House GOP pushes 'big' budget resolution to passage, a crucial step
toward delivering Trump's agenda
 [February 26, 2025]
By LISA MASCARO, KEVIN FREKING and MATT BROWN
WASHINGTON (AP) — With a push from President Donald Trump, House
Republicans sent a GOP budget blueprint to passage Tuesday, a step
toward delivering his “big, beautiful bill” with $4.5 trillion in tax
breaks and $2 trillion in spending cuts despite a wall of opposition
from Democrats and discomfort among Republicans.
House Speaker Mike Johnson had almost no votes to spare in his
bare-bones GOP majority and fought on all fronts — against Democrats,
uneasy rank-and-file Republicans and skeptical GOP senators — to advance
the party’s signature legislative package. Trump made calls to wayward
GOP lawmakers and invited Republicans to the White House.
The vote was 217-215, with a single Republican and all Democrats
opposed, and the outcome was in jeopardy until the gavel.
“On a vote like this, you’re always going to have people you’re talking
to all the way through the close of the vote,” Majority Leader Steve
Scalise said before the roll call.
“We got it done,” the speaker said afterward.
Passage of the package is crucial to kickstarting the process. Trump
wants the Republicans who control Congress to approve a massive bill
that would extend tax breaks, which he secured during his first term but
are expiring later this year, while also cutting spending across federal
programs and services.
Next steps are long and cumbersome before anything can become law —
weeks of committee hearings to draft the details and send the House
version to the Senate, where Republicans passed their own scaled-back
version. And more big votes are ahead, including an unrelated deal to
prevent a government shutdown when federal funding expires March 14.
Those talks are also underway.
It's all unfolding amid emerging backlash to what's happening elsewhere
as billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk is tearing through federal
agencies with his Department of Government Efficiency firing thousands
of workers nationwide, and angry voters are starting to confront
lawmakers at town hall meetings back home.
Democrats during an afternoon debate decried the package as a “betrayal”
to Americans, a “blueprint for American decline” and simply a
“Republican rip-off.”
“Our very way of life as a country is under assault,” House Democratic
Leader Hakeem Jeffries said on the steps of the Capitol.
Flanked by Americans who said they would be hurt by cuts to Medicaid and
other social programs, the Democrats booed the GOP budget blueprint. But
as the minority party, they don't have the votes to stop it.
Slashing government is not always popular at home
Even as they press ahead, Republicans are running into a familiar
problem: Slashing federal spending is typically easier said than done.
With cuts to the Pentagon and other programs largely off limits, much of
the other government outlays go for health care, food stamps, student
loans and programs relied on by their constituents.
Several Republican lawmakers worry that scope of the cuts being eyed —
particularly some $880 billion over the decade to the committee that
handles health care spending, including Medicaid, for example, or $230
billion to the agriculture committee that funds food stamps — will be
too harmful to their constituents back home.
GOP leaders insist Medicaid is not specifically listed in the initial
60-page budget framework, which is true. Johnson and his leadership team
also told lawmakers they would have plenty of time to debate the details
as they shape the final package.
But lawmakers wanted assurances the health care program and others will
be protected as the plans are developed and merged with the Senate in
the weeks to come.
Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., said Trump has promised he would not allow
Medicaid to be cut.
“The president was clear about that. I was clear about that," Lawler
said. “We will work through this, but the objective today is to begin
the process.”
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From left, Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, Rep. Kweisi Mfume, D-Md., Rep.
Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-N.J., and Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif.,
join others as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., speaks
out against the Republican budget plan, on the House steps at the
Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott
Applewhite)
At the same time, GOP deficit hawks were withholding support until
they were convinced it wouldn't add to the nation's $36 trillion
debt load. They warned it will pile onto debt because the cost of
the tax breaks, with at least $4.5 trillion over the decade
outweighing the $2 trillion in spending cuts to government programs.
One key conservative, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., ended up the sole
GOP vote against.
Trump had invited several dozen Republicans to the White House,
including Rep. Juan Ciscomani, R-Ariz., who joined a group of GOP
lawmakers from the Congressional Hispanic Conference raising
concerns about protecting Medicaid, food stamps and Pell grants for
college.
“While we fully support efforts to rein in wasteful spending and
deliver on President Trump's agenda, it is imperative that we do not
slash programs that support American communities across our nation,”
wrote Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, and several others GOP lawmakers
from the Hispanic Conference.
Democrats protest tax cuts for wealthy
Democrats in the House and the Senate vowed to keep fighting the
whole process. “This is not what people want,” said Rep. Jim
McGovern, D-Mass., during a rules debate ahead of planned votes.
“We all know that trickle-down economics,” he said about the 2017
tax breaks that flowed mainly to the wealthy, “don’t work.”
Trump has signaled a preference for “big” bill but also appears to
enjoy a competition between the House and the Senate, lawmakers
said, as he pits the Republicans against each other to see which
version will emerge.
Senate Republicans launched their own $340 billion package last
week. It’s focused on sending Trump money his administration needs
for its deportation and border security agenda now, with plans to
tackle the tax cuts separately later this year.
“I’m holding my breath. I’m crossing my fingers," said Sen. John
Cornyn, R-Texas, who said he was rooting for the House's approach as
the better option. "I think a one-shot is their best opportunity.”
The House GOP faces pitfalls ahead
Johnson, whose party lost seats in last November’s election,
commands one of the thinnest majorities in modern history, which
meant he had to keep almost every Republican in line or risk losing
the vote.
The budget is being compiled during a lengthy process that first
sends instructions to the various House and Senate committees, which
will then have several weeks to devise more detailed plans for
additional debate and votes.
Rep. Jodey Arrington, the Republican chairman of the House Budget
Committee, said with economic growth assumptions, from 1.8% as
projected by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to 2.6% as
projected by House Republicans, the package would generate about
$2.6 trillion in savings over 10 years and would ensure the plan
helps reduce the deficit.
Some fiscal advocacy groups view the GOP’s economic projections as
overly optimistic.
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Associated Press writers Leah Askarinam and Stephen Groves
contributed reporting.
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