The House of Representatives advanced President Donald Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill” largely along party lines early Thursday morning.
Members voted 215-214-1 with Republican Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Warren Davidson of Ohio being the lone GOP lawmakers to vote “no” on the tax and spending package including vast portions of the president’s legislative agenda. Speaker Mike Johnson called the budget reconciliation bill a “historic moment” on the House floor and called on the Senate to take up the bill and pass it quickly.
No House Democrats voted for the president’s landmark bill. House Freedom Caucus chair Andy Harris, a leading fiscal hawk, voted “present.”
The Speaker took a victory lap following the bill’s passage, noting that media skeptics and Democrats consistently dismissed that House Republicans would deliver on the president’s bill by their ambitious deadline of Memorial Day.
“It quite literally is again Morning in America,” Johnson said on the House floor shortly after 6 a.m. Thursday. “After four long years of President Biden’s failures, President Trump’s America first agenda is finally here, and we are advancing that today … it will make all the difference in the daily lives of hard working Americans. The Dallas waitress pulling overtime, the Detroit mom counting bills late at night, the Kentucky coal miner waiting on his second chance. These are the forgotten men and women of our country that we are all called here to serve and the one big, beautiful bill will deliver for those people. It revives our economy. It will deliver historic tax relief. It will make the largest investment in our border security in a generation.”
Congressional Republicans are aiming to get the bill to the president’s desk by July 4. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said GOP lawmakers must act quickly to avoid a scenario where the U.S. government could default on its debt, which could come as soon as mid-July. The massive piece of legislation includes a $4 trillion increase in the debt limit.
The bill’s passage followed eleventh-hour changes to the sprawling package to get the conference’s holdouts on board.
Last-minute reforms to the bill include the accelerated implementation of Medicaid work requirements to Dec. 31, 2026, moving up the phase out of tax breaks for wind, solar and battery storage to 2028 and raising the state and local tax deduction cap to $40,000 from $10,000 for households earning up to $500,000 annually, which primarily benefits individuals living in high-tax blue states.
The budget reconciliation bill also extends the expiring provisions of the president’s 2017 tax cuts and delivers on several Trump campaign promises by including provisions eliminating taxes on tips and overtime pay while enacting a larger tax break available to Americans age 65 or older. The spending package will also devote more than $100 billion in new funding for border security and immigration enforcement and boost defense spending by nearly $150 billion.
House Republicans notably exceeded their target to slash spending by $1.5 trillion over a ten-year period in the budget bill.
A majority of the savings come from reducing federal spending on Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program while phasing out green energy tax credits.
Johnson gave a special shoutout to House Rules Committee chairman Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, dubbing her the “iron lady of the House,” after she presided over a 22-hour long session to advance the bill from the rules panel with just two short breaks.
Republican Study Committee chairman August Pfluger of Texas called the ‘big, beautiful’ bill’s passage “the most consequential conservative victory of our lifetime” in a statement following the vote.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact [email protected].
