While the Senate narrowly approved their version of President Donald Trump’s domestic policy bill earlier this week, some Republican holdouts in House were expressing concern about the changes being made to the megabill.
Now, after voting yes for the “big, beautiful bill” in the House, they explain why they switched their vote in favor of it.
Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland, the chairman of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, said he decided to vote in favor after “significant agreements” with the White House that he said comes much closer to the trillions of dollars in savings that Freedom Caucus ultimately wanted.
Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina: “President Trump earnestly said that if we send this bill back to the Senate, it’s going to get worse,” Norman said, adding that Trump has “had it with the leaders in the Senate.” Norman said after being with the president for two hours, “he answered every question. He was real gracious with his time. I knew, then, we had to move.
Norman said the president laid out how the bill’s tax cuts would lead to growth, adding that the president said “once the tax cuts take effect, we’ll have a growth rate that will exceed 2.2%. We’ll exceed 2.6% which is what we had in reconciliation with the regulation cuts.”
Rep. Chip Roy of Texas insisted that House conservatives secured some key wins before they were willing to support Trump’s agenda. Roy — who has, at times, clashed with Trump over policy differences — said he spent roughly six hours with White House lawyers in the last 24 hours about how they could “undo” some of the policy sweeteners supporting subsidies for wind and solar energy that party leaders added for Sen. Lisa Murkowski.
Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee said any changes to the bill would not have made it through the Senate a second time and singled out Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska as a potential obstacle. “It would have died. It would have — it would have never passed if it went back to the Senate,” Burchett said.
