WASHINGTON — Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has successfully pushed through a revised budget blueprint essential for advancing President Donald Trump’s agenda in the House, overcoming a conservative backlash that nearly derailed the plan just one day earlier.
The vote was tightly contested, resulting in a 216-214 tally, with only two Republicans — Reps. Thomas Massie from Kentucky and Victoria Spartz from Indiana — joining all Democrats in opposition.
Trump had endorsed the budget plan, which the Senate had approved the previous weekend in a narrow 51-48 vote.
“It’s a good day in the House. I told you not to doubt us,” Johnson told reporters after the vote.
“We’re really grateful to have had the big victory on the floor just now. It was a big one, a very important one.”
The budget deal came after Johnson abruptly canceled an initial vote on the plan Wednesday night, following over an hour of private discussions with the conservative rebellers, which did not reach a resolution at that time.
Fiscal conservatives in the House, including several leaders from the House Freedom Caucus, had declared their intention to vote down the budget unless they received assurances for deeper spending cuts.
Negotiations stretched into Thursday morning, with a potential breakthrough emerging just before the vote.
Johnson, who appeared with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., at a rare joint press conference, projected an air of confidence.
He noted that leaders were “committed to finding at least $1.5 trillion in savings for the American people,” a figure that was part of the original House budget framework and appeared to sway many of the holdouts.
The Senate-passed budget blueprint had stipulated a meager $4 billion in spending cuts, which conservatives dismissed, causing the earlier deadlock.
“Our first big, beautiful reconciliation package here involves a number of commitments, and one of those is that we are committed to finding at least $1.5 trillion in savings for the American people while also preserving our essential programs,” Johnson remarked to reporters.
Thune, who had hosted several House Republican holdouts in his office on Wednesday evening for discussions, emphasized that the Senate aligns with the House regarding the budget resolution’s savings targets.
“We have got to do something to get the country on a more sustainable fiscal path, and that entails us taking a hard scrub of our government figuring out where we can find those savings,” Thune explained.
“The speaker’s talked about $1.5 trillion. We have a lot of United States senators who believe that is a minimum, and we’re certainly going to do everything we can to be as aggressive as possible to see that we are serious about the matter.”
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, one of the conservative holdouts, indicated that commitments received on spending cuts from the White House, Johnson, and Thune swayed his vote.
“We did not have those 48 hours ago. We do now,” Roy stated.
The successful passage of the budget plan marks a significant victory for Johnson, Thune, and Trump, coinciding with lawmakers’ imminent departure for a scheduled two-week recess.
Nonetheless, Thursday’s House vote is merely the initial step in an extensive process to implement Trump’s agenda of enacting trillions of dollars in tax cuts and hundreds of billions in new spending for immigration enforcement and military expansion.
Republicans also aim to leverage this package to elevate the debt ceiling by as much as $5 trillion, utilizing the reconciliation process, which allows them to circumvent the Senate’s 60-vote threshold and exclude Democrats from negotiations.
In the upcoming weeks, Republican lawmakers will face the challenging task of delineating specific cuts without alienating moderates tasked with safeguarding government programs vital to their constituents.
For instance, the budget directive instructs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, overseeing Medicare and Medicaid, to identify $880 billion in spending cuts to help fund the package.
It remains uncertain how legislators will achieve these savings without impacting popular entitlement programs.
However, Johnson reaffirmed on Thursday that Trump and Republicans intend to protect American benefits, previously stating their strategy would focus on combating fraud and abuse within those programs.
Democrats have alleged that Republicans intend to gut Medicaid, which Johnson firmly denied, asserting, “We’re going to protect the benefits that everyone is legally entitled to; the beneficiaries who have a legal right to that will be preserved. Those are essential safety net programs that Republicans support.”
He further emphasized, “The president has made clear — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid — will not take a hit.”
Highlighting Johnson’s pressure from moderates, a group of swing-district Republicans gathered around him on the House floor before casting their supportive votes.
This group included Reps. Nick LaLota, Mike Lawler, and Nicole Malliotakis from New York; Juan Ciscomani of Arizona; and Thomas Kean of New Jersey.
LaLota remarked, “After confirming directly with Speaker Johnson, I’m confident that the Medicaid reforms in the One Big Beautiful Bill will be both compassionate and responsible.
The plan will remove illegal immigrants from the rolls, implement work requirements for able-bodied adults, and increase the frequency of eligibility checks from every 12 months to every 6 months. These are commonsense steps to ensure Medicaid remains sustainable and focused on those who truly need it.”
Massie, one of the two Republican “no” votes, criticized some conservatives who ultimately supported the budget plan, implying they should not have relied on GOP leaders’ commitment to fulfill deeper spending cuts in the reconciliation package.
“I hope it works out for the people who traded their vote for a promise,” Massie said, suggesting they were likely looking for an off-ramp amid mounting pressure from Trump to support the plan.
Unlike other recent critical votes where Trump had to make calls to lawmakers on the House floor to sway their opinions, he was not required to do so this time around.
“He didn’t have to call a single member to wrangle anybody on this thing,” Johnson remarked.
“He allowed me the space to do what I need to do, and we got the votes together.”
However, Trump did exert pressure earlier in the week. He met with a group of holdouts at the White House on Tuesday, urging Republicans to support the budget plan and also utilized his social media platform Truth Social to advocate for it.
“Congratulations to the House on the passage of a Bill that sets the stage for one of the Greatest and Most Important Signings in the History of our Country. Among many other things, it will be the Largest Tax and Regulation Cuts ever even contemplated,” Trump posted Thursday following the successful vote.
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