Speaker Mike Johnson has guided the first step of President Donald Trump’s plan to remake much of the U.S. economy through the House, but Republicans in Congress still face significant headwinds before they can pass their “big, beautiful bill” on taxes, immigration, energy and defense.

A band of New York Republicans has made clear to Johnson (R-Louisiana) that any GOP tax bill must raise the cap on state and local taxdeductions, or SALT. A handful of conservative hard-liners have competing demands that the legislation must reduce the national debt. More moderate members have voiced concerns about proposed cuts to social safety net programs, including Medicaid. Rep. Thomas Massie (Kentucky), a leading budget hawk, has already signaled he opposes the whole thing — and U.S. DOGE Service overseer Elon Musk appears to agree.

After a brief honeymoon, Republicans are coming to grips with the fact that despite chalking up an early legislative win, internal divisions could still sink Trump’s agenda and imperil their majority in the 2026 midterm elections.

“We’ve proven in the last two and a half years that this is a wise, but diverse Republican Conference with different views on both taxing and spending. It’s going to take 99 percent of us to all agree on one ‘big, beautiful bill,’” said Rep. Nick LaLota (New York), one of the leading Republicans seeking a higher cap on state and local deductions. “I expect there to be some challenges along the way.”

The House GOP last week narrowly approved a budget that sets the stage for what’s known as the reconciliation process, a series of arcane maneuvers that would allow Republicans to head off a Democratic filibuster in the Senate and pass legislation through their thin majorities.

Conservatives face a pair of potent deadlines — in addition to a government shutdown looming in less than two weeks. The federal government is set to eclipse its borrowing limit in late May or early June; Johnson and Trump hope to use the reconciliation process to raise that cap and prevent a catastrophic national default.

And major portions of Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act expire at the end of the year. That law cut rates for nearly every tax bracket, though it concentrated most of the benefits among the wealthiest earners. If Congress does not act, virtually every filer will see taxes go up next year.

Johnson is fond of talking about the hundreds of “personalities” his leadership team must navigate to unite Republicans on spending bills. It’s a diplomatic way, lawmakers say privately, of reflecting the deep disunity within the conference — and dissatisfaction over the final version of the GOP budget.

Rep. David Schweikert, for example, made Johnson cast the decisive vote for the bill on his behalf after a lengthy negotiation on the House floor.

Schweikert, the chairman of the bicameral Joint Economic Committee and a leading spending skeptic, summoned Johnson over on the House floor during the vote,and the two had a brief conversation. Schweikert passed the speaker his voting card, Johnson cast Schweikert’s vote, and the two shook hands then went their separate ways.

The scene looked celebratory: Schweikert had just taken to the House floor to extol colleagues to vote for the GOP budget. But hewas not congratulating the speaker.

“I was absolutely disappointed,” he told The Washington Post.

The Arizona Republican had shopped a binder of spending cuts and program modernizations around the Capitol for six weeks as the GOP assembled its budget, hoping to interest colleagues in them. He identified nearly $6.5 trillion in savings over 10 years,without the sharp cuts to social safety net programs that another House GOP document envisioned, according to an copy he provided The Post. But House leaders didn’t run with much of Schweikert’s proposal.

“I was shocked because so much of the puffery, the chest-pounding, the moralizing, didn’t match the numbers that came out on that reconciliation budget,” Schweikert said. “So what do you do? Do you burn it down or do you go back with months’ worth of work and say, ‘How do I try to get this work in play in the actual bill?’”

The next day, Johnson backed a Senate plan to write off the cost of extending Trump’s tax cuts by adjusting how they count against the debt. Otherwise, congressional bookkeepers say the cuts would cost close to $5 trillion over 10 years.

“It’s a really important principle, and I hope that we can employ that because it makes a big difference in the calculations, and I think it also makes good logical sense,” Johnson told reporters.

“I was enraged to hear that,” Schweikert said. “I consider that language a betrayal.”

But from Johnson’s perspective, there’s almost no way to accomplish Trump’s tax goals — and reconcile the House’s priorities with those of the Senate, which is far more open to deficit spending — if the GOP is forced to offset the full cost of the policies. Shortly after the House passed its budget, Trump implemented broad tariffs on Canada and Mexico; lawmakers hope to use the revenue from that import tax to offset other tax and spending priorities.

Senate leaders have indicated a desire to amend the House’s budget to reduce its lofty aims for spending cuts. And a report from Congress’s nonpartisan bookkeeper on Wednesday found that the House could not accomplish its budget targets without cutting Medicare or Medicaid benefits.

The legislation asks the committee responsible for federal health-care spending to find at least $880 billion in savings over 10 years. But the Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday that reducing costs that much won’t be possible without cuts to Medicare, Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Members of the House GOP’s Congressional Hispanic Conference wrote to Johnson last month with concerns about potential cuts to Medicaid, which would be necessary to achieve the goals outlined in the lower chamber’s budget resolution.

“As we consider reconciliation cuts, we must be strategic,” the group wrote. “We need to uphold fiscal responsibility while ensuring that essential programs — programs that have empowered Americans to succeed — are not caught in the crossfire.”

All eight signatories of that letter ultimately voted for the budget resolution. Their movement and Trump’s involvement to keep would-be holdouts in line have given House Republican leaders a sense of cautious optimism about putting together a final tax and spending package.

“We’ve climbed harder hills just within the past couple weeks,” said Rep. Blake D. Moore (R-Utah). “We can do this.”

Back to News