House Republicans stayed up all night to pass a multi-trillion dollar tax cut package, with Speaker Mike Johnson defying skeptics and uniting his ranks to push through President Donald Trump's top bill.
Thanks to last-minute concessions and stern warnings from Mr. Trump, Republicans reluctant to make changes have largely abandoned their opposition to save the “One Big Beautiful Bill” that is at the center of the Republican agenda.
The House debate began before midnight, and by dawn Thursday the vote was announced: 215-214, with Democrats decisively opposed.
The document is then sent to the Senate.
“Simply put, this bill puts Americans back in the game,” Mr. Johnson said just before the vote.
The vote culminated a tense period on Capitol Hill that included days of closed-door negotiations and public committee hearings, many of which were held back-to-back, around the clock.
Republicans insisted their sprawling, 1,000-plus-page package was exactly what voters sent them to Congress and Trump to the White House for.
They believe it will be “rocket fuel,” as one debater put it, for the shaky US economy.
Mr Trump himself has demanded action, visiting House Republicans for a conference on Tuesday and hosting Republican and dissenting leaders for a lengthy meeting on Wednesday at the White House.
Before the vote, the administration warned in a stark statement that “failure to pass this bill would be the ultimate betrayal.”
The centerpiece of the package is a commitment by Republicans to extend the roughly $4.5 trillion in tax cuts they crafted during Trump's first term in 2017, while also adding new cuts he pushed during his 2024 campaign, including eliminating taxes on tips, overtime pay, auto loan interest and others.
To recoup some of the lost tax revenue, Republicans have focused on changes to Medicaid and food stamps, largely by imposing work requirements on many of those receiving benefits.
There has also been a major rollback of green energy tax credits introduced under the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act.
The package also includes $350 billion in new spending, with about $150 billion going to the Pentagon, including the president's new Golden Dome defense shield, and the rest to Trump's mass deportation and border security program.
Overall, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the proposed changes would reduce the number of people with health insurance by 8.6 million and reduce the number of people receiving SNAP food stamps by three million per month.
The CBO said the tax provisions would increase the federal deficit by $3.8 trillion over a decade, while changes to Medicaid, food stamps and other services would cut spending by $1 trillion.
The report says the lowest-income households in the U.S. will see their resources shrink, while the highest-income households will see them grow.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York read letters from Americans describing how the program cuts would hurt them.
“This is a big, ugly bill,” he said.
As a minority without the votes to stop Mr. Trump's package, Democrats instead turned to fiery speeches and procedural steps to stop it from moving forward.
As soon as the House reconvened for debate, Democrats pushed for a delay in the vote. It failed.
“They want to carry out this Republican tax scam under the cover of night,” said spokesman Pete Aguilar.
Other Democrats called it a “big, bad bill” or a “big, broken promise.”
Late in the evening, Republican leaders introduced a 42-page amendment with a number of changes.
The changes included an accelerated rollout of Medicaid work requirements that would begin in December 2026 instead of January 2029, and a faster phaseout of production tax credits for clean electricity projects that conservatives had sought.
And in a nod to Mr. Trump's influence, Republicans renamed the proposed new savings program for children after the president, changing the name of the Maga accounts (the Growth and Development Money Account) to simply Trump accounts.
Representative Erin Houchin said Americans should not believe Democrats' dire predictions about the bill's impact.
“We can usher in America's Golden Age,” she said, echoing the president's words.
The final cost and economic impact analysis of the entire package is still being assessed.
Sourse: breakingnews.ie
