Representative Eric Burlison, a two-term congressman from Missouri’s Ozarks, is unequivocal about his support for President Trump.
“I love the president,” he said this week as he walked through the Capitol.
But Mr. Burlison is also one of about a dozen hard-line conservative Republicans who have said they cannot back their party’s budget blueprint to unlock Mr. Trump’s spending and tax cuts, even as the president is imploring them to support it in a vote that could come as early as Wednesday.
“I can’t live with myself if I go back home and I added more debt and deficits without any kind of correction whatsoever,” said Mr. Burlison, a financial analyst who campaigned on bringing down the debt. “I couldn’t live with myself.”
A former state lawmaker, he successfully pushed for the Missouri Legislature to seek an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to require a balanced budget.
The unusual burst of resistance that emerged on Capitol Hill came from lawmakers who typically count themselves among Mr. Trump’s closest allies. G.O.P. lawmakers have long shown Mr. Trump extraordinary deference, and at the outset of his second term have caved to him on critical votes after getting a personal call or finding themselves on the receiving end of a blistering social media post.
They still may relent. After Mr. Trump met with a group of House Republicans on Tuesday, a handful of holdouts dropped their opposition to the resolution. But their insistence that they would not support a measure without the promise of deeper spending cuts underscored the challenge for G.O.P. leaders toiling to manage a group in their ranks who view reducing the debt as their north star.
