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The House GOP is quietly mounting a pressure campaign on the Senate to accept its version of President Donald Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill” even as lawmakers in the upper chamber signal they’ll be making changes.
Tensions are simmering between Republicans in the two chambers as they work to pass a massive tax, immigration and energy bill via the budget reconciliation process.
The House Budget Committee held a staff-level communications briefing on Monday, two sources told Fox News Digital, the same day the Senate returned from the Memorial Day week recess to begin consideration of the massive bill.
Senate Republicans have vowed to tweak the House’s offering to varying degrees, with some wanting to tackle even deeper spending cuts and others wanting to soften the blows to Medicaid and green energy subsidies.
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While lawmakers in the upper chamber are still working out the kinks of their approach, they agree the bill will be different.
Both sources interpreted the meeting as a way to get ahead of Senate Republicans’ criticism of certain aspects of the bill.
Documents viewed by Fox News Digital that were handed to House Republican aides show specific talking points about the bill’s taxpayer savings, Medicaid provisions and green energy subsidy rollbacks, among other topics.
The document pushed back on the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimate that the bill would add more than $2 trillion to the deficit over a decade.
“The cost of the bill ($4.12 trillion) is surpassed by the savings ($4.29 trillion) associated with mandatory spending reforms ($1.7 trillion) and economic growth ($2.6 trillion),” the document said.
It suggested House Republicans assume 2.6% economic growth over 10 years rather than the CBO’s unprecedentedly low 1.8%.
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“House Budget is desperately circling the wagons with staff and members to make sure they do not forget the fight is not over on messaging why their bill is better than their Senate rivals,” one House GOP aide told Fox News Digital. “They got jammed with the Senate version in the blueprint round and are using every tool at their disposal to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
A senior House GOP aide also told Fox News Digital, “The Senate should heed President Trump’s wishes to get [the bill] to his desk before July 4th.”
The House passed its version of the legislation late last month after a marathon all-night session full of debate and Democrat procedural motions to delay.
The mammoth bill is aimed at permanently extending Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act while also including new tax relief for senior citizens and eliminating taxes on tipped and overtime wages.
It would also send new funding to the U.S.-Mexico border and to enhance Immigrations and Customs Enforcement while rolling back a significant portion of the green energy subsidies from the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
To save money and cut down on what Republicans see as waste, fraud and abuse of government safety nets, the bill would introduce Medicaid work requirements for certain able-bodied recipients beginning in December 2026.
It would penalize states that allowed illegal immigrants into the Affordable Care Act-expanded Medicaid population while rewarding states that did not.
Both the IRA subsidies and Medicaid reforms are emerging as pain points for the Senate GOP’s three-seat majority.
The document obtained by Fox News Digital appears to target specific senators’ concerns. For example, one portion of the Q&A specifically said, “No,” the bill does not put rural hospitals at risk.
“The bill reinvests funds to reopen rural emergency hospitals and ensure cost-effective care access,” the messaging guidance said.
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On the rescinded IRA funds, it said, “The bill targets unused or duplicative funds from programs such as the Neighborhood Access and Equity Grants and sustainable jet fuel. These projects aligned more with ideological goals than infrastructure priorities.”
Another note mentioned the electric vehicle (EV) credit rollback, arguing it would “ensure all vehicles contribute to the Highway Trust Fund.”
“EVs cause more wear and tear due to their higher weight but pay no fuel taxes. The bill imposes modest user fees starting no later than the end of FY 2026 and terminates in FY 2035, indexed to inflation,” it said.
But it’s not clear that senators with those concerns will heed the House’s arguments right now.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., told reporters Tuesday, “It’s going to hurt rural hospitals in my state.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., acknowledged to reporters on Tuesday that while there was discontent over “individual pieces” of the bill, Republicans must agree on something that will pass the chamber.
“Failure is not an option. We’ve got to get to 51, so we’ll figure out the path forward to do that over the next couple of weeks,” Thune said.
Other senators, meanwhile, have argued they want to make deeper cuts than what the House came up with.
“The House bill, they’re not even scratching the surface. It’s not even the tip of the iceberg in terms of what we need to do to return to a reasonable, pre-pandemic-level spending,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said on Fox Business last week.
When reached for comment, the House Budget Committee referred Fox News Digital to recent comments by Chair Jodey Arrington, R-Texas.
“Some senators will say we went too far on entitlement reform and health care and welfare, and then you’ll have … [f]olks like [Sens.] Rick Scott, Ron Johnson, who are dear friends of mine, all well-intentioned, will say we don’t cut enough spending,” Arrington said on Fox News last week. “Well, the fact is, you can only cut as much as you can get the vote to pass it out of your chamber. And we cut almost $1.7 trillion in spending, which is the largest spending cuts in American history by twofold.”
“There’s always room for improvement, and I welcome that, especially on the fiscal reform side, but we’ve got to get the votes.”
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