Trump meets Republican hard-liners in hopes of moving tax bill forward
EPAPresident Donald Trump and House Republicans continued to negotiate a far-reaching tax and spending bill on Wednesday, holding discussions at the White House ahead of a potential vote.
Trump and his staff spent several hours with of the House Freedom Caucus, who have refused to a bill they say does not go far enough in cutting spending.
Many of Trump's top priorities are in the legislation: extending tax cuts ed in 2017, eliminating taxes on tips, spending more on defence and border security, and cutting government health care programmes.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates the bill would add about $2.3tn (£1.7tn) to the US national debt over the next 10 years.
Trump campaigned on promises to reduce the US budget debt - the cumulative gap between the government's tax revenue and its spending - which currently stands at around $36.2tn (£27tn).
Negotiators worked through the night on Tuesday, including a meeting of a House committee which began at 01:00 local time (05:00 GMT) Wednesday.
Because Republicans hold a narrow majority in the House and Democrats uniformly oppose the legislation, Trump can only risk losing a handful of votes from his own party. He and congressional allies are also under the pressure of a self-imposed deadline to get the bill ed by the end of the month, which is now 10 days away.
After it wins approval in the House, the bill will head to the Republican-led Senate, which could make its own changes.
After leaving the White House negotiations on Wednesday, Speaker Mike Johnson said the full House could vote on the bill Wednesday night or Thursday morning, according to Politico.
The president has called his proposal a "big, beautiful, bill" – the measure is now officially known as the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" – but has faced opposition from of the House Freedom Caucus who want additional spending cuts.
At the same time, several Republicans representing districts in Democratic-leaning states want bigger tax cuts for their voters - to be achieved by increasing credits those voters receive for paying state taxes at relatively high rates.
Trump and Johnson are trying win over both dissenting factions, which could prove to be a delicate balance.
Kentucky's Thomas Massie, one of the Republican holdouts in the House, took to X to complain about the closed negotiations. Trump earlier this week labelled him a "grandstander".
"Major provisions of the big beautiful bill are still being negotiated and written, yet we are being told we will vote on it today," Massie wrote. "Shouldn't we take more than a few hours to read a bill this big and this consequential">Hawaii's Kilauea volcano, one of the world's most active, erupted for the 25th time since 23 December 2024.
