WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump implored House Republicans at the Capitol to drop their fights over his big tax cuts bill and get it done, using encouraging words but also the hardened language of politics over the multitrillion-dollar package that is at risk of collapsing before planned votes this week.
During the more than hour-long session Tuesday, Trump warned Republicans not to touch Medicaid with cuts, and he told New York lawmakers to end their fight for a bigger local tax deduction reversing his own campaign promise. The president, heading into the meeting, called himself a “cheerleader” for the Republican Party and praised Speaker Mike Johnson. But he also criticized at least one of the GOP holdouts as a “grandstander” and warned that anyone who doesn’t support the bill would be a “fool.”
“We have unbelievable unity,” Trump said as he exited. “I think we’re going to get everything we want.”
The president arrived at a pivotal moment. Negotiations are slogging along and it’s not at all clear the package, with its sweeping tax breaks and cuts to Medicaid, food stamps and green energy programs, has the support needed from the House’s slim Republican majority. Lawmakers are also being asked to add some $350 billion to Trump’s border security, deportation and defense agenda.
Inside, he spoke privately in what one lawmaker called the president’s “weaving” style and took questions.
The president also made it clear he’s losing patience with the various holdout factions of the House Republicans, according to a senior White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private meeting.
But Trump himself disputed that notion as well as reports that he used an expletive in warning not to cut Medicaid. Instead, he said afterward, “That was a meeting of love.” He received several standing ovations, Republicans said.
Yet it was not at all clear that Trump, who was brought in to seal the deal, changed minds.
“We’re still a long ways away,” said Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., the chair of the House Freedom Caucus.
Conservatives are insisting on quicker, steeper cuts to federal programs to offset the costs of the trillions of dollars in lost tax revenue. At the same time, a core group of lawmakers from New York and other high-tax states want bigger tax breaks for their voters back home. Worries about piling onto the nation’s $36 trillion debt are stark.
With House Democrats lined up against the package as a giveaway to the wealthy at the expense of safety net programs, GOP leaders have almost no votes to spare. Johnson who was headed to the Senate at lunch to brief Republicans. A key committee hearing is set for the middle of the night Tuesday in hopes of a House floor vote by Wednesday afternoon.
“They literally are trying to take health care away from millions of Americans at this very moment in the dead of night,” said House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York.
Trump has been pushing hard for Republicans to unite behind the bill, which has been uniquely shaped in his image as the president’s signature domestic policy initiative in Congress.
Asked about one of the conservative Republicans, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Trump lashed out.
“I think he is a grandstander, frankly,” the president continued. “I think he should be voted out of office.”
But Massie, a renegade who often goes it alone and wears a clock lapel pin that tallies the nation’s debt load, said afterward he’s still a no vote.
