Despite facing multiple competing demands from Republicans in both chambers of Congress, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., remains “very optimistic” that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will reach the president’s desk by July 4.
The House-passed OBBBA, a multitrillion-dollar budget reconciliation bill implementing President Donald Trump’s major policy priorities, has undergone Senate committee revisions and is currently under the Senate parliamentarian’s review.
Some of those revisions have upset delicate compromises Johnson made to placate Republican factions in his chamber, and alienated several GOP lawmakers in the Senate.
Yet during a news conference Tuesday, Johnson told reporters not to “prejudge” the end product yet, remarking that “we’re still awaiting the final details.”
“I don’t think we can say it’s a vastly different product,” he said. “I’ve been emphasizing from the very beginning that this is a one-team approach. The House and Senate Republicans working together in tandem with the White House – there’s no daylight between any of us on the ultimate goal and objective.”
While both chambers aim to include Trump’s tax, defense, border, and energy agenda in the OBBBA, they disagree on how best to implement those priorities, particularly as they wrestle with offsetting the cost of the bill and accommodating holdouts’ demands.
Major touchpoints among lawmakers in both chambers include the timing of Inflation Reduction Act subsidy phaseouts, changes to SNAP and Medicaid, SALT deduction cap flip-flops, and the overall deficit impact of the bill.
“I’ve been talking to individual senators ad nauseam,” Johnson said. “They’re going through the five stages of grief on their individual preferences, as we did over here.”
Those internal conflicts, plus recent rulings made by the Senate parliamentarian, have slowed Republican leaders’ progress. Multiple Senate committees are scrambling to rewrite portions of the bill that had provided hundreds of billions of savings but were deemed as noncompliant with budget reconciliation rules.
Johnson, however, said they are “on target right now” to meet the July 4 deadline, predicting that “if the Senate acts accordingly” it could pass the bill by Friday or Saturday.
“I remain very optimistic that there is not going to be a wide chasm between the two products – what the Senate produces and what we produce,” the speaker said.
