The passage of the “Big Beautiful Bill” on Thursday was a moment when President Donald Trump’s hold on the Republican Party was tested — and he won. GOP holdouts objected to the trillions of dollars the bill is projected to add to the debt and the cuts to Medicaid and other safety net programs. But in the end, Trump was able to browbeat Republicans into supporting his costly plans to fund long-term tax cuts for the wealthy, more deportations of immigrants and boosting defense spending.
Trump’s victory further strengthens his power in Washington and clears the way for him to take even more aggressive actions on immigration, trade policy and depart from American tradition to hammer the chair of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell into lowering interest rates, a move that could give the U.S. economy a sugar high of cheap cash.
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Trump’s control over the GOP “is as close to total as any President has ever had over his own political party,” says Whit Ayres, a long-time Republican pollster. “It gives him the support of his own legislative caucus for almost anything he wants to do.”
Trump plans to sign the bill into law on Friday at 5 p.m. as B-2 bombers jet over the White House during a Fourth of July celebration for military families. “We’ll be signing with those beautiful planes flying right over our heads,” Trump told reporters traveling with him on Air Force One on Thursday evening.
In order to get the bill passed, some Republicans broke their promises not to cut Medicaid, other Republicans reneged on pledges to keep down the national debt. In the House, only two Republicans—Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania—ended up voting against Trump’s bill. The bill narrowly passed the House 218-214 with all Democrats voting against it. Massie wrote on X that he voted “no” because “it will significantly increase U.S. budget deficits in the near term, negatively impacting all Americans through sustained inflation and high interest rates.”
The bill barely made it out of the Senate earlier in the week. Republican Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Thom Tillis of North Carolina voted against Trump’s bill forcing Vice President J.D. Vance to cast a tie-breaking vote. Tillis said the Medicaid cuts would be devastating to his state, and, after bucking Trump, said he wouldn’t run for reelection. Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri had argued against the cuts to Medicaid but ended up voting “yes,” and Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, a Republican, had criticized the bill for not cutting enough to offset adding trillions to the debt, but ended up voting for the bill.
Read more: The GOP Budget Will Balloon the National Debt. Here’s What Trump Could do to Fix it
Now Trump is faced with the daunting task of selling the unpopular bill to the public. Only 29% of voters said they support the bill, according to a Quinnipiac University poll published on June 26, while 55% percent of voters said that they oppose the bill and 16% were unsure. The cuts to social safety net programs and the increase in the deficit could lead to political blowback that helps Democrats take back control of the House in the 2026 mid-term elections. The bill could be a political risk for Trump, says Ayres, if “a whole lot of Trump supporters lose their health care and get angry about it.”
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