House GOP clears key hurdle on Trump's big bill, pushing it closer to vote

A roll call that started late Wednesday finally closed almost six hours later, a highly unusual stall on a procedural step.

House Republicans are preparing to vote on President Donald Trump’s $4.5 trillion tax breaks and spending cuts bill early Thursday, up all night as GOP leaders and the president himself worked to persuade skeptical holdouts to drop their opposition and deliver by their Fourth of July deadline.

Final debates began in the predawn hours after another chaotic day, and night, at the Capitol. House Speaker Mike Johnson insisted the House would meet the holiday deadline, with just days to go after the Senate approved the package on the narrowest of margins and Vice President JD Vance breaking a tie vote.

“Our way is to plow through and get it done,” Johnson said, emerging in the middle of the night from a series of closed-door meetings. “We will meet our July 4th deadline.”

The outcome would be milestone for the president and his party, a longshot effort to compile a long list of GOP priorities into what they call his “one big beautiful bill,” an 800-plus page package. With Democrats unified in opposition, the bill will become a defining measure of Trump's return to the White House, with the sweep of Republican control of Congress.

Tax breaks and safety net cuts

At it core, the package's priority is $4.5 trillion in tax breaks enacted in Trump's first term, in 2017, that would expire if Congress failed to act, along with new ones. This includes allowing workers to deduct tips and overtime pay, and a $6,000 deduction for most older adults earning less than $75,000 a year.

There's also a hefty investment, $350 billion, in national security and Trump's deportation agenda and to help develop the “Golden Dome” defensive system over the U.S..

To help offset the costs of lost tax revenue, the package includes $1.2 trillion in cutbacks to the Medicaid health care and food stamps, largely by imposing new work requirements, including for some parents and older people, and a massive rollback of green energy investments.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the package will add $3.3 trillion to the deficit over the decade and 11.8 million more people will go without health coverage.

"This was a generational opportunity to deliver the most comprehensive and consequential set of conservative reforms in modern history, and that’s exactly what we’re doing,” said Rp. Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, the House Budget Committee chairman.

Democrats united against ‘ugly bill’

Democrats unified against the bill as a tax giveaway to the rich paid for on the backs of the most vulnerable in society, what one called “trickle down cruelty.”

“Have you no shame?” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn. “Have the moral courage to oppose this bill."

The House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries called it “one big ugly bill.”

Pushing the package this far in Congress has been difficult rom the start. Republicans have struggled mightily with the bill nearly every step of the way in the House and Senate, often succeeding only by the narrowest of margins: just one vote. The slim 220-212 majority in the House leaves Republicans little room for defections.

Political costs of saying no

But few GOP lawmakers have been fully satisfied with the final product. Several more moderate Republicans had reservations about the cuts to Medicaid health care and the loss of green energy credits that could derail solar, wind and other renewable projects in their districts.

At the same time, conservatives, including those from the House Freedom Caucus, held out for steeper reductions. Republicans had warned the Senate against making changes to the House-passed bill, but senators put their own stamp on the final draft.

The House ground to a standstill Wednesday as a handful of holdouts refused to move so quickly. One roll call dragged for some seven hours while another stalled for more than five, and Trump himself worked the phones and lashed out on social media.

“What are the Republicans waiting for??? What are you trying to prove???” Trump railed in a postmidnight vote.

Trump has been threatening to campaign against those who voted against the bill, and warned starkly of political fallout that any delay was “COSTING YOU VOTES!!!”

Up all night, Johnson relied on White House officials — including Cabinet secretaries, lawyers and others — to work skeptical Republicans through the details. Lawmakers were being told the administration could provide executive actions, projects or other provisions they needed in their districts back home.

"The president’s message was, ‘We’re on a roll,’” said Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C. “He wants to see this.”

And the alternative, of voting against the president, carried political costs.

One House Republican who has staked out opposition to the bill, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, is being targeted by Trump’s well-funded political operation.

And Senate Republican Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who had been on the receiving end of Trump’s lashings, announced he would not seek reelection shortly before voting against the bill.

Rollback of past agendas

In many ways, the package is a repudiation of the agendas of the last two Democratic presidents, a chiseling away at Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act, and a pullback of Joe Biden's climate change strategies in the Inflation Reduction Act.

Democrats have described the bill in dire terms, warning that cuts to Medicaid, which some 80 million Americans rely on, would result in lives lost. Food stamps that help feed more than 40 million people would "rip food from the mouths of hungry children, hungry veterans and hungry seniors,” Jeffries said.

Republicans say they are trying to rightsize the safety net programs for the population they were initially designed to serve, mainly pregnant women, the disabled and children, and root out what they describe as waste, fraud and abuse.

The package includes new 80-hour-a-month work requirements for many adults receiving Medicaid and applies existing work requirements in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, to more people. It shifts more costs of the programs to the states.

The Tax Policy Center, which provides nonpartisan analysis of tax and budget policy, projected the bill would result next year in a $150 tax break for the lowest quintile of Americans, a $1,750 tax cut for the middle quintile and a $10,950 tax cut for the top quintile. That's compared with what they would face if the 2017 tax cuts expired.

___

Associated Press writers Kevin Freking, Joey Cappelletti and Matt Brown contributed.