Washington — Key conservatives remain opposed to the massive budget package containing President Trump's second-term agenda, as the holdouts were expected meet again Wednesday with the president ahead of plans to vote on the bill.

Mr. Trump met Tuesday morning with House Republicans as leaders ramp up their efforts to push the bill over its last hurdle in the Rules Committee before it can get to the House floor for a vote.

The president put pressure on members to fall in line Tuesday as the party's dueling factions have threatened to upend the plan with demands that will be difficult to reconcile. When he arrived on Capitol Hill, Mr. Trump suggested that any GOP member who doesn't back what he and Republicans have deemed the "big, beautiful bill" would be "knocked out so fast," a warning to a handful of "grandstanders."

"It's the biggest bill ever passed, and we've got to get it done," Mr. Trump said.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, can only afford three defections in a floor vote, if all members are present and voting, given his slim majority. All Democrats are expected to oppose it.

"I would say that if the vote were held right now, it dies a painful death," Republican Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee said Tuesday evening. He told reporters he would vote "no" on the package in its current form.

But before a floor vote, the legislation will have to make it through the Rules Committee, the last stop for most legislation before the full House votes on a measure. The committee began meeting shortly after 1 a.m., and was still meeting as the sun rose on Wednesday.

President Trump arrives with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) for a House Republican meeting at the U.S. Capitol on May 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. / Credit: Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images

"If you guys think this ugly bill is so damn beautiful, like Trump keeps saying, you should have the courage to debate it in primetime," Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Rules Committee, said at the start of the meeting.

Republicans, however, rejected the request to adjourn the meeting until daylight hours. And the committee's chairwoman, Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, said the Rules Committee "has a long tradition of meeting late into the evening and reporting legislation long after most of America has gone to bed."

The committee's rare overnight meeting took place as Republican leadership races to pass the budget package before its self-imposed Memorial Day deadline.

Johnson has been meeting with the different factions in recent days to hear the demands and build a consensus around a modified version of the legislation that was produced by nearly a dozen House committees.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) (C) talks to Rep. Joe Neguse (D-CO) (L) and Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA) during a House Rules Committee meeting on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act at the U.S. Capitol on May 21, 2025. / Credit: Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images

Conservatives, who are upset that that bill does not make steep enough spending cuts to significantly bring down the deficit, have pushed for Medicaid work requirements to kick in much sooner than a 2029 deadline. They also want to eliminate all the clean energy subsidies that were implemented under the Inflation Reduction Act, which was signed into law by former President Joe Biden.

After right-wing opposition appeared to remain firm overnight, Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland, who chairs the conservative House Freedom Caucus, told reporters Wednesday that the White House offered a proposal that would enable these holdouts to back the budget bill, if it were to be included in the package.

"I don't think it can be done today," Harris said. "I think that there is a pathway forward that we can see."

The conservative holdouts did not offer details on the proposal they said the White House has offered. But the caucus was set to meet with Mr. Trump Wednesday afternoon, accompanied by Johnson, CBS News confirmed.

Conservatives have also been pushing to change the rate by which the federal government pays states for Medicaid, a point of contention with moderates, who have warned against larger cuts to the program.

Johnson reiterated earlier this week that the change has "been off the table for quite some time," however. And Mr. Trump said ahead of the meeting Tuesday morning that "we're not doing anything cutting of anything meaningful," adding that on Medicaid, "the only thing we're cutting is waste, fraud and abuse."

Though a manager's amendment, which will include the changes negotiated to the package in recent days, has yet to be released, the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated that the original version of the bill would add $3.3 trillion to the deficit over the next decade. And a new preliminary analysis from the Congressional Budget Office found it would increase the deficit by $3.8 trillion.

Right-wing Republicans aren't the only ones with objections to the legislation, though. Blue-state Republicans oppose a provision on the state and local tax deduction, known as SALT, and they have threatened to withhold their votes unless their demands are met.

Prior to the SALT deduction cap, which was imposed by the 2017 Trump tax law, taxpayers could deduct all their state and local taxes from their federal taxes, which some policymakers have said mainly benefits wealthy homeowners in states with high taxes, such as New York and California. But others also point out that the $10,000 cap is increasingly impacting middle-class homeowners who live in regions where property taxes are rising.

Republicans who represent blue states have pushed for an increase to the SALT cap, but balked at the $30,000 cap outlined in the package because they think that's still too low.

GOP Rep. Mike Lawler of New York said ahead of the meeting with the president on Tuesday that the group of moderates had no plans to cave. And on his message to conservatives, Lawler told reporters, "if they think we're going to throw our constituents under the bus to appease them, it's not happening."

"The fact is, we wouldn't even be in this position right now if you didn't have members in seats like mine who won," Lawler said.

Mr. Trump also weighed in on the SALT issue, suggesting that he opposes raising the cap because he claimed Democratic governors from states like New York, Illinois and California would benefit, calling them the "biggest" beneficiaries. But after the group of moderates met with the speaker Tuesday evening, Johnson indicated that they had "found a point of compromise."

According to a senior White House official, Mr. Trump told the House GOP conference during the meeting that they should not let division over the SALT cap get in the way of the bill, and said they should not touch Medicaid, except for addressing waste, fraud and abuse, along with cutting benefits for noncitizens and imposing work requirements. The official said Mr. Trump also made clear he wants every Republican to vote "yes" on the bill, while saying he's losing patience with the remaining holdouts.

Johnson said at a news conference following the meeting that leadership would work to "gather up the small subgroups in the House Republican conference and tie up the remaining loose ends."

"We are going to get this done," the speaker added.