By Caitlyn Kim | The Colorado Sun
House leaders are trying to pass the massive package with Republican votes alone. Trump came to the Capitol Tuesday morning to convince the holdouts to back the bill.
President Donald Trump left a meeting with the Republican caucus Tuesday morning predicting a great victory.
His trek to the U.S. Capitol came as GOP leaders try to get his “big, beautiful bill” passed in the House this week.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, whose party holds a slim majority, has been trying to stitch together a bill that can deliver on Trump’s agenda while threading the needle between his far right faction, his swing seat members, and others in the caucus, as the different factions seek opposing changes to the bill.
“Anybody that didn’t support [the bill] as a Republican, I would consider to be a fool,” Trump told reporters as he left the Capitol. “It’s a great bill.”
Many Republicans came out of the meeting saying Trump did a good job in trying to close the deal with the two main differing factions.
U.S. Rep. Jeff Crank, R-Colorado Springs, said Trump’s message was one of unity, “talking about how we got to get this done.”
Crank was hopeful that it moved some of the Republican holdouts. “I hope people understand that it’s important to the country. We don’t want a tax increase on the American people. We want to make sure that we cut waste, fraud and abuse out of the system. And the president was pretty clear, he doesn’t want to cut benefits to Medicaid recipients either.”
The package would extend the Trump tax cuts to individuals, institute new ones, roll back Biden-era clean energy tax incentives, make cuts to social safety net programs like SNAP and Medicaid, and raise the debt ceiling by $4 trillion dollars. It also increases both the deficit and the debt.
House Freedom Caucus members and other fiscal hawks have complained that the bill raises the deficit and doesn’t do enough to lower spending. Members of the Freedom Caucus, in particular, have been pushing for structural changes to Medicaid.
Meanwhile, blue state Republicans have been pushing for a large increase to the state and local tax deduction, currently capped at $10,000.
“President Trump is very firm on this bill passing and it being a good product,” said U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Windsor, as she left the meeting.