Johnson punts on key budget blueprint vote as GOP holdouts seek concessions on spending cuts

By Sarah Ferris and Lauren Fox, CNN

(CNN) — Rep. Andy Ogles personally warned Speaker Mike Johnson not to go ahead Wednesday with a contentious House vote essential to advancing President Donald Trump’s agenda that had drawn scorn from the right.

After hours of scrambling to convince the Tennessee Republican and a dozen other defectors, Johnson finally obliged.

The speaker punted Wednesday night on that key vote on the Senate Republicans’ budget blueprint after failing to appease a group of House GOP conservatives demanding steep spending cuts. ​Now, GOP leaders will spend the coming hours in thorny talks about how to come up with more spending cuts — despite the Senate GOP’s firm resistance to any changes to their plan.

​Trump had spent recent days, even amid his own political calamity on his escalating trade war, trying to rescue the plan. But on Wednesday night, Johnson personally spoke with the president about the need to postpone the vote on the Senate’s budget blueprint in order to make concessions to the group.

“He understands it. He supports the process. He wants us to do this right and do it well, and sometimes it takes a little bit more time to do that,” the speaker said of his call with Trump.

Johnson told reporters there are “different ideas on the table” to secure the needed votes to pass the measure Thursday before the House leaves for a two-week recess.

“We have a pretty well-developed playbook and it’s got a number of plays in it and I just haven’t made the call on which one it is yet,” Johnson told reporters late Wednesday after delaying the vote.

The decision to push the vote, however, drew the fury of Johnson’s leadership team, who ultimately had to bend to the ultraconservatives after they made clear they would not budge on the party’s contentious budget measure as written. Just hours earlier on Wednesday, Johnson projected confidence: “I think it is going to pass today.”

Pennsylvania Rep. Lloyd Smucker, one of the Republican holdouts, said he is pushing for an amendment that would have binding language for higher spending cuts. One idea is for the budget resolution to tie the size of the tax cuts to deficit reduction measures — similar to Smucker’s idea in the House.

Smucker was among multiple Republicans who had warned Johnson that his plan didn’t have the support to pass. They included Ogles, who personally warned Johnson to not bring the party’s contentious budget measure to the floor.

“It’s going to fail,” Ogles recalled telling Johnson of the Senate-passed blueprint for Trump’s agenda.

Ogles and the other holdout Republicans are defying Trump on his push for a Senate GOP budget measure that tees up huge tax cuts and trillions of spending to hike the debt limit — all while committing to pay for just $4 billion of it.

Republicans like Ogles are refusing to commit to that budget plan until their party leaders can guarantee a serious deficit reduction push, including from the Senate. While Trump and GOP leaders’ fierce whip operation has limited some of those defections — down from as many as 50 members earlier this week — Johnson still faces a huge vote problem with his own conference as he attempts to pass the Senate measure Wednesday night.

The tension within the GOP conference is largely aimed across the Capitol at the Senate, which is far more squeamish on big spending cuts than the more conservative House.

“I trust the president, but I don’t trust the Senate. They’re a key part of this conversation,” Ogles said.

In recent days, Trump has made perhaps the strongest pitch of his presidency so far to House Republicans to back the measure. He personally summoned a group of Republicans to the White House for meetings, while dozens of others have received calls from his senior advisers.

In meetings on the Hill in the last 48 hours, Trump’s deputy treasury secretary urged GOP lawmakers to back the measure, while separately, Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller pitched potential future spending cuts in a meeting with House Judiciary Republicans, according to people familiar with the discussions. Johnson himself sat down with the Freedom Caucus meeting on Monday night, which resulted in a tense discussion about the budget.

“We want everybody all in because it unlocks the opportunity to do the reconciliation package, which is where the rubber meets the road,” said Rep. Kevin Hern, who leads the House GOP policy committee.

But Rep. Rich McCormick, who said he is “undecided” on the budget plan, estimated that 15 more of his colleagues are firmly opposed right now.

“There is a trust factor that’s been kind of betrayed in recent history so we’re all a little bit wary of this negotiation process. Not that the president’s lying to us, but that the Senate will roll and somehow or another, the people who don’t want to cut spending significantly will find a way to continue the spending at the level it is,” McCormick said.

Just last month, the Georgia Republican had to be personally convinced to vote for the president’s bill to fund the government through September 30. He recalled sitting in meetings where they discussed ways to tackle federal spending — but then, as he now recalled, “we did none of it.”

“If you keep on pulling the football from when I’m kicking, eventually you’re going to get a little wary,” McCormick told CNN of his hesitation to get in line again.

That chorus of House conservatives who are demanding these big cuts as part of Trump’s domestic policy megabill, however, is so far failing to force the Senate’s hand.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune defended his chamber’s decision to commit to no more than $4 billion in his package, even as he acknowledges it has been a huge sticking point for conservatives.

“It’s kind of a feature of how we draft them to comply with the Byrd rule. A lot of it is just kind of speaking different languages but we understand where they are coming from and are trying to address that and just make sure everybody is comfortable with moving forward,” Thune said Wednesday.

This headline and story have been updated with additional developments.

CNN’s Manu Raju, Haley Talbot, Morgan Rimmer and Veronica Stracqualursi contributed to this report.

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