House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., on Wednesday said President Donald Trump will have "an active role" as the House works to approve his "one, big, beautiful bill."
Debate over the tax-cut and spending megabill returned to the House after the Senate passed the legislation on Tuesday.
GOP leaders are trying to persuade some conservative members to accept the proposal and meet Trump's self-imposed July 4 deadline.
Upon arriving at the Capitol on Wednesday, Scalise was asked about Trump's role in trying to convince party hard-liners, who are angry that the bill does not sufficiently cut spending and increases the debt ceiling $5 trillion, to accept the deal.
"The president's continued to play a very active role in helping us get the votes," Scalise told Newsmax's Kilmeny Duchardt. "I mean, he's talking to individual members.
"Even when the bill was in the Senate, you had some individual members that wanted some changes in the Senate calling the president to help get the support for those changes and some of those changes were implemented. So, you know, the president from day one has been our best closer, and he's going to continue to be through today."
Scalise refused to say how many votes Republicans were shy of guaranteeing the bill's passage.
"We're talking to individual members and small groups," he said. "We're not having a full conference today."
Scalise’s House GOP leadership colleagues also are looking to Trump and the White House to sway Freedom Caucus members threatening to vote against the megabill. The conservatives say the Senate-passed legislation would add more than $600 billion to the deficit as compared to the bill most of them supported in May.
"The sense is the White House needs to deliver the Freedom Caucus — that’s the project of the day," one source told Politico.
Caucus members say the Senate version violates a House budget framework, negotiated with Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., that links the amount of tax cuts to the aggregate amount of spending cuts.
Also, a group of Republican moderates in states such as Pennsylvania, New York and North Carolina are concerned about more demanding cuts to state provider taxes that fund Medicaid.
The moderates were meeting with Trump at the White House on Wednesday morning.
Any changes to the bill made by the House would require the legislation to return to the upper chamber for approval.
The Associated Press contributed this story.
Charlie McCarthy ✉
Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.