The U.S. House worked through the night and continues Thursday morning in an attempt to pass President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” with several Republican holdouts appearing to be on board to approve the measure.
Debate on the measure continues with a final vote expected sometime Thursday.
Republican fiscal hawks including U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, R.-Ky., voted to allow final debate on the package, giving House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., at least a short-term victory.
The multi-trillion dollar megabill implements the bulk of Trump’s tax, energy, border and defense agenda. Johnson barely passed it in the House last week with a promise to fiscal hawks that the Senate would pair any additional tax cuts with dollar-for-dollar spending cuts.
But Senate Republicans largely ignored Johnson’s pleas and passed a swath of controversial changes – including permanently extending the 2017 tax cuts rather than adopting the House’s 10-year extension – that skyrocketed the cost of the bill.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Senate’s version would add at least $3.3 trillion to primary deficits by 2034, a number earlier deemed unacceptable by members of the House Freedom Caucus without corresponding spending cuts.
U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said House Republicans “don’t need to redo the whole bill” but need to “make some modifications,” including returning it to the House’s purportedly deficit-neutral framework and repealing costly Inflation Reduction Act subsidies that the Senate allowed for.
Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., voted against the bill in committee Tuesday but hasn’t yet explicitly pledged his opposition on final passage.
“We have this one chance, this one moment, to curb spending,” Norman said Wednesday. “[W]hat I see right now, I don’t like.”
Johnson told reporters late Wednesday afternoon that he is “hopeful we can proceed tonight and get this done.”
