Can House Republicans Govern? This Week Will Pose a Big Test.

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After months of fits and starts, House Republicans have finally arrived at their most important week of the year: the week they try to pass (what is likely to be officially named) the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

The bill attempts to smoosh most of Donald Trump’s and Republicans’ legislative priorities into one gargantuan package, using a process—budget reconciliation—that allows them to bypass the 60-vote Senate filibuster. And passing it will not be easy.

The bigger question before the House GOP this week is one that has been asked of the party since November’s election: Can this majority, with its notoriously vocal factions and historically slim margin for error, function? A significant reason all of this is packed into one bill, instead of two or three, is that there were doubts about the House’s ability to pass multiple pieces of major partisan legislation. So Republicans opted to throw it all into one package in the hopes that it would be too big to fail. We’ll see.

The centerpiece of the bill is an attempt to permanentize expiring tax cuts from the GOP’s 2017 tax reform law. It also introduces new, temporary tax cuts pushed by Trump on overtime and tips, while giving seniors a “bonus.” And it increases spending on defense and border and immigration enforcement. On paper, this adds up to about a $5 trillion debt increase relative to current law.

The bill has drawn the most scrutiny for its proposals to (partially) offset that cost with spending cuts—chief among them cuts to Medicaid. The legislation introduces work requirements and other strictures to the program that would, per the Congressional Budget Office, save $625 billion over a decade while leaving 7.6 million people newly uninsured. The bill would also shift some of the cost of federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits to states, while placing new limits on federal student loans. It would repeal a slew of climate-focused tax breaks from Joe Biden’s signature reconciliation bill, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

Even if the House were able to pass the bill this week, there’s still a long way to go. The Senate, which generally sneers at the amateurism of House legislation, would have its turn; if the Senate were successful, the two chambers would then have to bridge what could be substantial differences.

There’s much work to be done before the bill is even ready for a vote in the House, and GOP leaders hope to make their final changes in the next couple of days. Here are some of the major outstanding questions.

Medicaid Work Requirements Not Quite “Work-y” Enough? 

The biggest chunk ($300 billion) of the bill’s Medicaid cuts comes from new work requirements, in which “able-bodied adults without dependents” would be mandated to complete at least 80 hours of work, community service, job training, or schooling a month. There have been gripes from conservatives that the new requirements allow for too many exceptions or qualify too many categories as “work.” Their biggest concern with this provision, though, is that it won’t kick in until 2029.

This is a gimmick that drives deficit hawks up the wall: The spending and tax cuts always begin immediately, while the spending cuts are delayed and—if a future Congress has anything to say about it, as it typically does—often never implemented.

It’s likely that the start date, then, would be pushed up to 2027. That makes the work requirements more likely to go into effect while still giving state administrators time to prepare for the change.

Why was it slated to start in 2029 to begin with? Pure politics. That start date would get the GOP through midterm and presidential election-year cycles without having to answer for significant health coverage losses across the country.

I had thought that Republicans might stick to the talking point that it was all about the need to give states four years to implement those work requirements. But last week on the Hill, they weren’t trying very hard to cloak the reason.

“I mean, you can guess,” Florida Rep. Kat Cammack told reporters.

Deeper Medicaid Cuts Back on the Table?

Although the changes to Medicaid wring hundreds of billions of dollars from the program—and separate millions from their health coverage—they don’t make the sorts of structural changes that some conservatives were hoping for. One idea they’d earlier pushed for was to lower the federal government’s share of the cost it currently pays for the 20 million Medicaid enrollees under Obamacare’s expansion of the program. The federal government currently covers 90 percent of those costs, while the states shoulder the other 10 percent.

This idea was too big of a sell to GOP members—and more than just a handful of moderates. It met a quick death before the bill was released.

But suddenly, over the weekend, the idea is being reconsidered as conservatives push for further changes. This is a particular cause for Freedom Caucus member Rep. Chip Roy, also a member of the Rules Committee, through which the bill would have to pass before it gets to the House floor.

This would be an incendiary change that would only seem to worsen the vote count for House Republican leaders. Maybe they’ll go for it anyway?

Deeper Clean Energy Cuts?

The bill takes aim at the energy and environmental provisions of 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act—but does it go far enough? In addition to eliminating subsidies for purchases of electric vehicles and solar panels, it winds down production and investment tax credits for clean energy technologies. Originally scheduled to expire in 2032, these credits would be phased out beginning in 2028.

This isn’t good enough, once again, for conservatives, who would like all of this stuff eliminated starting yesterday. But doing so won’t alienate just moderates—it could lose the votes of any members who have projects, factories, or employers in their districts benefiting from these subsidies.

How to Get These SALT People to Stop Complaining

The whiners aren’t all conservative spending hawks. Perhaps the most obstinate group is a handful of New York and California members who have staked their reputations on increasing the deductibility of state and local taxes, to the annoyance of every other House Republican.

The 2017 tax bill first implemented a cap on this deduction, set at $10,000. This hits expensive, high-tax blue-state districts more than others, and the “SALT caucus” (this is what the group calls itself) won’t budge until that cap is significantly lifted. In the version of the bill approved by the Ways and Means Committee, the cap was moved up to $15,000 for individual filers and $30,000 for couples. The SALT caucus considered this offer insultingly low.

The resolution of this may well be a grand bargain: The higher the cap the SALTies want, the deeper they’ll have to cut Medicaid. (This would be a very regressive trade, we should note.) A complication here, though, is that not all moderate and vulnerable members care about SALT—swing districts in Nebraska and Arizona are much different from those in Westchester County—and such a trade wouldn’t be to their benefit.

Remember to Keep the Senate in Mind

The Senate finds much of what the House is doing to be adorable. Look at them, playing grown-up legislature! The Senate fully intends to sand off the sharp edges of whatever overly aggressive product the House sends its way—and takes great pleasure in doing so.

This will certainly be the case on the House’s Medicaid cuts, for which it’s not just “moderate” senators rejecting an aggressive approach: Senators from Missouri and Ohio are frustrated with the House discussion too. Senators, after all, are the points of contact for governors who want to complain about federal funding cuts coming down the pike that might screw up their budgets. I can still picture Sen. John McCain, who was hardly a health policy wonk, showing reporters the list of gripes he had from then–Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey shortly before he cast the deciding vote to kill Obamacare repeal in 2017.

But the softening goes the other way too. There aren’t any GOP senators from New York or California. There’s only one from a soft-blue state at all: Maine Sen. Susan Collins. Most Senate Republicans will have little appetite in an increased SALT cap.

Which is to say, so many of the final decisions being made in the House to be more aggressive on various fronts are unlikely to reach the finish line. Their main effect will be to produce more material for House campaign ads next fall.

How Much Will Trump Have to Yell at Everyone?

Returning to the question of: Can House Republicans govern? On their own terms, almost certainly not. But on every difficult vote they’ve had so far this year—mostly procedural ones setting up this process—they’ve gotten over the hump because Trump has screamed at the necessary people to fall in line. He’ll have to do so again this week, and he’ll enjoy doing so.

But this isn’t a procedural vote. They’re not just teeing up a process anymore. Members believe they have existential interests on the line, and that if the House doesn’t stake a position now, the window will close. SALT caucus members have been pledging to eliminate this cap for eight years. Conservative spending hawks believe that the U.S. will die a painful death if the trajectory of the national debt is not addressed in this package. Trump will have his work cut out for him.