Republicans in the House of Representatives won passage on Thursday of a major bill that would enact Donald Trump’s tax and spending priorities while adding trillions of dollars to the US debt and potentially preventing millions of Americans from accessing federal safety net benefits.
The One Big Beautiful Bill act was approved in the early morning hours mostly along party lines by the slim Republican majority, with 215 votes in favor and 214 against. Its passage ended weeks of negotiations that drew into question the GOP’s ability to find agreement on Trump’s top legislative priority in a chamber they control by just three seats.
“It’s finally morning in America again,” the House speaker, Mike Johnson, said after the bill’s passage. “The media and the Democrats have consistently dismissed any possibility the House Republicans could get this done. They did not believe that we could succeed in our mission to enact president Trump’s ‘America first’ agenda. But this is a big one, and once again, they have been proven wrong.”
Trump cheered the vote and encouraged the Senate to pass the measure quickly. “This is arguably the most significant piece of Legislation that will ever be signed in the History of our Country!” he wrote on Truth Social. “Now, it’s time for our friends in the United States Senate to get to work, and send this Bill to my desk AS SOON AS POSSIBLE! There is no time to waste.”
The bill will make good on several of Trump’s campaign promises, including extending tax cuts for individuals and corporations, and sunsetting clean energy incentives enacted under Joe Biden. It also relieves taxes on tips, overtime and car loan interest, offers $1,000 to parents who open “Trump accounts” for their children and expands a deduction for older taxpayers – though only for as long as Trump remains in office.
The bill additionally pays for construction of a wall along the border with Mexico, and new staff and facilities for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.
To offset its costs, the GOP has approved funding cuts and new work requirements for Medicaid, which provides healthcare for poor and disabled Americans, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap). Analysts fear these changes will bar millions from these benefits.
Even with the cuts, the measure is expected to add about $2.3tn to the deficit, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. Its passage in the House comes less than a week after credit ratings agency Moody’s stripped the US of its top-notch triple-A rating and warned of its large national debt.
House Democratic leaders have decried the bill as a “tax scam” that “is deeply unpopular, which is why Republicans made every effort to advance it during the dead of night”.
“This fight is just beginning, and House Democrats will continue to use every tool at our disposal to ensure that the GOP Tax Scam is buried deep in the ground, never to rise again,” the minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries; the whip, Katherine Clark; and the caucus chair, Pete Aguilar, said.
The bill also drew rare condemnation from Barack Obama. “Right now, Republicans in Congress are trying to push through a bill that would put millions of Americans at risk of losing their healthcare. They want to cut federal funding for Medicaid, take away tax credits that help more people afford coverage and raise costs for working-class families,” the former president said. He encouraged people to contact their senators to oppose the measure.
Democratic lawmakers’ options are limited. The party is in the minority in both chambers, and Republicans are following the budget reconciliation procedure to prevent it from facing a filibuster in the Senate.
The biggest obstacle the bill faces is disputes among Republicans themselves. In the days leading up to the vote, Johnson had to reach agreements with lawmakers representing Democratic-led states who demanded a bigger deduction for state and local taxes (Salt). He also had to woo moderates wary of cutting too deeply into safety net programs and rightwing lawmakers demanding more cost savings.
The speaker appears to have bridged those divides, aided by a visit to the Capitol from Trump on Tuesday. Moderates backed down after some cuts were nixed, while lawmakers who held out over Salt won an enlarged tax break. Johnson also managed to corral most fiscal conservatives, but acknowledged: “There was a few moments over the last week when it looked like the thing might fall apart.”
Kentucky’s Thomas Massie and Ohio’s Warren Davidson were the sole Republican no votes the bill, and both cited its impact on the deficit.
“This bill is a debt bomb ticking,” Massie said as the bill was debated. “We’re not rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic tonight. We’re putting coal in the boiler and setting a course for the iceberg.”
The legislation now heads to the Senate, where Republicans say they would like to have it on Trump’s desk by 4 July, the Independence Day holiday.
“We’re going to fight this tooth and nail,” the Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, said, adding he expected the tax and Medicaid cuts would be controversial among the chamber’s Republicans.
“Based on what the House has passed, our chances of taking back the Senate have just increased, because while billionaire Republicans claim that their tax scam will lift America across the board, the American people see it’s just plain false,” Schumer said.