Conservatives in the House say they won’t back any package without deep cuts that would all but certainly affect the health program. Some Senate Republicans say they won’t accept such cuts.
When Republican leaders weigh which of their members might defy the party and defect on major legislation, Senator Jerry Moran’s name rarely comes up.
So it was all the more remarkable when Mr. Moran, a third-term senator from Kansas, went to the floor last week to issue a stark warning about how the budget blueprint his party was about to approve could affect his state.
Noting that the budget plan that Republicans were considering could lay the groundwork for sweeping cuts to Medicaid, Mr. Moran warned that such reductions might threaten struggling rural hospitals and, by extension, the future of the rural American heartland.
“I want to make certain that my colleagues know, in my view, the value of making certain we do no harm to those in desperate need of health care in Kansas and across the country,” Mr. Moran said
Speaker Mike Johnson was able to put down a revolt on Thursday and push through that blueprint to deliver President Trump’s agenda of spending and tax cuts by promising House conservatives that their colleagues in the Senate would join them in cutting $1.5 trillion in federal spending over the next decade.
The problem for Republicans is that it is increasingly clear that some G.O.P. senators simply do not have the appetite for the kinds of deep cuts that their counterparts in the House are agitating for. In recent days they have expressed concerns about repealing the entirety of President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s Inflation Reduction Act and restricting access to food stamps.