Johnson squeaks through chaotic vote session with first legislative victory for Donald Trump’s second term. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted to adopt a budget framework supported by GOP leadership and President Donald Trump on Tuesday, allowing Speaker Mike Johnson to hold on to his image as a unifiying voice among Republicans in the chamber.
Johnson and Rep Jodey Arrington, the House GOP’s Budget committee chairman, were able to win over several key holdouts within the Republican Party who felt that the plan did not do enough to cut federal spending. Thomas Massie was the only Republican to vote against the legislation after several others fell back into line, including Reps Victoria Spartz and Warren Davidson.
Leadership initially abandoned plans to call a vote on the bill Tuesday evening, then dragged lawmakers back to the floor more than an hour after the bill was originally scheduled to be taken up. It was then passed by a vote of 217 to 215. Democrats were eager to mock their Republican colleagues for being unable to unify behind Johnson’s legislation throughout the evening, while trashing the GOP’s priorities for spending cuts, an indication of just how surprising Johnson’s late-game dealmaking really was. The legislation, while just a framework, calls for hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts. Republicans have indicated that they will look to Medicaid programs to make up much of that ground.
Reports indicated that the president himself was actively involved in calling holdout members, including Massie, in the minutes leading up to the vote. Trump’s stake in the legislation is obvious, as it provides more funding for border security measures while also laying the path for an extension of the 2017 tax cuts which became his main legislative achievement in his first term.
