When it comes to Medicaid, Rep. Juan Ciscomani is telling fellow Republicans he won’t support steep cuts that could hit thousands of residents in his Arizona district — “my neighbors, people my kids go to school with” — who depend on it. Republican Rep. Don Bacon, who represents the liberal-leaning “blue dot” of Omaha, Nebraska, is trying to protect several Biden-era green energy tax breaks. He’s warning colleagues that “you can’t pull the rug out from under” businesses that have already sunk millions of dollars into renewable developments in Nebraska and beyond. And for Republican Rep. Nick LaLota of New York, it’s simple: “No Salt. No Deal. For Real.” He wants to revive — and bump up — what’s known as the SALT deduction, which allows taxpayers to write off a portion of their state and local taxes. Capping the deduction at $10,000 hurt many of his Long Island constituents. “Governing is a negotiation, right?” said Rep. Nicole Malliotakis of New York, another Republican who is also involved in the talks. “I think everybody is going to have to give a little.” As GOP leaders draft President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” of some $4.5 trillion in tax breaks and $1.5 trillion in spending cuts by Memorial Day, dozens of Republicans from contested congressional districts have positioned themselves at the center of the negotiating table. While it’s often the most conservative members of the House Freedom Caucus driving the legislative agenda — and they are demanding as much as $2 trillion in cuts — it’s the more centrist-leaning conservatives who could sink the bill. They have been hauled into meetings with Trump at the White House, some have journeyed to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, and many are huddling almost daily with House Speaker Mike Johnson. And they are not satisfied, yet. “To get everybody politically and policy-wise on the same page is going to require more conversations,” said LaLota, who is among five Republicans pledging to withhold their support unless changes to the SALT deduction are included. Republicans wrestle with what to put in — and what to leave out Diving into the gritty details of the massive package, the GOP leaders are running into the stubborn reality that not all the ideas from their menu of potential tax breaks and spending cuts are popular with voters back home. Moreover, their work of compiling the big package is not happening in a vacuum. It comes amid growing economic unease rippling across the country as Trump has fired thousands of federal workers, including some of their own constituents, and as his trade war sparks concerns of empty store shelves and higher prices. Brendan Buck, a former adviser to an earlier House speaker, Paul Ryan, warned in an op-ed Wednesday that all the party’s energy is being poured into one bill, with questionable returns. “Many Republicans are hoping that the tax bill can blunt the economic damage caused by the Trump tariffs,” Buck wrote in The New York Times, “but that is highly unlikely.” Democrats are ready for the fight, warning that Trump and his fellow Republicans are ripping away health care and driving the economy into the ditch — all to retain tax breaks approved during Trump’s first term that are expiring at year’s end. “What we see from Donald Trump and the Republicans is they are actually crashing the economy in real time,” said House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New […]