GOP Leaders Pledge Massive Spending Cuts As House Advances Trump Agenda

The House of Representatives voted largely along party lines Thursday morning to pass a resolution establishing a budget blueprint to enact much of President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda.

Lawmakers voted 216 to 214 with just two House Republicans — Reps. Victoria Spartz of Indiana and Thomas Massie of Kentucky — joining with Democrats to oppose the Trump-backed budget resolution. No House Democrats supported the resolution, which in part unlocked more than $100 billion in immigration enforcement funding, authorized new defense spending and allowed for a permanent extension of the 2017 Trump Tax Cuts.

Congressional Republicans are seeking to pass many of Trump’s first-year legislative priorities through the budget reconciliation process, which allows Senate Republicans to bypass the 60-vote filibuster and pass spending and tax legislation by a simple majority vote.

Both chambers have been racing to send the anticipated legislation to the president’s desk, which Trump has called his “one big, beautiful bill.” Speaker Mike Johnson has floated a deadline of Memorial Day. Failure to extend the expiring tax cuts would result in more than a $4 trillion tax increase on households and businesses in 2026.

Johnson’s ambitious timeline appeared to be in jeopardy as House Republicans were initially at an impasse Wednesday night to approve the Senate-amended budget resolution. Roughly a dozen deficit-focused lawmakers, including members of the House Freedom Caucus, refused to support the budget blueprint without firm commitments that the resolution would lock-in significant spending cuts.

“$4 billion in spending cuts in the Senate budget resolution is less than one day’s growth in the budget deficit,” Republican Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland, the House Freedom Caucus chairman,