Here are the sticking points as House holdouts stall Trump’s budget bill

Donald Trump’s massive tax and spending budget bill has returned to the US House of Representatives – as the clock ticks down to the president’s 4 July deadline for lawmakers to present him with a final version that can be signed into law.

The bill narrowly cleared the Senate, or upper chamber of Congress, on Tuesday. Vice-President JD Vance cast a tie-breaking vote after more than 24 hours of debate and resistance from some Republican senators.

It has so far proven equally tricky for Trump’s allies to pass the bill through the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson’s hopes of holding a vote on Wednesday appear to be thinning out.

Members of Congress had emptied from the House floor by the afternoon, after it became clear there weren’t even enough votes for the bill to pass the rule that allows the legislation to be brought to the floor, typically an easy procedural task.

The House, or lower chamber, approved an earlier version of the bill in May with a margin of just one vote, and this bill, with new amendments that have frustrated some Republicans, must now be reconciled with the Senate version.

Both chambers are controlled by Trump’s Republicans, but within the party several factions are fighting over key policies in the lengthy legislation.

The president has been very involved in attempting to persuade the holdouts and held several meetings at the White House on Wednesday in hopes of winning them over.

Ralph Norman, a House Republican from South Carolina, attended one of the meetings but wasn’t persuaded.

“There won’t be any vote until we can satisfy everybody,” he said, adding he believes there are about 25 other Republicans who are currently opposed to it. The chamber can only lose about three Republicans to pass the measure.

“I got problems with this bill,” he said. “I got trouble with all of it.”

Sticking points include the question of how much the bill will add to the US national deficit, and how deeply it will cut healthcare and other social programmes.

During previous signs of rebellion against Trump at Congress, Republican lawmakers have ultimately fallen in line.

What is at stake this time is the defining piece of legislation for Trump’s second term. Here are the factions standing in its way.