GOP holdouts bristle at Trump pressure over megabill

Washington – Known that the adoption of the legislation on the signing of President Trump was almost assured that West Wing aid summoned retained in the House Republican Caucus on Wednesday to transmit a defending message: follow the president’s orders and do it on Friday.

It was a call for action after the president of the chamber, Mike Johnson (R-La.), Ordered his Caucus to return to Washington from the host districts across the country, braving the flight delays due to storms in the capital to be back in time for a vote before July 4.

But the vote was in doubt, and signs emerged cracks in a coalition otherwise under the control of Trump.

“The President of the United States did not give us a mission,” the Representative Derrick Van Orden, a Republican of Wisconsin, journalists, told journalists to suggest that Trump was treating legislators as his servants. “I am a member of the Congress. I represent nearly 800,000 Wisconsinites. Is it clear? “

The frustration within the Republican Party came from two disparate camps of a large tension coalition which have their own sets of grievances: the tax hawks which believe that the bill adds too much to the national debt, and the legislators representing districts which are strongly based on Medicaid.

A GOP legislator who attended the White House meeting on Wednesday, representative David Valadao in California, represents a district of the central valley with one of the highest percentages of registration in Medicaid in the country.

The president’s megabill, which he calls the “great good bill”, takes historic cuts from the health care program which could lead to up to 12 million Americans to lose health coverage, according to the non -partisan office budget, to eliminate 1 dollars billion at the age of 65.

The legislation would also limit state taxes on health care providers, known as “providers tax”, an essential tool for many states in their efforts to complete the funding of Medicaid. Several Republican legislators fear that the provision could have devastating effects on rural hospitals.

The chief of the Hakeem Jeffries House minority, appearing on Wednesday with other Democrats on the Capitol marches, denounces the bill on the taxes and expenses of President Trump.

(Bloomberg via Getty Images)

A handful of North Carolina Republican legislators broke the president’s pressure campaign, representative Chuck Edwards, announced in Punchbowl News that the White House meeting “did not influence my opinion”. The Senator of North Carolina Thom Tillis was one of the three Republicans who voted against the bill on Tuesday, warning that he would devastate his condition. He has always passed with a revolutionary vote by Vice-President JD Vance.

The vote is also promised to the House, where Johnson can afford to lose only three votes in order to adopt omnibus legislation.

A day’s debate on the ground of the Chamber allowed private negotiations to continue, before a crucial vote on the rules which would be the last step before a final vote. But it was not clear if the expressions of frustration and doubt on Wednesday were equivalent to the art of performance in anticipation of the inevitable adoption of the bill, or pointed out a real threat to the bill.

Earlier Wednesday, after taking meetings at the White House, members of the House Freedom Caucus, a block founded to promote budgetary responsibility, also met Johnson. The speaker emerged with a message of soaked optimism and later said that he hoped to obtain a final vote on Wednesday evening.

“I feel very positive about progress, we have had a lot of great conversations,” said Johnson to journalists, “but we cannot make everyone 100%. It is impossible.”

“This is a deliberative organization. It is a legislative process by definition-we must all abandon personal preferences,” he said. “I will never ask anyone to compromise fundamental principles, but preferences must be sold for the greatest good. And that’s what I think people recognize and arrive with it. “

The Chip Roy representative of Texas, a member of Freedom Caucus, had been very critical of the Senate legislation. But he reported an opening on Wednesday afternoon to vote in favor of the bill, an indication that adoption could be imminent.

Democrats are out of power in Washington and do not have the capacity to stop legislation. But many believe that this could turn against the Republicans in the mid-term elections next year.

“Each Senate republican will have to respond to these cruel and unpopular cuts in this election,” said senator Kirsten Gillibrand in New York after the fact that the bill adopted the Senate. “This puts their majority at serious risks.”

Trump says that the legislation includes his entire national program, extending the tax reductions adopted during his first mandate in 2017 and strengthening the financing of border security, mass deportations and the Ministry of Defense.

Medicaid cuts, as well as the additional nutrition aid program, better known as Snap, are intended to compensate for a fraction of costs. But the CBO still estimates that the legislation will add 3.3 billions of dollars to the national debt during the next decade, and hundreds of billions to the deficit, other non -profit budget trackers providing even higher figures.