Trump’s agenda hangs in balance as House GOP leaders gamble on committee vote

Speaker Mike Johnson and his leadership team are taking a major gamble Friday as they power ahead with a key committee vote that — as of the start of that meeting — did not appear to have the support needed to succeed.

Speaker Mike Johnson and his leadership team are taking a major gamble Friday as they power ahead with a key committee vote that — as of the start of that meeting — did not appear to have the support needed to succeed. The fate of the vote was still unclear even as the House Budget Committee’s GOP roster entered the Capitol for the meeting, with Republican lawmakers and senior aides tight-lipped about whether leadership had struck any deals with the conservatives who — just 12 hours earlier — were vowing to tank the bill. “We did make progress BUT will see how MUCH progress we made!!” Rep. Ralph Norman, one of the GOP holdouts, told CNN ahead of the meeting. But Rep. Chip Roy — one of Speaker Mike Johnson’s many holdouts on President Donald Trump’s megabill — sent a clear signal to GOP leadership ahead of that committee vote that he wasn’t yet there. Roy posted on X an outside analysis of the bill’s deficit impact with the caption: “Why there’s a problem,” just minutes before the start of the meeting. The Budget Committee is meeting Friday to assemble the component pieces of the sweeping tax and spending cuts bill into a single legislative package. The panel is not empowered to make substantial policy changes during its meeting, but the bill needs to be advanced out of the committee to make it to a full floor vote. Roy would not answer Friday morning when asked whether he would vote to advance the bill, instead raising his eyebrows as he entered the room.