By Richard Rubin, Olivia Beavers and Jasmine Li

WASHINGTON -- Top Republicans pushed for a quick vote on President Trump's multitrillion-dollar fiscal package Wednesday, as negotiators raced to find the right combination of tax breaks and spending cuts to please warring wings of the party.

Passage would mark a major win for Trump and a step toward extending his 2017 tax cuts and cementing other conservative priorities. But the fate of the measure was expected to go down to the wire, with final text yet to be released as of early afternoon and some holdouts warning the legislation was unlikely to cross the finish line by leaders' target of later in the day.

GOP leadership struck a deal late Tuesday with blue-state moderates who have fought for a higher cap on the state and local tax, or SALT, deduction. But they still have problems on the other side of the GOP, with conservative hard-liners demanding faster spending reductions in Medicaid and quicker phaseouts of clean-energy tax breaks.

Fiscal conservatives thought they had clinched a deal with the White House overnight, only for House Speaker Mike Johnson's office to dismiss the contours of the agreement, further fueling right-wing frustration against the leadership's plans, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Johnson's office didn't respond to a request for comment. A White House official said there wasn't a deal, just options that the administration wouldn't oppose if there were enough House votes to pass them. The official said that the hard-liners, who were headed to the White House for a meeting on Wednesday afternoon, risked taking the blame if the package failed.

House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris (R., Md.), one of the fiscal hawks, said the White House offered a proposal late Tuesday related to energy provisions and Medicaid, without providing specifics. "There's broad agreement in the House Freedom Caucus that if that's included in the package, I think it's passed," he said at a press conference on Wednesday surrounded by other holdout lawmakers. "I think this package is en route to get passed. I don't think it can be done today."

Republicans control the House with one of the thinnest margins in U.S. history, with 220 members in their ranks to 212 Democrats. With perfect attendance, Johnson can afford to lose only three members and still manage to pass the proposal assuming all Democrats are opposed. At least a half dozen GOP members don't support the current proposal.

Johnson has said he wants to pass the bill as soon as Wednesday and no later than this weekend. He has been holding marathon negotiating sessions with unhappy groups of Republicans who have raised a number of objections throughout the bill's development.

Rep. Scott Perry (R., Pa.), another member of the Freedom Caucus, said that holdouts like him wouldn't be rushed into a deal as they sought changes. "This is an arbitrary deadline," he said.

Broadly, the tax proposal would boost spending on defense and border security while reducing spending on Medicaid and food assistance. Expiring tax cuts would be extended permanently, and the bill would create new tax cuts that implement temporary versions of Trump's plans to eliminate taxes on tips, overtime pay and Social Security benefits. The proposal is projected to increase budget deficits by nearly $3 trillion through 2034, compared with doing nothing, a scenario in which tax cuts would expire.

The House Rules Committee started debating the bill at 1 a.m. Wednesday morning, trying to tee up the measure for a full vote in the House. The committee meeting continued into afternoon, and Republican leaders still hadn't released the revised details of the bill.

Rep. Ralph Norman (R., S.C.) complained Tuesday night that he didn't know how or whether the bigger SALT tax breaks would be offset with cuts elsewhere. He said that conservatives could block the current version of the bill if the mix of tax deductions and spending cuts was inadequate.

Some holdouts have complained that the bill doesn't enact deep enough spending cuts, including by halting clean-energy tax breaks sooner than currently written in the proposal. Republicans are likely to revise the measure to accelerate the start date for new work requirements for some Medicaid recipients from the previous version, which begins those changes in 2029.

Meanwhile, moderates in high-tax states argued for a more generous cap on state and local tax deductions for their constituents. They were nearing a deal to boost that cap to $40,000 from the $30,000 that the House Ways and Means Committee approved.

Democrats say the proposal makes painful cuts to safety-net programs, including Medicaid and food assistance for low-income families, to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy.

Medicaid provides healthcare coverage to more than 70 million lower-income and disabled people. Under the new work requirements that would be imposed by the bill, most childless adults without disabilities between the ages of 19 and 64 would have to provide documentation that they worked 80 hours a month prior to applying.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that at least 8.6 million people would lose coverage by 2034 under the changes. And a CBO analysis released late Tuesday shows the top 10% of households gaining from the bill and the top 10% losing household resources because of the spending cuts.

Rep. Brett Guthrie (R., Ky.), the chairman of the committee handling Medicaid, emphasized that many of the people who would lose coverage are unauthorized immigrants or able-bodied people who would be affected by the new work requirements.

Tension over the bill came to a head during the middle-of-the-night Rules Committee meeting where lawmakers clashed over changes to tax breaks, Medicaid and federal worker pay.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle grumbled about the timing of the hearing, which began at 1 a.m. Some dozed off.

Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Rules Committee, accused Republicans of hiding from the public.

"Why not debate this bill in prime time when most of the American people can watch?" he said. "It's 1 o'clock in the morning, I think it's prime time in Guam."

Write to Richard Rubin at richard.rubin@wsj.com, Olivia Beavers at Olivia.Beavers@wsj.com and Jasmine Li at jasmine.li@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

A Congressional Budget Office analysis shows the bottom 10% of households losing resources because of the spending cuts. "GOP Races to Overcome Final Hurdles in Passing Trump Tax Bill," at 10:51 a.m. ET, incorrectly said the top 10% of households were losing resources.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 21, 2025 15:30 ET (19:30 GMT)

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