House GOP passes big Trump tax break bill
Republican holdouts drop opposition during all-night session; bill now moves to Senate
In this image from video with the final vote total, the House of Representatives passed President Donald Trump's big bill of tax breaks and program cuts after an all-night session on Thursday at the U.S. Capitol in Washington. The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — House Republicans stayed up all night to pass their multitrillion-dollar tax breaks package, with Speaker Mike Johnson defying the skeptics and unifying his ranks to muscle President Donald Trump’s priority bill to approval Thursday.
With last-minute concessions and stark warnings from Trump, the Republican holdouts largely dropped their opposition to salvage the “One Big Beautiful Bill” that’s central to the GOP agenda. The House launched debate before midnight and by dawn the vote was called, 215-214, with Democrats staunchly opposed. It next goes to the Senate, with long negotiations ahead.
“To put it simply, this bill gets Americans back to winning again,” said Johnson, R-La.
The outcome caps an intense time on Capitol Hill, with days of private negotiations and public committee hearings, many happening back-to-back, around-the-clock. Republicans insisted their sprawling 1,000-page-plus package was what voters sent them to Congress — and Trump to the White House — to accomplish. They believe it will be “rocket fuel,” as one put it during debate, for the uneasy U.S. economy.
Trump himself demanded action, visiting House Republicans at Tuesday’s conference meeting and hosting GOP leaders and the holdouts for a lengthy session Wednesday at the White House. Before the vote, the administration warned in a pointed statement that failure “would be the ultimate betrayal.”
After the legislation’s passage, Trump posted on social media: “Thank you to every Republican who voted YES on this Historic Bill! Now, it’s time for our friends in the United States Senate to get to work.”
The Senate hopes to wrap up its version by the Fourth of July holiday.
Central to the package is the GOP’s commitment to extending some $4.5 trillion in tax breaks they engineered during Trump’s first term in 2017, while temporarily adding new ones he campaigned on during his 2024 campaign, including no taxes on tips, overtime pay, car loan interest and others.
To make up for some of the lost tax revenue, the Republicans focused on changes to Medicaid and the food stamps program, largely by imposing work requirements on many of those receiving benefits. There’s also a massive rollback of green energy tax breaks from the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act.
Additionally, the package tacks on $350 billion in new spending, with about $150 billion going to the Pentagon, including for the president’s new ” Golden Dome” defense shield, and the rest for Trump’s mass deportation and border security agenda.
All told, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates 8.6 million fewer people would have health care coverage and
3 million less people a month would have SNAP food stamps benefits with the proposed changes.
The CBO said the tax provisions would increase federal deficits by $3.8 trillion over the decade, while the changes to Medicaid, food stamps and other services would tally $1 trillion in reduced spending. The lowest-income households in the U.S. would see their resources drop, while the highest ones would see a boost, it said.
House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York read letters from Americans describing the way the program cuts would hurt them. “This is one big ugly bill,” he said.
In “the dark of night they want to pass this GOP tax scam,” said Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif.
Other Democrats called it a “big, bad bill” or a “big, broken promise.”




