U.S. House Republicans propelled President Donald Trump’s $4.5-trillion US tax breaks and spending cuts bill to final congressional passage on Thursday, overcoming multiple setbacks to approve his policy package before a Fourth of July deadline.
The tight roll call, 218-214, came at a potentially high political cost, with two Republicans joining all Democrats opposed. GOP leaders worked overnight and the president himself leaned on a handful of skeptics to drop their opposition and send the bill to him to sign into law.
Democratic leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries delayed voting by holding the floor for more than eight hours with a record-breaking speech against the bill.
U.S. House Speaker and Republican Rep. Mike Johnson, meanwhile, said, “With one big, beautiful bill we are going to make this country stronger, safer and more prosperous than ever before.”
The bill includes a massive spending increase for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and a decrease in funding for Medicaid.
The outcome delivers a milestone for the president and his party. It was a long-shot effort to compile a lengthy list of GOP priorities into what they called his “one big, beautiful bill,” an 800-plus-page measure.
With Democrats unified in opposition, the bill will become a defining measure of Trump’s return to the White House, aided by Republican control of Congress.
Includes money to help develop ‘Golden Dome’
At its core, the package’s priority is $4.5 trillion US in tax breaks enacted in 2017, during Trump’s first term, that would expire if Congress failed to act, along with new ones. This includes allowing workers to deduct tips and overtime pay, and a $6,000 deduction for most older adults earning less than $75,000 a year.
There’s also a hefty investment, some $350 billion, in national security and Trump’s deportation agenda and to help develop the “Golden Dome” defensive system over the U.S.
To help offset the lost tax revenue, the package includes $1.2 trillion in cutbacks to health care and food stamps, largely by imposing new work requirements, including for some parents and older people, and a major rollback of green energy tax credits.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the package will add $3.3 trillion to the deficit over the decade and 11.8 million more people will go without health coverage.
‘Trickle-down cruelty’
Democrats unified against the bill as a tax giveaway to the rich paid for on the backs of the working class and the most vulnerable in society, what they called “trickle-down cruelty.” Tensions ran high in the chamber.
Rep. Jeffries began his speech at 4:53 a.m. ET and finished at 1:37 p.m. — eight hours and 44 minutes later, a record — as he argued against what he called Trump’s “big, ugly bill.”
“We’re better than this,” Jeffries said, who used a leader’s prerogative for unlimited debate and read letter after letter from Americans writing about their reliance on the health-care programs.
“It’s a crime scene, going after the health and the safety and the well-being of the American people.”
Hauling the package through the Congress has been difficult from the start. Republicans have struggled mightily with the bill nearly every step of the way, quarrelling in the House and Senate and often succeeding only by the narrowest of margins: just one vote.
The U.S. Senate passed the package days earlier with U.S. Vice-President J.D. Vance breaking the tie. The slim majority in the House left Republicans little room for defections.
Pressure from Trump
Despite their discomfort with various aspects of the sprawling package, in some ways it became too big to fail — in part because Republicans found it difficult to buck Trump.
As Wednesday’s stalled floor action dragged overnight, Trump railed against the delays. “What are the Republicans waiting for???” the president said in a midnight post on Truth Social. “What are you trying to prove???”
Rep. Johnson relied heavily on White House Cabinet secretaries, lawyers and others to satisfy skeptical GOP holdouts. Moderate Republicans worried about the severity of cuts while conservatives pressed for steeper reductions. Lawmakers said they were being told the administration could provide executive actions, projects or other provisions in their districts back home.
The alternative was clear. Republicans who staked out opposition to the bill, including Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Sen. Thom Tillis, were being warned by Trump’s well-funded political operation. Tillis soon after announced he would not seek re-election.