These House Republicans Voted Against Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’

Two House Republicans broke ranks and voted against the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, President Donald Trump‘s flagship tax and spending package, on Thursday afternoon.

Despite the GOP defections, the measure passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 218-214, with every House Democrat voting against it.

Why It Matters

Thursday’s vote caps weeks of nail-biting tension among Republicans as intraparty dissent threatened to derail Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” which aims to deliver on his top legislative priorities: cementing the sweeping tax cuts, which disproportionately benefit wealthy Americans, enacted during his first term, and substantially increasing funding for border security and immigration enforcement.

The Republican bill pays for the tax cuts and increased border security with deep spending reductions in critical social safety net programs like Medicaid and food assistance. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the bill could result in 11.8 million more uninsured Americans by 2034 and add nearly $3.3 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade.

What To Know

The initial version of the “big, beautiful bill” passed the House in May but was significantly reshaped in the Senate, before being sent back to the House earlier this week. A number of House Republicans, including Speaker Mike Johnson, said they were unhappy with the Senate-passed version. Ultimately, two Republicans did not support it for differing reasons.

Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky said he could not vote for it because of concerns that it would balloon the federal deficit
Representative Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania promised his constituents that he would not support a package that included steep cuts to Medicaid.

Representative Warren Davidson of Ohio initially said he would not support the measure but announced shortly before the final roll call that he would vote yes. Nebraska Representative Don Bacon, who’s retiring soon and was seen as a wild card in the GOP’s megabill negotiations, also decided to vote yes.

Democrats in both the House and Senate unanimously opposed the measure, warning that it was giving millionaires and billionaires steep tax breaks at the cost of working-class, low-income and older Americans.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries gave a marathon speech railing against the bill that lasted eight hours and 44 minutes. Shortly before 1:30 p.m., Jeffries broke the record set by Republican Representative Kevin McCarthy of California in 2021, when McCarthy spoke for more than eight hours to delay a vote on a $2 trillion Democratic bill to shore up the social safety net and address climate change.

“Republicans are trying to jam this one, big, ugly bill down the throats of the American people,” Jeffries said during his “magic minute” speech.

“Leadership requires courage, conviction, compassion—and yet what we have seen from this administration and co-conspirators on the Republican side of the aisle is cruelty, chaos and corruption,” he said, adding that the bill was “an extraordinary assault on the health care of the American people.”

Other Democratic lawmakers also made headline for their stinging rebukes of the megabill.

“This bill will kill good, blue-collar manufacturing jobs that we need to rebuild the economy in this country,” Democratic Representative Josh Riley said during a floor debate on Wednesday. “It closes rural hospitals. It defunds health care. All to give trillions of dollars in tax cuts to your cronies.”

“Don’t tell me you give a s*** about the middle class when all you are doing is s******* on the middle class,” Riley added.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York and one of the most progressive members of Congress, described the bill as a “deal with the devil” in an impassioned speech on the House floor.

Democratic Massachusetts Representative Jim McGovern mocked Republicans for behaving like they were in a “cult” because of their support for the Trump-backed bill, despite recent polling data showing that it’s broadly opposed by Americans.

Trump, meanwhile, repeatedly promised that he would not sign a bill that included significant cuts to Medicaid.

“It’s very complicated stuff,” he said earlier this week. “I don’t want to go too crazy with cuts. I don’t like cuts.”

The bill contains $1.2 trillion in spending reductions, mainly targeting Medicaid and food assistance. It imposes work requirements on able-bodied adults—including some parents and older Americans—and tightens eligibility rules for safety net programs. It also changes federal reimbursements to states, which raised alarm bells among senators from rural states, though the vast majority voted to pass the spending package.

Several Republican Senators have also faced questions over comments they made regarding the cuts to Medicaid.

Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa made headlines in May when she responded to people protesting Medicaid cuts by saying, “Well, we are all going to die.” And Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, the former Senate majority leader, told Republicans during a closed-door lunch in June: “I know a lot of us are hearing from people back home about Medicaid. But they’ll get over it.”

More than 700,000 Iowans receive health care coverage through Medicaid every year, and 1.4 million people in Kentucky are enrolled in the program.