House narrowly passes GOP’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ for Trump’s agenda
House Republicans narrowly approved framework Tuesday for President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda, setting off a sprint with the Senate to reshape the tax code, implement strict new immigration policy, drill for new energy resources and spend billions on national defense.
The bill, which passed 217 to 215, would allow Congress’s GOP majorities to bypass a Democratic Senate filibuster through what’s known as the budget reconciliation process, but Republicans still face significant challenges before they can pass what Trump has taken to calling his “big, beautiful bill.” The House and Senate must agree on competing approaches, even though both chambers have now passed their own versions of the legislation.
Some tensions within the GOP were on display Tuesday. Conservative hard-liners and moderates alike threatened to buck Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and sink the budget. Moderates fear its $2 trillion in spending cuts will force the GOP to slash Medicaid benefits, a political third rail in toss-up districts. But hard-liners say Republicans’ budget cuts don’t go far enough.
Democrats were united against the bill and attempted to thwart a GOP head-fake over it.
Republicans acted as if they planned to postpone the vote after a lengthy negotiation with a quartet of holdouts. As Democrats left the chamber for the night, the GOP called up the measure again, forcing the minority to rush back. Two Democratic members, Reps. Kevin Mullin (California) and Brittany Pettersen (Colorado), whom the GOP did not expect to be in attendance, emerged from hideouts to cast crucial votes.
“We’re going to do this methodically, we’re going to do it in a responsible manner, and we’re going to achieve these goals,” Johnson told reporters Tuesday morning.
The legislation would extend tax cuts otherwise set to expire, along with major spending cuts elsewhere. Passage means the House and Senate can now negotiate over how to move forward.
Republicans passed their first test of the day earlier in the afternoon, banding together to approve a procedural step to advance the bill to the House floor for a final vote. But the House GOP has openly feuded over spending issues for nearly two years.
“With any big vote, this is what happens,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said. “You’re talking to members all the way up until the mission closes.”
Trump himself worked the phones, too, Johnson said.
“The president has talked to a number of members. He’s made his intentions well-known. He wants them to vote for this and move along,” the speaker said after huddling with undecided lawmakers on the House floor.
The GOP-controlled Senate is planning a two-step approach to passing Trump’s agenda with a pair of reconciliation bills, an idea Johnson sees as a backup plan. The huge, Trump-endorsed legislative package is full of contradicting demands that have left some lawmakers uncertain how to proceed.
House leaders, both publicly and privately, have been telegraphing to lawmakers that no policy prescriptions are included in the budget resolution. But many Republicans, particularly those representing swing districts where voters rely heavily on social safety net programs, were hesitant to support the budget because of its strict instructions to cut federal spending that could affect those areas.
“All these conversations are helping us get to a place where we want to be,” said Rep. Juan Ciscomani (Arizona), a swing-district Republican whose area relies heavily on Medicaid. “Obviously we’re supportive of what the president wants and what we as a conference ran on, and we won on, to make sure that we’re fiscally responsible, we do the appropriate things, root out the waste, the abuse and the fraud, in many cases, while protecting the most vulnerable.”
The budget resolution issues instructions to committees to come up with new spending or cuts, but the actual policies are up to the committees themselves. Worries about what the committees could decide to cut have made many Republicans hesitant to support the current proposal.
Three Miami-area Republicans huddled with Johnson after Tuesday’s procedural vote to demand they reinstate funding to protect Venezuelan migrants who had temporary protected status from deportation, according to two people familiar with the negotiations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private talks. A significant constituency in South Florida benefited from that status. The Trump administration has already moved to end that status, so if Johnson were to make that promise, it would set up a clash with the White House.
Major portions of Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act expire at the end of 2025, meaning most taxpayers will see a rate hike if Congress does not act. Extending those provisions could add roughly $5 trillion to the national debt over 10 years, according to congressional bookkeepers. And Trump has ordered Republicans to include new, expensive tax policies in the bill, too, including ending taxes on tips, Social Security benefits and overtime wages, and raising the cap on state and local tax deductions.
Together, the package could add as much as $11.25 trillion over 10 years to the United States’ existing $36.2 trillion in debt, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
To pay down the cost, Republican committee leaders have been on the hunt for spending cuts. The House Energy and Commerce Committee, which controls the purse strings for Medicare and Medicaid, for instance, was issued instructions to cut at least $880 billion from the national debt over 10 years — an amount that can virtually only be accomplished with major overhauls, or benefit cuts, to public health insurance programs.
But Trump has complicated the GOP’s task. The president said in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity that Republicans will not cut benefits to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — together, roughly $3.2 trillion of the country’s $6.75 trillion of total spending in the 2024 fiscal year. The GOP has also sworn off cutting the defense budget — $825 billion in fiscal 2024 — and its reconciliation plan would increase defense spending by $100 billion over 10 years.
With annual debt service payments factored in, there isn’t enough spending left over to satisfy hard-liners’ craving for spending cuts.
“This budget risks even greater deficits without proven follow-through — as it is hardly aggressive enough,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a leading budget hawk, wrote on social media. He added that he was “open to supporting” Johnson’s bill to give the GOP an opening to search for more ways to slash spending.
Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.), formerly a Democrat, said he called Trump on Monday to tell the president to reinforce his pledge not to cut Medicaid.
“Don’t touch seniors’ Medicare, and don’t cut Medicaid, because it isn’t just for lazy welfare people. It’s for real people,” Van Drew said late Monday. “That’s the new Republican Party, a populist party, a party of working people, a party of blue-collar people.”
In the Senate, Republicans appeared to be rooting on their House colleagues — while holding a net beneath them.
“I am hopeful and optimistic, and we’ll see if they can pull it off,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said. “The margins are narrow, and there are a lot of moving parts to all of this stuff. All I know is, we want them to succeed.”
—
Liz Goodwin, Mariana Alfaro, Meryl Kornfield and Hannah Knowles contributed.