Washington (AP) As GOP leaders and the president himself tried to convince skeptics to abandon their opposition before his Fourth of July deadline, House Republicans prepared to vote on President Donald Trump’s $4.5 trillion tax giveaways and spending cuts measure early Thursday.
After yet another hectic day and night at the Capitol, the last discussions started in the early hours of the morning. After the Senate narrowly approved Trump’s hallmark domestic policy package, House Speaker Mike Johnson insisted that the House would fulfill the holiday deadline.
After a series of discussions behind closed doors, Johnson stated, “Our approach is to push through and finish it.” Our deadline of July 4th will be met.
A long-shot attempt to combine a broad list of GOP initiatives into what they refer to as his “one big beautiful bill,” a package that is more than 800 pages long, would result in a historic outcome for the president and his party. Given the Republican sweep of Congress and the united Democratic opposition, the bill will be a distinguishing feature of Trump’s comeback to the White House.
Tax breaks and safety net cuts
The main focus of the plan is $4.5 trillion in tax incentives that were implemented during Trump’s first term in 2017 and would expire if Congress did nothing, as well as additional ones. This includes giving employees the ability to deduct overtime and gratuities, as well as a $6,000 deduction for the majority of older persons making less than $75,000.
Additionally, a substantial investment of approximately $350 billion has been made in national security, Trump’s deportation agenda, and the development of the Golden Dome defensive system throughout the United States.
The package includes a significant rollback of green energy expenditures and $1.2 trillion in cuts to Medicaid health care and food stamps, primarily through the imposition of additional work requirements, especially for certain elderly individuals and parents, to help offset the expenses of lost tax income.
According to the impartial Congressional Budget Office, 11.8 million more people will lack health insurance and the package will increase the debt by $3.3 trillion over the course of ten years.
According to House Budget Committee chairman Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, “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.”
Democrats united against ugly bill
Democrats banded together to oppose the plan, arguing that it was a tax giveaway to the wealthy that was funded by the weakest members of society—a practice they dubbed “trickle-down cruelty.”
Are you ashamed? Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., stated. Be brave enough to oppose this law.
Invoking the nation’s rich history of the Independence Day holiday, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries questioned: What is this one, large, ugly bill related to?
He spent almost two hours reading letters from people all throughout the nation about how health care programs have benefited their families and how painful cuts would be.
It has been challenging from the beginning to get the measure this far in Congress. In the House and Senate, Republicans have fought the plan fiercely at almost every stage, frequently winning by a slim margin of only one vote. Vice President JD Vance broke the tie vote in the Senate. Republicans in the House have limited room for defections due to their narrow 220-212 majority.
Political costs of saying no
Few Republican lawmakers, however, are quite happy with the outcome. The Medicaid health care cuts and the elimination of green energy credits, which might put solar, wind, and other renewable energy projects in their districts at risk, alarmed a number of more moderate Republicans.
However, conservatives, such as members from the House Freedom Caucus, insisted on more drastic cuts. Despite Republican warnings that the Senate should not alter the House-passed plan, senators signed the final version.
Due to the stubbornness of a few holdouts, the House came to a complete halt on Wednesday. Trump himself worked the phones and took to social media, and a roll call in the morning went on for over seven hours, while a nighttime vote stalled for over five.
How long are the Republicans going to wait? What are you attempting to demonstrate? In a vote after midnight, Trump raged.
Johnson, who has remained close to Trump, depended on White House representatives, such as lawyers and Cabinet secretaries, to help dubious Republicans understand the specifics. Lawmakers were informed that they might request executive actions, initiatives, or other items from the administration for their home districts.
“We’re on a roll,” the president declared, according to Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C. This is what he wants to see.
There were also significant political ramifications to defying the president on his centerpiece second-term agenda.
Trump has made threats to run against the defectors in public. Trump’s well-funded political campaign is focusing on Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a House Republican who has voiced opposition to the bill.
Shortly before voting against the bill, North Carolina Senate Republican Thom Tillis, who had been the target of Trump’s scolding, declared he would not run for reelection.
Rollback of past presidential agendas
The package is essentially a rejection of the goals of the previous two Democratic presidents, a retraction of Joe Biden’s climate change policies in the Inflation Reduction Act, and a slash at the Medicaid expansion from Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
Democrats have painted a bleak picture of the measure, stating that Medicaid cuts, which about 80 million Americans depend on, would cause fatalities. According to Jeffries, food stamps, which provide food for over 40 million people, would take food away from hungry elders, hungry veterans, and hungry children.
Republicans claim that the tax benefits will boost the economy and avoid raising household taxes. They assert that they are working to eliminate what they characterize as waste, fraud, and abuse and to appropriately scale the safety net programs for the demographics they were originally intended to assist, primarily children, the disabled, and pregnant women.
According to the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan organization that analyzes tax and budget policy, the plan would provide the lowest quintile of Americans a $150 tax reduction next year, the middle quintile a $1,750 tax cut, and the wealthiest quintile a $10,950 tax cut. That contrasts with what they would have to deal with if the tax cuts from 2017 ended.
