President Donald Trump warned House Republicans not to oppose his “One Big, Beautiful Bill” to boost support for it.
According to three people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share closed-door conversations, President Donald Trump told House Republicans to band together, drop their objections, and listen to Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) for his domestic agenda to be passed.
He offered one clear warning for Republicans that has irritated some fiscal hawks: “Don’t f— around with Medicaid,” according to two sources.
As Trump speaks to House Republicans on Capitol Hill, the White House promotes a list of “20 reasons why Congress must unite behind” his priority legislation.
Trump’s plan would implement the “largest tax cut in American history” and fulfill Trump’s campaign promises to remove tip and overtime taxes.
Trump is pushing hard to get the package through the House, where Republican holdouts remain. Trump has already threatened to impose political punishment on Republican holdouts who refuse to comply.
He also slammed Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who has consistently voted “no” on the measure, calling him a “grandstander” and that he should be “voted out of office.”
Before meeting with House Republicans, President Trump stated that legislators are “not touching” Medicaid and urged them to eliminate “waste, fraud, and abuse” in the program.
The House funding measure would restructure Medicaid, including imposing work requirements, which experts say may cut off benefits for millions and deter others from enrolling.
Trump also warned the GOP’s blue state holdouts against pushing too hard on the SALT deduction ceiling. Millions of Americans might lose their health insurance if the current reconciliation deal passes.
“President Trump and Republicans are protecting and preserving Medicaid for the Americans who the program was intended to be a lifeline for: pregnant women, children, disabled individuals, and seniors,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai told Axios’ Emily Peck.
That White House list excludes poorer working-age people without children who obtained Medicaid coverage as a result of the Affordable Care Act’s expansion.
Before the meeting, Trump told reporters at the Capitol that the bill needed to be passed to provide more help and assistance to the American people.
“Mr. President, what’s your message to the holdouts?” a reporter asked the president.
“Well, it’s not a question of holdouts. We have a tremendously unified party. I don’t think we ever had a party like this. There are some people that want a couple things that maybe I don’t like or that they’re not gonna get, but I think we’re gonna have tremendous — not luck, we have tremendous talent. This man has done an incredible job as speaker,” Trump said.
“You know, we had a majority of one. We were one heart attack away from losing the House, okay? Now we have seven. That’s a big one, because we won some elections, as you probably noticed, and we’re gonna win a lot of elections. We have an economy that’s roaring. We took our 5.1 billion — if you take a look, 5.1 trillion with a ‘t,’ not ‘b,’ 5.1 trillion out of the Middle East,” Trump added.
“They’re investing more than that. It’s going to be ultimately more than that, 180 wide-body Boeing aircraft. They’re spending money at levels that nobody’s ever seen. Usually a president goes for a trip and he loses money. In other words, he gives money. We went for a trip and we took out $5.1 trillion. Nobody has ever seen anything like it. That’s just the beginning. So I think we’re a very unified party. The Senate is doing great. John Thune is doing fantastically, he’s a great guy. And we’re gonna have a bill, the one big beautiful bill. I think it’s gonna be — it’s the biggest bill ever passed and we gotta get it done. Tremendous tax cuts for people, tremendous incentives, tremendous regulation cuts, all these regulations that are so horrible,” he continued.