Against all odds, U.S. House Republicans finally united around the Senate-revised “big, beautiful bill” and passed it in a 218-214 vote Thursday afternoon, sending the multitrillion-dollar budget reconciliation package to the president’s desk.
The bill’s passage marks yet another herculean feat by House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who not only persuaded – with President Donald Trump’s help – the most recalcitrant GOP holdouts to vote for the bill as is, but also passed it by a self-imposed July 4 deadline.
The $3.3 trillion megabill, formerly titled the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, hikes the debt ceiling by $5 trillion and implements the bulk of Trump’s tax, energy, border and defense agenda.
When Johnson barely passed the first version in the House last week, he promised fiscal hawks that the Senate would pair any additional tax cuts with dollar-for-dollar spending cuts. The House version extended most of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act for the next 10 years while finding $1.7 trillion in offsets.
But Senate Republican leaders, itching to permanently extend the boosted maximum standard deduction and reduced cross-bracket tax rates, adopted a controversial accounting method to theoretically zero out the cost of codifying Trump’s tax policies.
That move and other changes, reported on by The Center Square, alienated multiple House Republicans and upset multiple delicate political compromises House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., had made his constituents earlier.
Despite threats by many Republicans in the House to oppose the final bill when it returned to their chamber, Johnson decided to muscle the bill through the House Rules Committee and onto the floor Wednesday, where he and other GOP congressional leaders spent all night pushing hardliners to fold.
“I do so deeply desire to have just normal Congress, but it doesn’t happen anymore,” Johnson told reporters around 1:30 a.m. Thursday. “I don’t want to make history, but we’re forced into these situations.”
Ultimately, Johnson’s gamble paid off, garnering praise from his colleagues and condemnation from Democrats.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., called the bill a “disgusting abomination” that will “have devastating consequences for everyday Americans” during his eight-hour long speech leading up to the final vote.
Among other things, the bill codifies the $15,000 maximum standard deduction, the 20% Qualified Business Income deduction, and the doubled child tax credit of $2,000, though both parents now need a Social Security number to claim it.
Key business tax credits would become permanent as well – full reimbursement for capital investments, an expanded deduction for corporation’s interest on debt, and streamlined deductions for companies’ research costs.
The bill also implements some temporary tax provisions that Trump promised during his campaign, such as creating a $6,000 deduction for eligible seniors and nixing taxes on tips and overtime. The Senate version requires seniors to have a Social Security number to claim the deduction, as well as caps deductions for tips at $25,000 and deductions for overtime at $12,500 for single filers.
To partially offset the bill’s cost and advance Trump’s goal to cut waste and fraud, the legislation would require able-bodied adults without dependents to fulfill work-related requirements to receive welfare benefits and cap the Medicaid provider tax at 3.5% – down from the current 6% rate – by 2030.
It also cracks down on states with high SNAP payment error rates and hikes states’ share of the program’s administrative cost by 2027.
Costly solar and wind subsidies from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act will have slightly faster phaseouts than originally intended, saving about $517 billion over the next 10 years. The savings are less than fiscal hawks wanted, but a substantial enough spending decrease to eventually get them on board.
“The One, Big, Beautiful Bill is for the people who don’t have lobbyists in this town,” House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., told lawmakers early Thursday morning. “It’s about restoring sanity in a town that’s lost it, cutting waste and reining in reckless spending. It demands that if you’re able to work, you should. It stops asking working families to foot the bill for Washington’s bad decisions.”
The White House has scheduled a bill signing ceremony Friday.
