House Republicans muscled the “big, beautiful bill” through a procedural hurdle on the floor overnight Thursday, setting the legislation up for a final vote as the conference works to get it to President Donald Trump’s desk by July 4.
The House voted 219 to 213 to adopt the rule, with one Republican joining all Democrats to vote against the procedural measure. The sole dissenter was Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA).
Massie initially voted in favor of the rule, but flipped his vote about two hours later as the night dragged on. “The world doesn’t understand the difference between a rule vote and final passage,” he explained.
The Kentucky Republican, along with Reps. Victoria Spartz (R-IN), Andrew Clyde (R-GA) and Keith Self (R-TX), all flipped their votes to “yes” around 3:20 a.m. after hours of the vote being open.
Final passage is expected later Thursday morning, which would conclude weeks of intense, cross-chamber negotiations as various factions of the Republican Party lobbied congressional leadership and the White House to create the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
The rule vote was dramatic, starting at 9:33 p.m. on Wednesday and lasting until 3:24 a.m. Thursday. During the vote, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) called into Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News to say the floor will stay open until he can flip the votes needed. “I’ll keep it open as long as it takes,” Johnson said.
Just after 1:30 a.m., Johnson told reporters the holdouts were coming around and projected confidence the vote would be successful.
“We had the president himself, we had the Vice President, we had we had attorneys and agencies answering questions,” Johnson told reporters. “I mean, it was very detailed and I think, very productive in the end.”
Around the same time, holdouts were seen leaving the House floor and heading to a House office building. When asked for updates, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) said “we’re very close” but didn’t say which way he’d vote.
Johnson said of the holdouts, “They went to finish up their work, and they’ll be part of the team.”
But passing the bill out of the lower chamber is still easier said than done. Several GOP holdouts remain concerned over changes in the legislation made in the Senate regarding Medicaid and energy tax credits.
Members from the Freedom Caucus, as well as some centrist Republicans from the Main Street Caucus, traveled to the White House earlier on Wednesday to meet with Trump over the bill. Several centrist Republicans declined the offer, including Fitzpatrick, who did not want to be “stared down,” according to a GOP source.
Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-SD), co-chair of the Main Street Caucus, told reporters that Trump is the “best closer in the business” and it was a “productive meeting.”
“He got a lot of members to ‘yes’ in that meeting,” the South Dakota Republican said.
Dusty Johnson added that many lawmakers, at least the ones at the meetings he was present for, were holdouts due to a lack of understanding of the bill’s contents, not opposition to the changes themselves.
“There are some members who have concerns about the Medicaid impact,” Dusty Johnson said. “The president walked through the specifics, which made members feel a lot better.”
“The more members understand about the Senate changes, the better they feel about them,” the South Dakota congressman added.
But the White House meeting was not enough to sway some conservatives like Reps. Chip Roy (R-TX), who expressed disappointment or outright anger at Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) for a bill that did not adhere to the cuts that the budget framework called for, as he promised.
However, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC), who voted against the bill in the Rules Committee, changed his mind heading into the chamber for the procedural vote on Wednesday night.
“It’s the right thing to do at the right time,” Norman said.
The House was at a standstill for much of Wednesday afternoon over an amendment to the rule. The House Rules Committee skipped a step, forgetting to include a procedural measure called the “previous question” as part of the rule. If this had not been corrected, Johnson would not have had a way to pull the bill from the floor once debate began on the bill.
The mistake was eventually fixed with an amendment as a separate vote to the rule, as Johnson huddled with holdouts in his office, including the Freedom Caucus. The floor remained open for more than seven hours and made history as the longest continuous vote in modern history.
Leadership sources told the Washington Examiner they kept the vote open to wait for members caught in bad weather to get into town, but most of the holdouts were already in Washington.
Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought arrived on Capitol Hill to meet with holdouts. Leaving the meeting almost a half hour later, Vought had told reporters that they were “making good progress.”
The Senate passed its version of the bill on Tuesday after over 26 hours of debate and amendments. The House Rules Committee met for over 12 hours Tuesday evening.
Roy put his feelings simply while giving his remarks in the Rules Committee: “My colleagues in the Senate have failed us.”
“I don’t believe this delivers what the president, what the administration, were working to deliver on,” Roy told reporters ahead of the Rules Committee meeting.
Harris had told reporters coming back from the White House he was a ‘no’ on the rule.
“Senate should have never left town,” Harris said after meeting with the speaker earlier Wednesday. “The president asked us to stay until this issue was resolved and the Senate left town.”
“It’s not going anywhere,” Harris added later in the day. “And that’s the way the normal legislative process works. The House takes a position, the Senate takes a position, and then we come to an agreement somewhere in the middle.”
Harris eventually voted in favor of the rule.
The legislation extends the 2017 tax cuts passed during Trump’s first term. Republicans hoped to push similar landmark legislation during the first two years of the president’s second term, ahead of the 2026 midterms, where the GOP is defending a razor-thin majority and Trump won’t be on the ballot.
House Republican sources told reporters on a press call Tuesday that the bill is 85-90% of the original House bill and has the full support of Trump. The sources acknowledged that the bill is more conservative in some places and more centrist in others, but the House is moving forward to consider the bill and get it to the president by Friday.
HOW TRUMP’S ‘ONE BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL’ PASSED IN THE SENATE WITH KEY MURKOWSKI FLIP
Sources said the bill is in a “legislative sweet spot.” If they continue to go back and forth, and it doesn’t pass, the sources said it could lead to consequences for the American people, such as a tax hike.
The president said Tuesday he wants the party to unite and vote in favor of the bill so it can hit his desk by July 4, a self-imposed deadline that Republicans in both chambers accused of being “artificial” and resulted in the bill being “jammed through” without proper consideration.
Lauren Green and Zach Halaschak contributed to this report.
