Speaker Mike Johnson toiled on Tuesday to find the votes to squeeze the G.O.P. budget resolution through the House, facing potential defections from centrist Republicans fearing the plan would tee up deep Medicaid cuts and conservatives who want to slash federal spending even more deeply.
Mr. Johnson announced an evening vote on the budget outline, whose approval would clear the way to enact the major elements of President Trump’s domestic agenda, but it was not clear whether he would be able to muster the votes to adopt it.
At a news conference at the Capitol on Tuesday, Mr. Johnson said Republican leaders were “very close” to winning the votes they needed to do so, but signaled the vote could slip to later in the week.
“There may be a vote tonight,” he said. “There might not be.”
It was a familiar conundrum for the speaker, who is working to quell discontent from both flanks of his fractious conference, all while dealing with a razor-thin majority that will accommodate almost no defections. If all members were present and voting, Mr. Johnson could afford to lose no more than a single Republican, and a handful have already said they are against the measure.
Approval of the budget plan is a crucial first step for Republicans to smooth the way through Congress for a massive fiscal package using a process called reconciliation, which allows such bills to steer clear of a filibuster and pass the Senate on a simple majority vote.
The House blueprint calls for legislation that would add roughly $3 trillion to the deficit over a decade, while teeing up deep cuts in spending on health care and food programs for low-income people. That would help pay for $4.5 trillion in tax cuts. It also calls for raising the debt limit by $4 trillion.
At least five conservatives on Tuesday morning said they planned to vote against it.
“It’s insane,” said Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky. “We’re going to increase the deficit with this. Why would I vote for that? You can’t cut taxes without cutting spending, and they’re not really cutting spending.”
At the same time, Republicans in swing-seat districts have said they are uncomfortable approving a plan that could lead to major cuts to Medicaid and food stamps. The budget does not specify precise cuts, but it lays out broad spending targets by committee that dictate where Republicans must find the money to finance their tax cuts.
For example, the plan instructs the Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees Medicaid and Medicare, to come up with at least $880 billion in cuts. It would not be possible to find anywhere approaching that amount of money without slicing deeply into at least one of those programs.
“I’m still making my point all the way to the end about the need to protect the services that are important to my district,” Representative Juan Ciscomani of Arizona, said as he left a closed-door meeting of Republicans on Tuesday morning to discuss the plan. “Obviously, this is only the beginning. This is where the real fight actually begins to protect the services that I’ve been fighting for, while also delivering on the promise of slashing down the size of government.”
Republican leaders in recent days have huddled with those skeptical lawmakers and tried to assure them that they will not ultimately be asked to approve deep cuts to those programs. They have argued the House urgently needs to approve the blueprint — which does not carry the force of law — in order to move the reconciliation process forward.
“The question before us now is, what will move us in the right direction: failure, or a partial success?” said Representative Dusty Johnson, a South Dakota Republican who leads the centrist Main Street Caucus. “I think we’re going to come together around the idea that failure is the wrong option, and a partial success is far preferable.”
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