Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), the chair of the conservative Home Freedom Caucus, is staking opposition to the Senate’s model of the “big, beautiful bill,” spelling hassle for the laws’s possibilities of clearing the Home down the highway.
“The currently proposed Senate version of the One Big Beautiful Bill weakens key House priorities—it doesn’t do enough to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicaid, it backtracks on Green New Scam elimination included in the House bill, and it greatly increases the deficit – taking us even further from a balanced budget,” Harris wrote on the social platform X.
The Freedom Caucus chair — who voted “present” when the measure handed the Home — stated he’ll go a step additional if the Senate’s invoice, with none adjustments, involves the ground.
“If the Senate tries to jam the House with this version, I won’t vote ‘present.’ I’ll vote NO,” he added.
The criticism comes because the Senate is racing to succeed in consensus on key sticking factors within the sprawling tax minimize and spending bundle, with GOP leaders pushing to fulfill their self-imposed July 4 deadline for enactment. As soon as the Senate clears the measure, the Home must give it a closing stamp of approval earlier than it heads to President Trump’s desk.
The timeline, nonetheless, is hanging within the steadiness as hard-line conservatives — like Harris — and average Republicans within the Home balk at adjustments the Senate made to the laws.
The Senate Finance Committee launched its a part of the “big, beautiful bill” final week, unveiling adjustments that toughen Medicaid cuts, ease the rollback of green-energy tax credit and drastically lower the state and native tax deduction cap — alterations which can be prompting issues amongst a various group of Republicans.
Arduous-liners like Harris have been most incensed with the green-energy tax credit and what they see as inadequate spending cuts within the Senate’s model of the invoice.
The laws, for instance, seems to get rid of a provision that will have required climate-friendly power sources to start development inside 60 days of the invoice’s enactment to qualify for the credit, which was thought of some of the stringent power circumstances within the invoice. As a substitute, the Senate’s measure requires initiatives, together with photo voltaic panels and wind farms, to begin development by the tip of this 12 months to obtain the total credit score.
After the Home vote, Freedom Caucus members warned that they’d not assist a Senate invoice if it weakened their core provisions, a warning shot throughout the Capitol.
Within the lead-up to that vote, nonetheless, hard-line conservatives have been vocal in voicing their opposition to the laws, arguing that they wanted days — not hours — to appropriate their qualms. When the invoice got here to the ground, nonetheless, everybody within the group besides Harris voted “sure,” prompting questions on how lengthy the group will proceed its opposition this time round. A number of members credited their assist to last-minute assurances they acquired from the White Home.
