House Republicans muscle passage of Big Beautiful Bill, soon to be law

House Republicans propelled President Donald Trump’s big multitrillion-dollar tax breaks and spending cuts bill to final passage Thursday in Congress, overcoming multiple setbacks to approve his signature second-term policy package before a Fourth of July deadline.

The tight roll call, 218-214, came 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. Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York delayed voting by seizing control of the floor with an 8-hour speech against the bill.

Trump celebrated his political victory in Iowa, where he attended the kickoff for a year of events marking the country’s upcoming 250th anniversary.

Trump said he plans to sign the legislation on Friday at the White House.

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,” at nearly 900 pages. The bill will become a defining measure of Trump’s return to the White House, aided by Republican control of Congress.

The package is a repudiation of the agendas of the last two Democratic presidents, chiseling away at the Medicaid expansion from Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, and a pullback of Joe Biden’s climate change strategies in the Inflation Reduction Act.

At its core, the package’s priority is $4.5 trillion in tax breaks enacted in 2017 during Trump’s first term that would expire if Congress failed to act, along with new breaks. 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 lost tax revenue, the package includes $1.2 trillion in cutbacks to the Medicaid health care and food stamps, including new work requirements, and a major rollback of green energy tax credits.

Republicans have struggled mightily with the bill nearly every step of the way, quarreling in the House and Senate, and often succeeding only by the narrowest of margins: just one vote.

The Senate passed the package days earlier with Vice President JD Vance breaking the tie vote. 

Once Johnson gaveled the tally, Republicans cheered “USA!” and flashed Trump-style thumbs-up to the cameras.


(AP Photo Julia Demaree Nikhinson)