With Senate Republican leadership hoping to send its version of the GOP budget reconciliation bill back to the House for final approval before Friday of this week, there remain a few potential holdouts in the House of Representatives to getting the bill signed by the president by the July 4 deadline.
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., has already said he will not support the Senate budget bill in its current iteration. The Kentucky congressman has cited the bill’s projected effects on deficit spending, which could potentially increase the national debt by as much as $3.8 trillion over the next 10 years, as a major reason for his opposition to the bill.
The bill would also raise the debt ceiling by the largest amount ever specified in history: $4 trillion in the House bill and $5 trillion in the Senate version. Massie has said he could potentially support a budget bill that focused on MAGA agenda priorities without blowing out the national debt. But that would involve splitting the current budget bill that was passed in the House and amended in the Senate into two distinct pieces of legislation.
Rep. David Valadao, R-Calif., has said he will vote against the Senate budget bill when it comes up for a vote in the House this week if it eliminates funding streams to hospitals; that is, provider taxes and state-directed payments under Medicaid.
When the fiscal hawk House Freedom Caucus unanimously supported the passage of the Budget Reconciliation Bill in the House in April, the caucus said it received an assurance from House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., that “committed to ensuring the final bill will provide enough spending reduction so that tax cuts will be fully offset.â€
Less than three months later, however, the Senate version of the budget bill actually adds a projected $800 billion more to the national debt over 10 years than the House bill did, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The extra spending could push some House Freedom Caucus members to oppose the bill.
Several caucus members have come out in favor of a Senate amendment from Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., to the budget bill that would place more of the burden for Medicaid expansion on individual states.
“I don’t see how what the Senate is doing will pass the House if [Scott’s amendment] does not pass at the minimum. It’s probably going to take more spending reductions than that, but that would get the majority of us there,†Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., told Fox News.
In a post on the social media platform X on Monday, the House Freedom Caucus said, “The Senate’s version adds $651 billion to the deficit—and that’s before interest costs, which nearly double the total. That’s not fiscal responsibility. It’s not what we agreed to. The Senate must make major changes and should at least be in the ballpark of compliance with the agreed-upon House budget framework. Republicans must do better.â€
Another point of contention in the bill is over the SALT (state and local tax) deduction. This provision incentivizes some individuals in high tax states, such as New York, to deduct a portion of those taxes from their federal taxable income. Right now, the amount taxpayers can deduct stands at $10,000 per year. The Senate version of the budget bill raises that number to $40,000, with what Forbes described as a gradual phasedown, before the cap reverts to $10,000 by 2030.
That may not be enough of a benefit for some House Republicans. Rep. Nick LaLota, R-N.Y., was one of four New York Republicans who had rejected a $30,000 SALT cap in the House budget bill and successfully negotiated for it to be raised to $40,000. The other members who agitated for a higher SALT deduction during House negotiations were New York Reps. Elise Stefanik, Andrew Garbarino, and Mike Lawler.
For his part, Massie has said the SALT deduction favors blue states over red states. “If they make that tweak, let’s say they limit the SALT deduction to people who make less than $400,000 a year, that means that more of the benefit of that tax provision will go to blue states instead of red states, because to be under whatever the threshold is—let’s just say $400,000 a year annual income and have $40,000 of state and local taxes or property taxes—means that you’re probably in a blue state,†the Kentucky congressman told The Daily Caller.
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