House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) achieved the seemingly impossible in getting President Donald Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill” across the finish line with a one-vote margin. However, Trump’s legislative legacy only passed the lower chamber with the promise to Freedom Caucus fiscal hawks that the Senate would expedite and expand Medicaid reforms and the reversal of former President Joe Biden’s green energy credits. The bill, which the Congressional Budget Office estimated will cost a little over $2 trillion over the next decade, would have to incorporate the $1.6 trillion in cuts pledged to the Freedom Caucus in order for economic growth to render the bill truly fiscally responsible. The Senate is facing a similar uphill battle, with holdouts across the ideological spectrum weighing in with their own requests for the bill.
However, one request from the ostensibly hawkish faction of the Senate isn’t just antithetical to the demands of the Freedom Caucus — it’s a nonstarter that Trump would never, ever agree to pass into law.
