House Republicans are pushing Trump's big bill to the brink of passage
[July 03, 2025]
By LISA MASCARO, MARY CLARE JALONICK and LEAH ASKARINAM
WASHINGTON (AP) — 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.
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Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pa., center, speaks during a news conference
at the U.S. Capitol, Wednesday, July 2, 2025, in Washington. (AP
Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)
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.
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Associated Press writers Kevin Freking, Joey Cappelletti and Matt
Brown contributed.
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