{"id":36869,"date":"2025-07-04T02:09:18","date_gmt":"2025-07-04T02:09:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/36869\/"},"modified":"2025-07-04T02:09:18","modified_gmt":"2025-07-04T02:09:18","slug":"house-passes-big-beautiful-bill-act-sending-it-to-trump-after-bruising-struggle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/36869\/","title":{"rendered":"House passes Big Beautiful Bill Act, sending it to Trump after bruising struggle"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Trump is finally getting his \u201cbig, beautiful\u201d bill.<\/p>\n

The GOP-led House of Representatives passed\u00a0the One Big Beautiful Bill Act<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0a 218-214 vote Thursday\u00a0following 29 hours of arm-twisting and deliberation that included the longest floor speech and\u00a0longest procedural vote<\/a>\u00a0in the body\u2019s 236-year history.<\/p>\n

In the end, just two Republicans,\u00a0Thomas Massie of Kentucky<\/a>\u00a0and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, voted against the measure after Trump held 11th-hour White House meetings Wednesday with more than a dozen holdouts.<\/p>\n

House Speaker Mike Johnson griped that he was \u201cnot happy with what the Senate did to our product.\u201d REUTERS<\/p>\n

The president will sign the package into law during a Friday evening event at the White House to mark the July 4 holiday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Trump celebrated the OBBB\u2019s passage as \u201ca declaration of independence from a national decline\u201d during an Iowa rally Thursday night. <\/p>\n

\u201cWith this bill, every major promise I made to the people of Iowa in 2024 became a promise kept,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a national decline. We were a laughing stock all over the world. We had a man as president who shouldn\u2019t have been there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really have independence now over the \u2014 if you look at it \u2014 the overtaxation, where we were being taxed out of our lives, independence from over-regulation, we have independence now from radical-left bureaucrats and independence from the largest alien invasion that I think any country has ever seen.\u201d<\/p>\n

The president also applauded House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune for getting the package over the line.<\/p>\n

\u201cA couple of us quite literally haven\u2019t slept in two days, so I\u2019m a danger to myself and others right now,\u201d Johnson (R-La.) joked after the vote. \u201cAmerica was in deep trouble, and we knew that if we won [in 2024] \u2014 and we believed we would \u2014 if we knew that if we got in government, we\u2019d have to quite literally fix every area of the absolute disaster of the Biden era.\u201d<\/p>\n

The act is intended to be Trump\u2019s signature legislative achievement of his second term and includes an extension of the 2017 tax cuts, key provisions of which were set to expire at the end of the year; bolstered spending on border security, defense, and energy exploration; and reductions in discretionary spending.<\/p>\n

Every House Democrat opposed the bill, in addition to the two Republican defectors.\u00a0Massie, whom\u00a0Trump is hoping to oust in the 2026\u00a0midterms, had rejected the legislation nearly every step of the way due to his deep concerns with its impact on the deficit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fitzpatrick turned against the bill after concluding that the Senate\u2019s adjustments to Medicaid \u201cfell short\u201d of his standards.\u00a0<\/p>\n

President Trump had been mounting a pressure campaign on Republicans to send him the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Fiscal hawks and moderates alike had\u00a0initially\u00a0bristled at the Senate\u2019s modifications to the 870-page\u00a0bill, which cleared the upper chamber Tuesday in a 51-50\u00a0vote that required Vice President JD Vance to break a 50-all tie.<\/p>\n

The final vote was further delayed by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) reading letters from constituents who expressed concern about their Medicaid benefits being stripped.<\/p>\n

Jeffries\u00a0used his so-called \u201cmagic minute\u201d of debate to rage against the bill\u00a0<\/a>for almost nine hours<\/a>, shattering the record previously held by former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in expressing his opposition to the Build Back Better Act.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an utter waste of everyone\u2019s time, but you know, that\u2019s part of the system here,\u201d Johnson groused to reporters about Jeffries\u2019 tactics.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt takes a lot longer to build a lie than to tell the simple truth,\u201d the speaker later clapped back during a 24-minute floor speech that served as the last word before final voting began.<\/p>\n

The House speaker went further during an appearance on Fox News\u2019 \u201cThe Ingraham Angle,\u201d arguing that Jeffries \u201cembarrassed his party.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a performance art, and what Republicans are doing is delivering results, not performances,\u201d Johnson told guest host Raymond Arroyo. \u201cI think the contrast was clear for the American people.\u201d<\/p>\n

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) later mocked Jeffries over\u00a0Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) dozing off in full view of the TV cameras<\/a>\u00a0during the Brooklyn congressman\u2019s remarks.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope America watched all of it, watched Democrats falling asleep behind their leader as he went on and on, trying to scare the American people with lies, with scare tactics, with depressing stories about things that will never happen unless Democrats keep running this country,\u201d Scalise chided.<\/p>\n

During the\u00a0mad dash to pass the\u00a0bill,\u00a0Trump and GOP leadership were adamant that holdouts bite their tongue and vote \u201cyea\u201d\u00a0to meet\u00a0Johnson\u2019s self-imposed Independence Day deadline.<\/p>\n

\u201cCongrats to everyone,\u201d Vance cheered on X after the vote. \u201cAt times I even doubted we\u2019d get it done by July 4! But now we\u2019ve delivered big tax cuts and the resources necessary to secure the border. Promises made, promises kept!\u201d<\/p>\n

House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris had pushed for deeper cuts. Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cWithout these agreements [that] we came through last night, I was a hard no on this bill,\u201d House Freedom Cacus leader Andy\u00a0Harris (R-Md.) told reporters after the bill\u2019s passage, without divulging what those deals entailed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese agreements are significant. They will\u00a0become obvious over the next few months \u2026 [about] how we\u2019ve got the administration to move in a direction that mitigates a lot of the issues with the Senate bill.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the most prominent holdouts, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), hinted that some of the concessions revolved around executive actions to further target\u00a0\u201cMedicaid waste, fraud and abuse in states\u201d and subsidies for environmental projects.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were also able to get some significant, I think, assurances on what they\u2019re doing, on spending, things they can do as we\u2019ve been talking about rescissions,\u201d Roy added, \u201cplus other things that I can\u2019t quite get into at the moment that I think will have significant impact on spending.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie voted against nearly every iteration of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act due to his deficit concerns. AP<\/p>\n

Johnson surmised that a lot of his members \u201cjust needed time to digest\u201d the adjustments the Senate made and noted he \u201cgave them the space\u201d to parse through it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Republicans packaged\u00a0Trump\u2019s key legislative\u00a0agenda items into a budget reconciliation bill to bypass the 60-vote threshold needed to overcome a Democratic filibuster in the Senate and spent months delicately balancing competing interests within their razor-thin majorities in both chambers of Congress.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The original House version of the bill, which passed by one vote May 22, was projected to increase the deficit by about $3 trillion over the next decade, while the modified Senate version\u00a0that passed Thursday is set to add $3.9 trillion, according to the\u00a0Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Senate had revamped the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to make key business tax cut extensions permanent, including credits for research and development expensing.<\/p>\n

Senate Majority Leader John Thune oversaw the megabill\u2019s passage in the upper chamber earlier this week. Getty Images<\/p>\n

Fiscal hawks fumed over the impact on the deficit, while\u00a0moderates were vexed by the steeper cuts to Medicaid, which provides health insurance to 70 million low-income Americans.<\/p>\n

Another sticking point was the $10,000 cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions, which had been a key priority of blue state Republicans and was raised to $40,000 for most Americans making below $500,000 per year for the next five years.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Several Republican\u00a0lawmakers\u00a0hinted\u00a0that there were discussions of\u00a0pursuing\u00a0another reconciliation bill\u00a0later this year\u00a0to address outstanding concerns.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u00a0don\u2019t think it\u2019ll be as big. I think there\u2019ll be some targeted stuff,\u201d Roy told The Post. \u201cI think there\u2019s a good chance of that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Johnson later confirmed that he\u2019s aiming to pass \u201ca second reconciliation package in the fall and a third one in the spring of next year, for the next two fiscal years.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The House speaker also teased that rescission packages to cut spending identified as \u201cwaste and abuse\u201d will soon be on the congressional agenda.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe White House is sending us collections of items to claw back,\u201d Johnson told Fox News. \u201cAnd we\u2019re going to appropriate at lower levels.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Republican Party is the party to get us back to fiscal responsibility,\u201d he added. \u201cWe can\u2019t do it overnight \u2026 but we are on the right track.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

What\u2019s in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a brief rundown of what\u2019s in the OBBA: <\/p>\n