WASHINGTON – Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.) drew a red line on Saturday when he said in a written statement that he would not vote for the Senate version of the so-called Big Beautiful Bill because of its cuts to Medicaid.
“President [Donald] Trump was clear when he said to root out waste, fraud, and abuse without cutting Medicaid and I wholeheartedly agree,” Valadao said. “I urge my Senate colleagues to stick to the Medicaid provisions in H.R. 1 — otherwise, I will vote no.”
The Senate is on the verge of passing its own version of H.R. 1, the legislation known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which uses Medicaid cuts to partially pay for increased deportations and tax cuts tilted in favor of wealthier households.
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Valadao is one of more than two dozen House Republicans who have complained about the Senate bill or threatened to vote against it. If the Senate passes the bill — which could happen in the next day or two — it would head to the House for a final vote before going to the president’s desk. Depending on attendance, it could take just four Republicans to stop the bill dead in its tracks.
But it probably would be a mistake to expect Republicans to kill their own bill, a piece of legislation intended to codify Trump’s entire domestic policy agenda. A lot of House Republicans griped about the House version of the bill, but only two of them — Reps. Thomas Massie (Ky.) and Warren Davidson (Ohio) — actually voted no when it passed the House last month.
Many lawmakers on Capitol Hill expect the holdouts to give up.
“If the Senate passes it, the House will too,” Massie told HuffPost last week. “I don’t think enough of my colleagues have the political capital to go against the president on this.”
Massie has faced criticism from Trump, who has called for him to be thrown out of the party in what Massie described as an effort to intimidate other Republicans thinking of stepping out of line. After Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) voted “nay” on a motion to proceed to the bill over the weekend, Trump immediately said he would recruit Republican primary challengers, prompting Tillis to announce his retirement.
There are three main complaints among the House Republicans with reservations about the Big Beautiful Bill. Conservatives like Massie object to the legislation’s overall deficit impact; the Senate bill would add more than $3 trillion to the national debt over a decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
The House Freedom Caucus, a group of far-right Republicans, is specifically complaining that the Senate bill widens deficits by even more than the House version, which CBO said would add an extra $2.4 trillion to the debt. (Both sums represent enormous betrayals of years of Republican rhetoric about fiscal responsibility.)
“The Senate must make major changes and should at least be in the ballpark of compliance with the agreed upon House budget framework,” the Freedom Caucus said on social media Monday. The group’s leader, Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), voted “present” on the House bill in May, allowing it to pass by a single vote.
“If the Senate tries to jam the House with this version, I won’t vote ‘present.’ I’ll vote NO,” Harris said last week.
Moderates like Valadao, whose California district is filled with Medicaid recipients, oppose the bill because of its cuts to the program. Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) have insisted the bill doesn’t actually cut Medicaid, despite the fact that the bill cuts projected program spending more than 10%. The CBO said the Senate version would cut the insured population in the U.S. by more than 11 million, a reduction caused by Medicaid cuts and changes to Affordable Care Act subsidies. It’s just a teensy bit harsher than the House bill thanks to stricter restrictions on how states can tax Medicaid providers in order to finance benefits.
Then there are the moderate Republicans in Democratic states, such as Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.), who has said he dislikes the Senate’s alteration to a provision boosting a tax deduction for wealthy homeowners. Other House Republicans concerned about the state-and-local tax deduction, however, have said they’re OK with the Senate version.
Punchbowl News keeps a running tally of who has threatened to vote no, who has said they’re mad about the bill and who is known to fold.
“I want to vote yes, but I can’t vote yes just because they say I have to,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who is known to fold, said Monday. “I can’t vote yes just because everybody says we got to get it done by July 4th.”
It’s best to think of the threats to vote against the bill less as actual threats than as efforts to force changes to the legislation, suggested Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.).
“Once it gets over to them, it’s a matter of, ‘Are we better off with the bill or without the bill?’ And they’re gonna say, ‘We’re better off with the bill. We’re mad, but we’re gonna go take it,’” Rounds told HuffPost.
Of course, the bill still has to pass the Senate before it can go back to the House, and Senate passage isn’t guaranteed. Republicans control 53 seats, meaning Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) can lose three Republicans and then have Vice President JD Vance break the 50-50 tie. Thune lost only two Republicans on a key procedural vote Saturday.
The legislation is not at all popular, according to a series of recent polls. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said the situation reminded him of 2017, when the House passed a bill aimed at undoing the Affordable Care Act, only to get stopped by a thumbs-down from then-Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
“The bill was starting to get more unwieldy and ugly, and this feels a little bit like that moment in 2017, so I don’t rule out the fact that they might have to step back and rewrite this thing,” Murphy told HuffPost.