House GOP leaders delay key vote on Trump megabill amid opposition, attendance issues

House Republican leaders are delaying a key vote on the “big, beautiful bill” as top lawmakers work to lock down enough support to clear the procedural hurdle amid GOP opposition and absences.

Leaders told lawmakers to return to their offices during a Wednesday afternoon vote series, as the penultimate procedural vote in the series — just before the key vote to open debate — remained open for more than an hour while top lawmakers met with holdouts behind the scenes.

Hard-line Republicans — including many members of the House Freedom Caucus — were seen shuffling in and out of a room off the House floor during the vote series. Many of them had vowed to vote against the rule, which sets the parameters for debate. If enough did, and the effort failed, the House floor would have come to a standstill.

Republican Reps. Andy Harris (Md.) — the chair of the conservative House Freedom Caucus — Chip Roy (Texas), Ralph Norman (S.C.), Scott Perry (Pa.), Eli Crane (Ariz.), Lloyd Smucker (Pa.), Andy Biggs (Ariz.) and others were seen entering the room at various points. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russ Vought was also spotted entering the meeting room.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), however, told reporters that leadership is waiting on some Republicans to arrive at the Capitol after facing travel issues with weather delaying flights across the country. Once the absent members arrive, they will resume the vote, he noted.

“As you can see, there’s still a few members who couldn’t get flights in but are driving and finding other ways to D.C., and we need them here. As you know, we need their votes. And they’re going to be here shortly. So when they get here within the next hour we’ll come back, finish this vote, then go straight into the rule vote,” Scalise said.

It remains unclear which lawmakers had not yet returned to Washington. There were eight outstanding votes on the open vote, but some of those individuals had been seen in the Capitol throughout the day.

Despite the absences, it had still been clear that GOP leadership would have trouble clearing the procedural hurdle as a handful of hard-line Republicans vowed to vote against the rule. 

Conservatives have expressed serious concerns with the deficit impact of the Senate’s legislation, griping that it does not comply with a spending agreement they landed earlier this year. They are demanding changes in exchange for support.

“Hopefully it goes back to Rules [Committee], gets moved closer to the House position, and the Senate gets called back into town,” Harris told reporters. “Senate never should have left town. The president asked us to stay until this issue was resolved, and the Senate left town.”

Ahead of the vote, Harris predicted that the vote would fail.

Moderates, meanwhile, have voiced worries about the impact Medicaid cuts and the rollback of green energy tax credits will have on their districts.

As the vote dragged on, and conversations continued behind the scenes, some of the opposition appears to be softening.

Norman, for example, told reporters earlier Wednesday that the Freedom Caucus had “a three-point plan” of demands to win their support for the bill, including changes to the legislation.

“I’m done with promises,” Norman said. “The best thing is to send the bill back [to the Senate].”

A few hours later, however, he spoke highly of a meeting with the president at the White House earlier in the day, where holdouts “had a lot of questions answered and a lot of information we found out that we did not know.”

All the new information was positive, he said.

Updated at 4:24 p.m. EDT