House passes ‘big, beautiful’ budget bill

The House of Representatives passed a budget reconciliation bill that, if signed into law, would secure a number of President Donald Trump’s campaign promises, such as extending his first-term 2017 tax cuts and funding border security.

The bill passed by 215-214 margin, with one “present” vote.

It will now go the Senate. Johnson said after the vote that he has asked Senate Republicans “to modify this as little as possible, because it will make it easier for us to get it over the line ultimately and finished and get it to the president’s desk by July 4.”

Republican Reps. Thomas Massie, Ky., and Warren Davidson, Ohio, joined all Democrats in voting against the bill. Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., who chairs the House Freedom Caucus, voted “present.”

Davidson announced his “no” vote early Wednesday morning, writing on X, “Deficits do matter and this bill grows them now. The only Congress we can control is the one we’re in. Consequently, I cannot support this big deficit plan.”

Massie echoed this sentiment, writing, “If we were serious, we’d be cutting spending now, instead of promising to cut spending years from now.”

Reps. Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., and David Schweikert, R-Ariz., did not vote.

After the bill passed, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., stated, “we really had 217 votes this morning. Andrew Garbarino did not make it in time. He fell asleep in the back. No kidding, I know. I’m going to just strangle him.”

He added, “And then, David Schweikert was going to vote and slipped his card in right at the last minute… It was really 217. Would y’all put a footnote somewhere in history on that thing? They’re both going to go on record saying that’s how they would have voted if they got the card in on time.”

Going into Wednesday, the whip count was not in leadership’s favor, as Rep. Harris said that there was “no way it passes today” due to a lack of concessions on conservative demands such as more aggressive Medicaid reforms and the phasing out of former President Joe Biden’s green energy subsidies.

However, after talks involving House leadership and the White House with House Freedom Caucus holdouts, the Republican conference came together in solidarity to pass the bill.

The “one big, beautiful bill,” as Trump calls it, is a massive 10-year fiscal framework that is exempt from being filibustered and requiring a 60-vote Senate supermajority to pass.

The White House laid on the pressure in the final days before the vote, with Trump visiting the Capitol on Tuesday for a meeting with the entire House Republican conference, where he prodded them to wrap up negotiations.

The executive branch’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) put out a statement Wednesday that warned against opposing the bill.

“President Trump is committed to keeping his promises, and failure to pass this would be the ultimate betrayal,” the statement read.

The bill that came to the floor Wednesday night extends Trump’s first-term 2017 tax cuts, increases defense spending and allocates billions towards deportation of illegal immigrants and border security efforts.

However, it also contains some controversial provisions that caused intense debate in the House.

For one, the bill meets a target of $880 billion in savings in the Energy and Commerce Committee’s section, which encompasses Medicare and Medicaid funding.

Those spending cuts, which made some moderate, swing state members, such as Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., nervous, were carried out by instituting a number of reforms, such as instituting “community engagement” requirements for Medicaid.

However, many fiscal hawks felt that the reforms did not go far enough, as they were not set to go into effect until 2029—after the next presidential election.

Another issue in the reconciliation process was the cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions. A SALT deduction allows residents in high-tax states to deduct their state and local taxes on their federal tax returns.

Pro-SALT Republicans, such as Rep. Nick LaLota, R-N.Y., made clear they wouldn’t vote yes for any bill that didn’t include a major increase in that cap. Late in the process, they rejected an offer from Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., to raise the cap on deductions from $10,000 to $30,000.

Johnson later upped the offer to $40,000. Contributing to the confusion was the fact that those intense disagreements were not resolved publicly until shortly before the bill came to the floor.

After a meeting of House GOP leadership, Trump and Freedom Caucus members at the White House Wednesday afternoon, Speaker Johnson came back to the Capitol exuding confidence they had found a compromise.

“You will see how all of this is resolved,” he said. “I think we can resolve their concerns, and it’ll be probably some combination of work by the president in these areas, as well as here in Congress. So there may be executive orders relating to some of these issues in the near future.”

A few hours later, the House Rules Committee released a “manager’s amendment” containing key concessions, such as raising the SALT cap to $40,000 and implementing Medicaid community engagement requirements in December 2026—a month after the next midterm elections.

The bill also contained concessions related to ending Biden-era green energy tax credits, such as sunsetting credits for “facilities placed in service after December 31, 2028.”

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal.]