Not all GOP House members support Trump's 'big beautiful bill'

After taking office, Donald Trump made it clear that he wanted "one big, beautiful bill" to be passed for his budget.

Donald Trump knows that in order for him to get certain portions of the budget and some key agenda issues through Congress, he will have to use reconciliation, as Democrats did multiple times during the Biden administration.

If this will work, there is little room for opposition, but Trump is seeing that opposition from some more moderate members of the House.

Not Getting Behind It

Reps. David Valadao (R-CA), Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.), and Don Bacon (R-NE) are resisting the legislation as is over concerns about cuts to Medicaid.

If all members are present during the vote, the GOP will now only have one vote to spare in the House due to Trump tapping Congress for his administration.

Point being, if all three of those members continue to have concerns, the legislation will fail.

Rep. Malliotakis stated, “I’m leaning no on the resolution as-is, minus getting clarity on my concerns.

“I’m glad to hear that he agrees with me that we need to protect Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, but it doesn’t eliminate my concerns with the specific resolution put forward by the House or my need for clarity before next week’s vote."

From the reports I have seen, Johnson is considering adding qualifiers for some entitlement programs, which I support and have discussed many times on these pages.

If you are going to give them a free check and free health coverage, why not make them do something to possibly get them back into the workforce?

They can volunteer, go to school, etc. Anything to show they have some ambition not to stay on these programs forever.

And to be clear, I am not talking about our elderly, but healthy, work-age individuals who are collecting a check simply because they are too lazy to work.

Valadao also expressed his concerns, stating, “Until I know exactly what’s going to be in, or what this is going to look like, or at least have some pretty good idea, I’m really concerned with this.

“But it sounds like the president and myself and others are on the same page: We don’t want to touch Medicaid. We want to make sure that we’re all on the same page. If he’s on the same page as me, that makes me feel a little bit better about it.”

To be clear, Trump wants to strengthen these programs, not cut them out, and so far, I love the ideas that are being tossed around.

I also don't think we can cut these programs, but the truth is many of them are being abused.

They are supposed to be a relief, not a crutch to depend on like a regular check, and that needs to be fixed if we are ever going to start to cut down on yearly spending.