over a decade from federal health and energy programs, which they fear cannot be achieved without cutting Medicaid, the hugely expensive health program, since Trump has vowed not to touch Medicare.
GOP leaders have strongly pushed back against the idea that benefits would be cut, noting that the budget plan is only a framework and not specific policy. They argue there are ways to cut hundreds of billions in wasted money on federal health programs without slashing Medicaid benefits, though it remains unclear where those cuts would come from.
“This is a procedural vote. You tell me what the cuts are,” House Majority Whip Tom Emmer told CNN when asked about swing seat lawmakers’ concerns about Medicaid cuts.
In the end, Johnson only recorded a single Republican defection.
“We will get there, as we always do,” the speaker predicted earlier in the day, when he was still lacking at least a half-dozen votes.
This headline and story have been updated with additional developments.
CNN’s Manu Raju, Alison Main, Morgan Rimmer, Veronica Stracqualursi and Aileen Graef contributed to this report.
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House GOP pushes ‘big’ budget resolution to passage, a crucial step toward delivering Trump’s agenda
With a push from Trump, House Republicans have sent a GOP budget blueprint to passage. It’s a step toward delivering his big bill with $4.5 trillion in tax breaks and $2 trillion in spending cuts.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — With a push from President Donald Trump, House Republicans sent a GOP budget blueprint to passage Tuesday, a step toward delivering his “big, beautiful bill” with $4.5 trillion in tax breaks and $2 trillion in spending cuts despite a wall of opposition from Democrats and discomfort among Republicans.
House Speaker Mike Johnson had almost no votes to spare in his bare-bones GOP majority and fought on all fronts — against Democrats, uneasy rank-and-file Republicans and skeptical GOP senators — to advance the party’s signature legislative package. Trump made calls to wayward GOP lawmakers and invited Republicans to the White House.
The vote was 217-215, with a single Republican and all Democrats opposed, and the outcome was in jeopardy until the gavel.
“On a vote like this, you’re always going to have people you’re talking to all the way through the close of the vote,” Majority Leader Steve Scalise said before the roll call.
“We got it done,” the speaker said afterward.
Passage of the package is crucial to kickstarting the process. Trump wants the Republicans who control Congress to approve a massive bill that would extend tax breaks, which he secured during his first term but are expiring later this year, while also cutting spending across federal programs and services.
Next steps are long and cumbersome before anything can become law — weeks of committee hearings to draft the details and send the House version to the Senate, where Republicans passed their own scaled-back version. And more big votes are ahead, including an unrelated deal to prevent a government shutdown when federal funding expires March 14. Those talks are also underway.
It’s all unfolding amid emerging backlash to what’s happening elsewhere as billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk is tearing through federal agencies with his Department of Government Efficiency firing thousands of workers nationwide, and angry voters are starting to confront lawmakers at town hall meetings back home.
Democrats during an afternoon debate decried the package as a “betrayal” to Americans, a “blueprint for American decline” and simply a “Republican rip-off.”
“Our very way of life as a country is under assault,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said on the steps of the Capitol.
Flanked by Americans who said they would be hurt by cuts to Medicaid and other social programs, the Democrats booed the GOP budget blueprint. But as the minority party, they don’t have the votes to stop it.
Even as they press ahead, Republicans are running into a familiar problem: Slashing federal spending is typically easier said than done. With cuts to the Pentagon and other programs largely off limits, much of the other government outlays go for health care, food stamps, student loans and programs relied on by their constituents.
Several Republican lawmakers worry that scope of the cuts being eyed — particularly some $880 billion over the decade to the committee that handles health care spending, including Medicaid, for example, or $230 billion to the agriculture committee that funds food stamps — will be too harmful to their constituents back home.
GOP leaders insist Medicaid is not specifically listed in the initial 60-page budget framework, which is true. Johnson and his leadership team also told lawmakers they would have plenty of time to debate the details as they shape the final package.
But lawmakers wanted assurances the health care program and others will be protected as the plans are developed and merged with the Senate in the weeks to come.
Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., said Trump has promised he would not allow Medicaid to be cut.
“The president was clear about that. I was clear about that,” Lawler said. “We will work through this, but the objective today is to begin the process.”
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., center, departs a news conference joined from left by Rep. Abraham Hamadeh, R-Ariz., and House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., after discussing work on a spending bill, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
At the same time, GOP deficit hawks were withholding support until they were convinced it wouldn’t add to the nation’s $36 trillion debt load. They warned it will pile onto debt because the cost of the tax breaks, with at least $4.5 trillion over the decade outweighing the $2 trillion in spending cuts to government programs.
One key conservative, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., ended up the sole GOP vote against.
Trump had invited several dozen Republicans to the White House, including Rep. Juan Ciscomani, R-Ariz., who joined a group of GOP lawmakers from the Congressional Hispanic Conference raising concerns about protecting Medicaid, food stamps and Pell grants for college.
“While we fully support efforts to rein in wasteful spending and deliver on President Trump’s agenda, it is imperative that we do not slash programs that support American communities across our nation,” wrote Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, and several others GOP lawmakers from the Hispanic Conference.
Democrats in the House and the Senate vowed to keep fighting the whole process. “This is not what people want,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., during a rules debate ahead of planned votes.
“We all know that trickle-down economics,” he said about the 2017 tax breaks that flowed mainly to the wealthy, “don’t work.”
Trump has signaled a preference for “big” bill but also appears to enjoy a competition between the House and the Senate, lawmakers said, as he pits the Republicans against each other to see which version will emerge.
Senate Republicans launched their own $340 billion package last week. It’s focused on sending Trump money his administration needs for its deportation and border security agenda now, with plans to tackle the tax cuts separately later this year.
“I’m holding my breath. I’m crossing my fingers,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who said he was rooting for the House’s approach as the better option. “I think a one-shot is their best opportunity.”
Johnson, whose party lost seats in last November’s election, commands one of the thinnest majorities in modern history, which meant he had to keep almost every Republican in line or risk losing the vote.
The budget is being compiled during a lengthy process that first sends instructions to the various House and Senate committees, which will then have several weeks to devise more detailed plans for additional debate and votes.
Rep. Jodey Arrington, the Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee, said with economic growth assumptions, from 1.8% as projected by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to 2.6% as projected by House Republicans, the package would generate about $2.6 trillion in savings over 10 years and would ensure the plan helps reduce the deficit.
Some fiscal advocacy groups view the GOP’s economic projections as overly optimistic.
Associated Press writers Leah Askarinam and Stephen Groves contributed reporting.
Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. House of Representatives at https://apnews.com/hub/united-states-house-of-representatives.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Slashing government is not always popular at home
Democrats protest tax cuts for wealthy
The House GOP faces pitfalls ahead
___
House Republicans pass budget resolution, clearing a key early test for Trump agenda
By
Claudia Grisales
,
Elena Moore
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., (right) departs a news conference alongside House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday.
The future of President Trump’s domestic agenda cleared a decisive test in the House on Tuesday, as Republicans overcame internal divides over spending to pass a framework for a sweeping multitrillion dollar plan to address defense, energy, immigration and tax policy.
Tuesday’s vote was a critical step forward for House Republicans, as passage allows them to unlock a complicated legislative tool known as reconciliation. It’s a process that Republicans can use to avoid a filibuster from Democrats in the Senate, but in order to use it they had to first agree on a budget blueprint.
“We got it done,” Johnson told reporters following the vote. “This is the first important step in opening up the reconciliation process. We have a lot of hard work ahead of us, but we are going to deliver the America First agenda.”
House Republicans have a razor-thin majority, and needed virtually the entire conference to vote yes. Ultimately, the measure passed 217 to 215, with just one Republican voting against the budget resolution.
Tuesday’s vote marks an early step forward in what promises to be a lengthy and difficult path in passing the party’s policy priorities. The Republican-led Senate, impatient with delays on the House side, has already moved their own budget reconciliation plan forward. Now, the two chambers need to pass the same bill in order to move ahead.
At the start of the day, GOP leaders were still working to wrangle support. Johnson and his deputies spent weeks in painstaking negotiations, but struggled to balance competing demands from within a fractious GOP caucus.
While fiscal hawks were demanding steep spending cuts, other members voiced concern about those cuts having to come from Medicaid, the government insurance program that provides health coverage for millions of low-income and disabled Americans.
The House plan calls for an increase in funding to secure the southern border, a boost for military spending and raising the nation’s debt limit by $4 trillion.
The plan also calls for $4.5 trillion in tax cuts over the next decade. Those cuts include renewing the 2017 Trump tax cuts, which are set to expire at the end of the year, as well as other proposals that the president campaigned on, like no taxes on tips, overtime or Social Security.
In order to get the budget plan just to this stage, Johnson was forced to concede to a demand from some conservative holdouts for $2 trillion in spending cuts. Under the budget framework, the exact details of those cuts will be sorted out later, by individual committees in the House.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee, for example, would be responsible for coming up with $880 billion in savings. But because the committee has say over spending for programs like Medicare and Medicaid, more moderate Republicans are worried about cuts coming from the social safety net.
Democrats also seized on the potential for cuts to the popular Medicaid program for low-income, elderly and disabled Americans.
“The House Republican budget resolution will set in motion the largest Medicaid cut in American history,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., told reporters after the vote.
Ahead of Tuesday’s vote, several members signaled opposition — but in the end just one Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, voted against it.
In a post on social media Monday, Massie wrote, “If the Republican budget passes, the deficit gets worse, not better.” Elon Musk responded to the post by saying, “That sounds bad.”
The chair of the House Budget Committee, Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, credited Johnson for the outcome. There were multiple holdouts before the vote, Arrington acknowledged, but the speaker he said, was “the difference maker.”
“I think that small margin forces you to work together,” Arrington said. “This was an historic election. We know this is a monumental opportunity for us to course correct, for us to reverse course on the last four years, to be frank, and nobody wants to miss that. And everybody had to make some sacrifice or some pain involved.”
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