House adopts budget blueprint for Trump's agenda after GOP leaders sway holdouts
Republican lawmakers can begin crafting a massive party-line bill now that both the House and the Senate have approved the same budget framework.
WASHINGTON — Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., muscled a revised budget blueprint needed to advance President Donald Trump’s agenda through the House on Thursday, beating back a conservative rebellion that had threatened to sink the measure just a day earlier.
The razor-thin tally was 216-214, with just two Republicans — Reps. Thomas Massie, of Kentucky, and Victoria Spartz, of Indiana — joining all Democrats in opposition. Trump had endorsed the budget plan, which the Senate adopted last weekend on a narrow 51-48 vote.
“It’s a good day in the House. I told you not to doubt us,” Johnson told reporters after the vote. “We’re really grateful to have had the big victory on the floor just now. It was a big one, a very important one.”
Johnson abruptly scrapped a vote on the budget plan Wednesday night after he and the conservative holdouts privately huddled for more than an hour off the House floor but failed to come to an agreement. Fiscal conservatives in the House, including several House Freedom Caucus leaders, had vowed to vote down the budget unless they got guarantees for deeper spending cuts.
The discussions continued into Thursday morning, when there appeared to be a breakthrough in the standoff. Shortly before the vote, Johnson appeared alongside Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., at a rare joint news conference and projected confidence.
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