WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives on Thursday morning narrowly passed a massive domestic policy package, a major victory for President Donald Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., after weeks of heated negotiations within the GOP.
The multitrillion-dollar tax-cut and spending measure now heads to the Senate, where Republicans have vowed to change it.
Following hours of overnight debate, the vote on final passage in the House was 215-214, with two Republicans — Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Warren Davidson of Ohio — joining all Democrats present in opposition.
Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., the leader of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, voted present. Reps. Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., and David Schweikert, R-Ariz., did not vote.
Dubbed by Trump as the “big, beautiful bill,” the legislation extends the president’s expiring tax cuts passed in 2017 and contains an infusion of money to expand the military and carry out the president’s mass deportation plans. It also fulfills two of Trump’s campaign promises: eliminating taxes on tips and overtime work.
The bill also slashes spending in other areas, including hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), while rescinding a series of clean energy tax credits passed by Democrats in 2022. And it raises the debt ceiling by $4 trillion.
“What we’re going to do here this morning is truly historic, and it will make all the difference in the daily lives of hard working Americans. … To put it simply, this bill gets Americans back to winning again, and it’s been a long time coming,” Johnson said in a floor speech before the vote.
But he acknowledged that there are more challenges to come, with the bill now heading to the Republican-led Senate.
“We’re accomplishing a big thing here today, but we know this isn’t the end of the road,” Johnson said.
Congressional GOP leaders have said they want to send the final bill to Trump’s desk for a signature by July 4.
The vote came after Republicans and Democrats sparred over the legislation during a marathon House Rules Committee hearing that began just after 1 a.m. ET Wednesday and wrapped 21 hours later, when the panel sent the bill to the floor.
The sweeping package included a series of last-minute changes to appease factions of GOP holdouts whose votes are essential in the slim House majority. Republicans can only spare three GOP defections on any vote in the face of unified Democratic opposition.
Conservative hard-liners secured changes in the form of speeding up the Medicaid work requirements to begin at the end of 2026, and phasing out the clean energy tax credits more quickly.
A group of blue-state Republicans secured a larger state and local deduction (SALT) cap of $40,000 to bring home to their high-tax districts.
The measure was projected Tuesday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to increase the national debt by $2.3 trillion. The budget office said it would rescind health care coverage for 8.6 million people.
Overall, the package is set to decrease household resources among the lowest decile of income earners by 4%, while increase household resources among the highest decile of income earners by 2% by 2023.
It is unclear what impact the late changes will have on the final estimate.
Trump helped Johnson and GOP leaders close the deal, joining a House Republican conference meeting at the Capitol on Tuesday. The president told holdouts in the room that it was now time to drop their demands and unify behind his “big, beautiful bill.”
When Harris and other conservatives dug in further on Wednesday, Trump called the group’s leaders and GOP leaders down to the White House to get them on board.
Both Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., returned from the meeting vowing to charge ahead with a vote, even without public assurances from the Freedom Caucus. The leaders were desperate to move quickly because they feared there could be GOP absences later in the week.
Ultimately, some of the anti-spending hawks who were skpeitcal of the bill, including Reps. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Ralph Norman, R-S.C., voted for the bill.
Democrats repeatedly blasted Republicans for debating and passing the bill “under the cover of darkness,” and warned that the deep spending cuts would boot millions of Americans off the Medicaid rolls.
“Here’s what it will mean for the American people,” Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D.N-Y., said in a speech before the vote. “Children will get hurt. Women will get hurt. Older Americans who rely on Medicaid for nursing home care and for home care will get hurt. People with disabilities who rely on Medicaid to survive, will get hurt. Hospitals in your districts will close. Nursing homes will shut down. And people will die.”
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