Trump
Policy Bill Clears Congress, Tax Cuts with $5tn in Debt Limit
After a tumultuous day, an overnight cliffhanger
of a vote and a record-breaking speech, Republicans managed to wear down internal
resistance and muscle their domestic policy bill through the House.
·
The House on Thursday (03.07.2025)
narrowly passed a sweeping bill to extend tax cuts and slash social safety net
programs, capping Republicans’ chaotic months long slog to overcome deep rifts
within their party and deliver President Trump’s domestic agenda.
·
The final vote, 218 to 214, was mostly
along party lines and came after Speaker Mike Johnson spent a frenzied day and
night toiling to quell resistance in his ranks that threatened until the very
end to derail the president’s marquee legislation.
·
Increases funding for defense and
border security and cuts nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid, with more reductions
to food assistance for the poor and other government aid.
·
Included is a $5 trillion increase in
the debt limit, a measure that Republicans are typically unwilling to support
but that was necessary to avert a federal default later this year.
·
The bill’s final passage was a major
victory for congressional Republicans and for Mr. Trump, who celebrated in a
Thursday night speech in Des Moines, Iowa, meant to kick off a yearlong
celebration of the 250th anniversary of the country’s founding.
·
Large benefit losses in food stamps,
which will also have new work requirements, threatening to leave millions
without benefits.
· AS move to slash critical government programs to fund tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans.
[ABS
News Service/04.07.2025]
The
final vote, 218 to 214, was mostly along party lines and came after Speaker Mike
Johnson spent a frenzied day and night toiling to quell resistance in his ranks
that threatened until the very end to derail the president’s marquee legislation.
With all but two Republicans in favor and Democrats uniformly
opposed, the action cleared the bill for Mr. Trump’s signature, meeting the July
4 deadline he had demanded.
The legislation extends tax cuts enacted
in 2017 that had been scheduled to expire at the end of the year, while adding new
ones Mr. Trump promised during this campaign, on some tips and overtime pay, at
a total cost of $4.5 trillion. It also increases funding
for defense and border security and cuts nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid, with
more reductions to food assistance for the poor and other government aid. And
it phases out clean-energy
tax credits passed under former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. that
Mr. Trump and conservative Republicans have long decried.
“With this bill,” Mr. Trump said, “every
major promise I’ve made to the people of Iowa in 2024 became a promise kept.”
Mr. Trump plans to sign what he has frequently
referred to as his “big, beautiful bill” on Friday. G.O.P. lawmakers who had feuded
bitterly over the legislation ultimately united almost unanimously behind it, fearing
the political consequences of allowing a tax increase and of crossing a president
who demands unflagging loyalty and was pressuring them to fall into line.
“If you’re for a secure border, safer communities
and a strong military, this bill is for you,” Mr. Johnson said, extolling the bill
ahead of the final vote. “If you’re for common-sense fiscal responsibility and reducing
the deficit, this bill is for you. If you’re for fairer and lower taxes, bigger
paychecks, affordable gas and groceries and restoring dignity to hard work, this
is the bill for you.”
But it also was a major political gamble
for the party that will leave vulnerable lawmakers open to sharp attacks ahead of next
year’s midterm elections.
Many economists have estimated that its
greatest benefits would go to the wealthiest Americans, who would see the most generous
tax cuts. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget
Office recently predicted that cuts to Medicaid, including the imposition
of a strict work requirement, could leave 11.8 million more people without health
insurance by 2034.
The office, studying earlier versions of
the bill, had also warned of large benefit losses in food
stamps, which will also have new work requirements, threatening to leave millions
without benefits. At the same time, contrary to Republican claims that it cut
deficits, the budget office reported the measure would swell the already soaring
national debt by at least $3.4 trillion over a decade.
Polls show that the bill is deeply unpopular, and Democrats have roundly denounced
it as a move to slash critical government programs to fund
tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans. They have repeatedly accused Republicans
of being so much in Mr. Trump’s thrall that they embraced a bill that would harm
their own constituents, with cuts to programs that the president had vowed to protect.
In an impassioned closing speech on the
House floor that stretched for more than eight and a half hours, breaking the chamber’s
record and delaying a final vote well into the afternoon, Representative Hakeem
Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, assailed the measure as
a “disgusting abomination” that would hurt Americans.
In what amounted to a last gasp of Democratic
opposition to the bill, Mr. Jeffries spent much of his time reading testimonials
from Americans who said they relied on Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program and other government help and worried that cuts would upend their lives.
He made a point of highlighting that several of the letters came from people who
live in Republican congressional districts that are among the Democrats’ top targets
for the midterm elections.
“This bill is an all-out assault on the
health care of the people of the United States of America, hardworking American
taxpayers,” Mr. Jeffries said. “These are the people we should be standing up, to
work hard to lift up. But instead, they’re victims of this legislation.”
In the messy, monthslong process of pushing
through a bill that divided their party, Republicans in both the House and Senate
made it clear that they, too, were uncomfortable with parts of it, criticizing its
flaws before most of them ultimately banded together to pass it.
Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska,
who cast the deciding vote for the bill in her chamber after cutting a series of
deals to insulate her constituents from its harshest cuts, said just moments after
she had backed the bill that she did not like it.
“This has been an awful process — a frantic
rush to meet an artificial deadline that has tested every limit of this institution,”
Ms. Murkowski said in a statement earlier this week, in which she urged the House
to reopen and improve it.
As if to underscore the political risks
of the bill — and the intense pressure Republicans faced from Mr. Trump to embrace
it — Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina announced during Senate debate on it
that he would not seek re-election next year. He went on to savage the bill as a
disaster for Medicaid that would betray the president’s promises to protect the
program. The announcement from Mr. Tillis, whom Mr. Trump had threatened with a
primary challenge after he expressed opposition to the bill, was a harsh reminder
for Republicans of the consequences of crossing the president on the measure.
Because of the slim Republican majorities
in both chambers, ideological rifts within the party were frequently magnified as
Mr. Johnson and Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the majority leader, tried to
muscle the legislation through the House and Senate. They succeeded only after protracted
negotiations, several seemingly insurmountable setbacks and parliamentary gymnastics.
The House devolved into paralysis on Wednesday
and into Thursday morning in the hours before the final action, as a handful of
Republicans withheld their votes to bring up the measure.
Mr. Trump, who had met with recalcitrant
Republicans throughout the day Wednesday to pressure them to support the measure,
weighed in with angry posts on social media, threatening any defectors.
“MAGA IS NOT HAPPY, AND IT’S COSTING YOU
VOTES!!!” he wrote.
In the end, Mr. Johnson pulled off a victory,
the latest in a series
of instances in which he has faced resistance in his own party to a major legislative
priority — only to pull out a narrow win with the help of considerable pressure
from Mr. Trump.
The bill squeaked through the Senate by
the narrowest of margins on Tuesday. But the changes that senators made to cobble
together support for it exacerbated party divides that have plagued G.O.P. efforts
to advance Mr. Trump’s agenda since the beginning. Fiscal conservatives demanded
even deeper cuts to rein in the deficit, while more mainstream lawmakers whose seats
are at risk were wary of the biggest cuts to popular government programs.
One member of each faction voted against
the bill on Thursday: Representative Thomas Massie, a fiscal hawk from a deep-red
district in Kentucky who had railed against the high cost of the bill, and Representative
Brian Fitzpatrick, a moderate from a battleground district in suburban Pennsylvania
that Democrats won in the 2024 presidential election, who had expressed concern
about the Medicaid, SNAP and other safety net cuts.
Mr. Trump and party leaders refused to
reopen the bill for changes, a time-consuming process that would have blown through
the president’s chosen timetable and prolonged negotiations on the package for weeks
or months, potentially killing the entire enterprise.
Ultimately, the fiscal conservatives who
had railed the most strongly against the bill followed a familiar
pattern of caving and supporting it. Conservatives have repeatedly refused
to back major legislation because of its potential impact on federal deficits, only
to back down under pressure from Mr. Trump.
After the House gave final approval on
Thursday, the president waved off questions about the fractious process, telling
reporters on his way to Iowa that it was “very easy” to sway Republican holdouts.
He equivocated on whether conservatives won any concessions outside the bill in
last-minute talks.