Sweeping budget package passes House after weeks of arm-twisting

WASHINGTON — House Republicans passed their “big, beautiful” reconciliation bill early Thursday morning, sending to the Senate a filibuster-proof package that would deliver the major elements of President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda, from tax cuts and border security to lifting the nation’s borrowing limit.

The 215-214 vote capped weeks of grueling negotiations behind the scenes between House leaders and warring factions of the Republican conference. While moderates in high-tax states sought additional tax relief, hardcore conservatives sought deeper cuts to federal spending, particularly on Medicaid, and a faster repeal on clean energy tax credits they dubbed the “green new scam.”

A 42-page manager’s amendment, released just hours before the final vote, gave both factions enough of what they wanted to turn undecided and dissenting lawmakers into supporters of the bill. While more than a dozen Republicans had threatened to vote down the bill in recent weeks, almost all agreed to support the final version of the sweeping package.

“Some good, some bad,” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, one of the ringleaders among rebellious conservatives, said of the manager’s amendment before the vote. “We got some good cuts, but it just still blows a lot of deficits in the first few years.”

Roy helped secure a last-minute fix that would provide $12 billion to reimburse states like his for border security costs, even as he was unsuccessful in cutting funds to states that expanded Medicaid and currently receive a 90 percent federal match for covering adults without disabilities. He ultimately voted for the measure.

House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris, R-Md., had been leading opposition to the previous draft all day Wednesday, but ultimately was swayed by some in-person face time with Trump at the White House, the manager’s amendment and some unspecified promises of further executive action to rein in costs.

“I mean, now it might just be what the executive can do to, again, move the ball down the court, especially on making sure that we don’t have further Medicaid expansion that is honestly bankrupting my country,” Harris said before the vote. He ended up voting “present.”

No Democrats supported the measure, while two Republicans opposed it: Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Warren Davidson of Ohio.

Rep. Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., who didn’t like last-minute changes in the manager’s amendment that would speed up the expiration of tax incentives for clean energy projects, sat out the vote.

Big win for Trump, Johnson

Spanning more than 1,000 pages, the legislation would make permanent the 2017 tax cuts, provide new tax breaks such as exempting tips from taxes, slash federal spending by at least $1.5 trillion over 10 years, pump an extra $300 billion into defense and border security, and raise the nation’s $36.1 trillion borrowing limit by at least $4 trillion.

The vote marked the biggest political victory yet for Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who has struggled to unite his razor-thin GOP majority since winning the speaker’s gavel in 2023. A defeat would have been seen as a major blow to his leadership after promising for weeks to pass the bill through the House before Memorial Day.

“Sometimes it’s good to be underestimated,” Johnson told his colleagues before the final vote. “What we are achieving here today is nothing short of historic.”

The vote was also a victory for Trump, who expended some political capital through public and private cajoling — and a visit to the Capitol Tuesday — to rally Republicans around what could be the most important legislation of his second term.

So much of his agenda was wrapped up in what he called his “one big, beautiful bill”: new and extended tax cuts, a more robust military, tougher border security measures and a downsizing of government through major spending cuts.

But for all the progress, the fate of the bill is hardly secure. The measure now goes to the Senate, where Republicans have already made clear they intend to give it a rewrite. Senate GOP tax writers have suggested they are eyeing more generous tax breaks, while party moderates in that chamber have expressed concern about the size of Medicaid cuts.

Campaign fodder for Democrats

Democrats in both chambers, meanwhile, excoriated the bill as a fiscal boondoggle that would explode the debt and reward billionaires with more tax breaks while cutting off health insurance to millions of needy Americans.

They forced a 20-hour session debating the bill and amendments in the House Rules Committee, in a meeting that started at 1 a.m. Wednesday. Upon moving to the floor shortly thereafter, Democrats forced procedural votes using maneuvers allowed under federal budget law.

Rules Committee ranking member Jim McGovern, D-Mass., joked that the GOP wanted to debate the bill during “prime time in Guam” so voters wouldn’t watch.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office offered a preliminary estimate that the measure would add about $2.3 trillion to deficits over 10 years, though it was incomplete and didn’t account for added interest payments on that extra debt.

“They’re patching it together in an effort to get through tonight. There’s nothing more to it than that. It’s chicanery. This has never added up,” said Massachusetts Rep. Richard E. Neal, the top Democrat on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. “It’s an abomination.”

Republicans dismissed the Democratic attacks as fear-mongering, saying they only sought to cut “fraud, waste and abuse” in Medicaid, not benefits to those in need. Without their bill, they argued, taxpayers would be hit with what they called the largest tax increase in history, when tax rates return to the levels that existed before Trump’s 2017 tax overhaul.

House Budget Chairman Jodey C. Arrington, R-Texas, also pushed back on the CBO deficit analysis Wednesday, saying it did not account for all the robust economic growth he said would be triggered by the tax cuts, energy production and other measures in the bill. Instead of a $2.3 trillion deficit hole, Arrington said, the bill would actually reduce the shortfall.

“While I love many things in the bill, promising someone else will cut spending in the future does not cut spending,” Davidson said in a statement before the vote. “Consequently, I cannot support this big deficit plan. NO.”

Deficit concerns clearly rippled through financial markets on Wednesday, exacerbating GOP whip issues among the rank and file.

Treasury bond yields rose as investors dumped their holdings in the morning after overnight news of a pricey expansion of state and local tax deductions in the emerging deal. And then an afternoon auction of 20-year Treasury debt saw weak demand, sparking a new round of selling. The higher yield on typically ultra-safe government bonds caused stock prices to decline sharply as investors sold riskier assets.

“We’re not rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic tonight. We’re putting coal in the boiler and setting a course for the iceberg,” Massie said, pointing to the additional debt the bill would rack up. “If something is beautiful, you don’t do it after midnight.”

GOP moderates from high-tax states, particularly New York, had threatened for weeks to oppose the bill if it did not raise the cap on the state and local tax deduction, known as SALT, to a higher level than the bill’s original $30,000. The new manager’s amendment sweetened the pot by raising it to $40,000 for those with annual incomes up to $500,000, with annual 1 percent increases through 2033.

Members of the hard-line Freedom Caucus, meanwhile, said they had felt betrayed by provisions that delayed imposing work requirements on Medicaid recipients and repealing clean energy tax credits created by the Democratic health and climate law from 2022. Both of those measures were accelerated through the manager’s amendment.

The overall bill would seek to cut federal spending by about $1.7 trillion over 10 years, particularly through curbs on Medicaid and food stamps, while offering about $4 trillion in new and extended tax cuts. Republican backers say that robust economic growth would provide about $2.5 trillion in new revenue to avoid spiking the deficit.

In another provision of prime importance to Trump, the bill would raise the debt ceiling by at least $4 trillion — a level intended to secure the government’s borrowing capacity through next year’s midterm elections. Trump has sought to raise the limit high enough to avoid having to repeat the task before his term ends.

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Peter Cohn contributed to this report.