WASHINGTON — House Republicans propelled President Donald Trump’s big trillion-dollar tax breaks and spending cuts bill to final passage Thursday in Congress, overcoming multiple setbacks to approve his signature second-term policy package before a Fourth of July deadline.
The tight roll call, 218-214, came at a potentially high political cost, with two Republicans joining all Democrats opposed. GOP leaders worked overnight and the president himself leaned on a handful of skeptics to drop their opposition and send the bill to him to sign into law. Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York delayed voting for more than eight hours by seizing control of the floor with a record-breaking speech against the bill.
“You get tired of winning yet?” said House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., invoking Trump as he called the vote.
“With one big beautiful bill we are going to make this country stronger, safer and more prosperous than ever before,” he said. Republicans celebrated with a rendition of the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.,” a song the president often plays at his rallies, during a ceremony afterward.
The outcome delivers a milestone for the president, by his Friday goal, and for his party. It was a long-shot effort to compile a lengthy list of GOP priorities into what they called his “one big beautiful bill,” an 800-plus page measure. With Democrats unified in opposition, the bill will become a defining measure of Trump’s return to the White House, aided by Republican control of Congress.
Alabama’s Angle
The state’s Republican U.S. House members immediately applauded the passage of the megabill Thursday afternoon. All of them voted to support the legislation.
“The One Big Beautiful Bill delivers the America First agenda in a fiscally responsible way,” Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Haleyville, said in a statement.
He said the social safety net reforms would “ensure that Medicaid remains focused on its core mission and continues to serve those who truly need it most.”
Rep. Gary Palmer, R-Birmingham, championed the tax cuts and new tax breaks as his reasons for voting in support of the budget bill.
“I voted for this bill to prevent families from facing a $4 trillion tax hike,” Palmer said in a statement. “This bill extends President Trump’s 2017 tax cuts that provided economic relief to American families.”
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Saks, praised the bill inclusion of $150 billion to modernize the military, support the defense industrial base, and allocate money to the Golden Dome.
“We can’t afford to wait any longer to begin rebuilding our military capacity, launching the future of American defense, and supercharging American manufacturing,” he said in a statement.
Huntsville’s space operations at the Marshall Space Flight Center will also see benefits from the bill, Rep. Dale Strong, R-Huntsville, said.
“From our space, defense, and manufacturing sectors to our working families, farmers, and small business owners — all of North Alabama will benefit from President Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill,” he said in a statement.
Republican Rep. Barry Moore of Enterprise also praised the passage of the bill, saying he was proud to support it.
“By codifying President Trump’s agenda of cutting taxes and wasteful spending to put more money back in the hands of families and small businesses, fully funding the border wall, and strengthening our national security through military modernization, this legislation puts American families first,” Moore said in a statement.
The state’s Democratic House members, Reps. Terrri Sewell, D-Birmingham, and Shomari Figures, D-Mobile, struck a much more somber tone after voting against the package Thursday.
“My heart aches for the millions of Americans who will be hit hardest by this cruel and heartless bill—the single mom at risk of losing her child’s Medicaid coverage, the grandmother who may no longer qualify for SNAP, the families in rural Alabama whose nearest hospital may soon be forced to shut its doors,” Sewell said in a statement.
Sewell and Figures sat behind Jeffries on the House floor at different points on Thursday as he delivered his record-breaking speech to oppose the social safety net cuts in the bill.
“If we are going to spend more money, it should be to help Americans across the country keep a roof over their heads, clothes on their backs, and food on their tables,” Figures said in a statement. “It should be to give tax breaks to teachers and school personnel, nurses, social workers, law enforcement, firefighters, first responders, and everyday people.”
Alabama Arise called the budget bill a “cruel” plan to strip Alabamians of food assistance and health coverage.
“It’s wrong to hurt people who are struggling to help people who are already far ahead,” Robyn Hyden, executive director, said in a statement. “But Congress just passed legislation that will do exactly that.”
Tax breaks and safety net cuts
At its core, the package’s priority is $4.5 trillion in tax breaks enacted in 2017 during Trump’s first term that would expire if Congress failed to act, along with new ones. This includes allowing workers to deduct tips and overtime pay, and a $6,000 deduction for most older adults earning less than $75,000 a year.
There’s also a hefty investment, some $350 billion, in national security and Trump’s deportation agenda and to help develop the “Golden Dome” defensive system over the U.S.
To help offset the lost tax revenue, the package includes $1.2 trillion in cutbacks to the Medicaid health care and food stamps, largely by imposing new work requirements, including for some parents and older people, and a major rollback of green energy tax credits.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the package will add $3.3 trillion to the deficit over the decade and 11.8 million more people will go without health coverage.
“This was a generational opportunity to deliver the most comprehensive and consequential set of conservative reforms in modern history, and that’s exactly what we’re doing,” said Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, the House Budget Committee chairman.
Democrats united against the big ‘ugly bill’
Democrats unified against the bill as a tax giveaway to the rich paid for on the backs of the working class and most vulnerable in society, what they called “trickle down cruelty.”
Jeffries began the speech at 4:53 a.m. EDT and finished at 1:37 p.m. EDT, 8 hours, 44 minutes later, a record, as he argued against what he called Trump’s “big ugly bill.”
“We’re better than this,” said Jeffries, who used a leader’s prerogative for unlimited debate, and read letter after letter from Americans writing about their reliance on the health care programs.
“I never thought that I’d be on the House floor saying that this is a crime scene,” Jeffries said. “It’s a crime scene, going after the health, and the safety, and the well-being of the American people.”
And as Democrats, he said, “We want no part of it.”
Tensions ran high. As fellow Democrats chanted Jeffries’ name, a top Republican, Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, called his speech “a bunch of hogwash.”
Hauling the package through the Congress has been difficult from the start. Republicans have struggled mightily with the bill nearly every step of the way, quarreling in the House and Senate, and often succeeding only by the narrowest of margins: just one vote.
The Senate passed the package days earlier with Vice President JD Vance breaking the tie vote. The slim majority in the House left Republicans little room for defections.
Once Johnson gaveled the tally, Republicans cheered “USA!” and flashed Trump-style thumbs-up to the cameras.
Political costs of saying no
Despite their discomfort with various aspects of the sprawling package, in some ways it became too big to fail — in part because Republicans found it difficult to buck Trump.
As Wednesday’s stalled floor action dragged overnight, Trump railed against the delays.
“What are the Republicans waiting for???” the president said in a midnight post.
Johnson relied heavily on White House Cabinet secretaries, lawyers and others to satisfy skeptical GOP holdouts. Moderate Republicans worried about the severity of cuts while conservatives pressed for steeper reductions. Lawmakers said they were being told the administration could provide executive actions, projects or other provisions in their districts back home.
The alternative was clear. Republicans who staked out opposition to the bill, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, were being warned by Trump’s well-funded political operation. Tillis soon after announced he would not seek reelection.
Massie voted against it, as did Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, who was concerned about cuts to Medicaid.
Rollback of past presidential agendas
In many ways, the package is a repudiation of the agendas of the last two Democratic presidents, a chiseling away at the Medicaid expansion from Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, and a pullback of Joe Biden’s climate change strategies in the Inflation Reduction Act.
Democrats have described the bill in dire terms, warning that cuts to Medicaid, which some 80 million Americans rely on, would result in lives lost. Food stamps that help feed more than 40 million people would “rip food from the mouths of hungry children, hungry veterans and hungry seniors,” Jeffries said.
Republicans say the tax breaks will prevent a tax hike on households and grow the economy. They maintain they are trying to rightsize the safety net programs for the population they were initially designed to serve, mainly pregnant women, the disabled and children, and root out what they describe as waste, fraud and abuse.
The Tax Policy Center, which provides nonpartisan analysis of tax and budget policy, projected the bill would result next year in a $150 tax break for the lowest quintile of Americans, a $1,750 tax cut for the middle quintile and a $10,950 tax cut for the top quintile. That’s compared with what they would face if the 2017 tax cuts expired.
Alabama Daily News’ Alex Angle contributed to this report. Associated Press writers Kevin Freking, Joey Cappelletti and Matt Brown contributed to this report.