By Sarah Ferris, CNN

Washington (CNN) — On the eve of their first major vote to advance President Donald Trump’s agenda, key House Republicans are warning Speaker Mike Johnson that they won’t simply rubber-stamp steep cuts across the federal government.

Johnson plans to hold a vote Tuesday on a sweeping budget plan that calls for $2 trillion in cuts over a decade to help pay for tax cuts and new national security spending. But the fate of that measure is uncertain amid rising pressure back home, as Republicans across the country face blowback over the blitz of spending freezes and federal worker firings directed by billionaire Elon Musk.

“You have to do this with a scalpel and not a hatchet. And we have to make sure that people who work hard but rely on Medicaid for health insurance, or seniors in a nursing home, or folks who are disabled, are protected,” Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a New Jersey Republican, told CNN.

Van Drew — who’s had protesters lined up outside his South Jersey district office — said he’s spoken to Johnson about getting “an assurance” before he agrees to advance Trump’s agenda.

He isn’t alone. Several other Republicans, such as Reps. Nicole Malliotakis of New York and Don Bacon of Nebraska, have yet to commit to Johnson’s budget plan until party leaders can promise the final bill won’t gut key federal aid programs like Medicaid, food assistance and Pell grants, according to multiple people familiar with discussions.

Bacon, for his part, said he wants to advance Trump’s agenda on national security, energy production and tax cuts. “But we don’t want to make significant cuts to Medicaid, and the current proposal appears to do just that,” he told CNN.

Many centrist-leaning Republicans, including Bacon, had spent the first few weeks of Trump’s presidency carefully avoiding direct criticism of the new administration. But a month into Trump’s second term, a growing number of rank-and-file lawmakers are publicly warning against some of the president’s recent moves to shake up the status quo in Washington, like his cost-cutting task force run by Musk, and — now — his support for a budget plan that could gut hundreds of billions of dollars from the nation’s largest low-income health program.

Across the country last week, multiple GOP lawmakers faced questions in town halls and local interviews about the close-to-home impact of Trump’s rapid-fire attempt to downsize the federal government.

In New Jersey, Van Drew raised concerns about firings in a local Federal Aviation Administration center. In Alaska, Rep. Nick Begich was grilled by local officials about a federal funding freeze that could increase the likelihood of power blackouts. In Ohio, Rep. Troy Balderson was blunt during a local business luncheon that he believed some of Trump’s unilateral moves went too far.

“Congress has to decide whether or not the Department of Education goes away,” Balderson said, according to The Columbus Dispatch. “Not the president, not Elon Musk. Congress decides.”

Several states away, Rep. Rich McCormick — a military veteran and fiscal hawk from Georgia — faced boos in a town hall as he was pressed about cuts to the local government health hub, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“I don’t think executive privilege should be as strong as it is. I think we’re out of balance right now. I think your direct representation, whether you like me or not, I’m the closest thing you have to represent,” McCormick said as he faced jeers in the crowd.

The increasing dissatisfaction felt by some House Republicans won’t make it any easier for Johnson and his leadership team as they attempt to lock down the votes for the separate budget vote on Tuesday. Some New York Republicans, for instance, are still furious at Musk’s team for going after a 9/11 survivors fund, even after the cuts were swiftly reversed.

Conservative Republicans told CNN they believe their more centrist colleagues will ultimately fall in line and support the budget plan. Still, the lingering angst from the middle is a warning sign for GOP leaders as they draft and later try to pass the massive measure with zero room for error — without risking their majority in 2026.

“This is a tricky business. This is something you can’t do easily and you can’t just bludgeon your way through it,” Van Drew said of the GOP’s goal of trimming spending, which he said he generally supports. “But there’s a lot that needs to be done.”

Some Republicans already privately believed the cuts in the latest version of the House GOP budget blueprint were too steep for a single bill, according to several members and senior aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity. They feared there would be no way to accomplish that scale of cuts without touching benefits for programs like Medicaid — even if Trump himself has said he would protect the program.

House Republicans weren’t always committed to a $2 trillion number. Johnson’s leadership team struck a compromise with hard-right conservatives who voiced their opposition after the Louisiana Republican initially told members of his conference that he supported a figure closer to $1 trillion.

Now, House Republicans are forging ahead on the new plan without certainty that it will pass their narrowly divided chamber. Johnson can afford to lose only a handful of votes on the budget.

Further complicating matters, Senate Republicans are presenting a simpler — and less contentious — path to kick-starting Trump’s agenda. That chamber passed a narrow budget plan Friday morning that would tee up new cash for border and military programs, all without the politically painful cuts for swing seats.

That plan, though, has its own opponents in the House, who worry that temporarily forgoing the thorny issue of extending Trump’s tax cuts would risk letting them expire altogether.

And it’s not just battleground-district Republicans who are seeking assurances from Johnson on the looming cuts.

A group of Hispanic Republicans, led by Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas, sent an open letter to Johnson last week warning the party not to slash benefits for Medicaid and food assistance, which they said would directly impact their own voters.

Cutting Medicaid, they wrote, would have “serious consequences,” particularly in Hispanic communities,” which they described as the “future of the Republican party.”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.