Sen. Josh Hawley is urging GOP leaders to strike Senate Finance Committee language altering a key Medicaid financing provision, warning he’s already hearing from House Republicans that it can’t clear their chamber.
“I don’t know why we would pass something that the House can’t pass and will force us into [a] conference,” the Missouri Republican said in an interview about the proposed crackdown on the state provider tax.
Hawley added that he and his fellow Senate GOP colleagues were also caught off guard by the Senate proposal — which would curtail the tax most states use to finance their Medicaid programs rather than simply freezing it, as the House did.
He summed up what he’s hearing from House Republicans: “We cannot pass this. We were not consulted.”
It’s the latest red flag for Senate Majority Leader John Thune as he tries to pass President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” next week, a necessary step if the House is going to have to advance it to the president’s desk by the GOP’s July 4 target. Thune wants the bill on the floor as soon as Wednesday.
“Unless you want to be here in August and September still doing this, I think that is a bad, bad plan,” Hawley said. “We don’t have time to reinvent the wheel.”
Hawley isn’t the only one raising concerns. House moderates are also starting to express opposition, and others within Speaker Mike Johnson’s circle described themselves to POLITICO as caught off guard.
But Hawley is offering one carrot to GOP leadership that could be critical as they try to hunt down the 50 votes they need to move forward: He said he is prepared to support the House provider tax freeze with the minor clarifications that hospital associations in 13 states, including his own, asked for last week in a letter first reported by POLITICO.
“I think that would be fine,” Hawley said, adding that rural hospitals in his state were “pretty satisfied” with the House language with some technical changes.
GOP leaders, including Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo, have been hoping to sway Hawley and other holdouts with a proposed rural hospital fund, which they believe would offset the potential impact of the provider tax changes.
While Hawley said he was still open to including a new fund, it wouldn’t change his belief that the Senate provider tax language had to go. In addition to talking with House Republicans, Hawley said he’s delivered his message directly to Thune, who said in a brief interview Wednesday ahead of Hawley’s comments that he’s speaking to Trump on a near-daily basis and is expected to spend the weekend and into early next week negotiating with his holdouts.
“We’re talking to individual senators on an ongoing basis and hearing them out about things they want included or not included in the final draft,” Thune said.
Hawley has already spoken with Trump about the Senate language and has described the president as being “surprised” by the provider tax proposal.
Asked if he believed Trump and the White House should get involved to nudge Thune and Crapo, Hawley added that they were “stepping up their involvement.” He pointed to chief of staff Susie Wiles urging Congress to get the bill to Trump’s desk by July 4 as an example of them “trying to deliver it gently” but predicted it could become “more forceful.”
Asked about the Senate’s Medicaid language Thursday, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt declined to get into specifics, instead telling reporters that since “the bill hasn’t been sent to the president’s desk yet, there’s more room for change.”
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