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President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson pushed their party’s sweeping tax-and-spending legislation to passage on Thursday morning, just in time to meet Trump’s self-imposed deadline of July 4.
Leaders met for hours Wednesday into Thursday with members across the conference’s ideological spectrum who were adamant that the Senate-passed version did not cut enough in spending or salvage enough of Medicaid. Eventually, all but two of them folded to help pass the legislation, which would trim social safety net programs to pay for extending tax cuts, enacting new ones, and boosting spending on immigration and defense.
The 218-214 vote is a testament to Trump’s sustained sway over the conference, and Johnson’s ability to beat the odds. The duo has pushed through multiple tough votes this year — and the tax and spending cuts bill was the most difficult yet.
“Every time it looked like it might die, we just didn’t give anybody that chance to let the bill go down,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters Thursday.
“There were members last night saying, ‘Let’s delay the vote again. Let’s close this vote and just go home and we’ll come back tomorrow and take it up again.’ We could have done that 100 times, and we’d be here till December and probably still not have a bill,” he added.”
Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Thomas Massie of Kentucky were the only Republican opponents of the bill; every Democrat also voted no.
GOP leaders’ hardest sell: fiscal hawks who were openly skeptical of the administration’s claim that the bill will spark enough growth to eventually shrink budget deficits, particularly after the Senate’s more expensive proposal toned down a House rollback of Biden-era clean energy tax credits.
The White House helped sway them in part by promising to tackle some of those credits using executive action. Independent analyses predict the legislation, which Trump is expected to sign on Friday, will grow the national debt by some $3 trillion.
“Republicans have put together a product that has a lot of good pieces to it, but it’s falling short,” Rep. Chip Roy, one of the House Freedom Caucus members who met with Johnson and Trump to discuss their concerns, said Wednesday.
“I want the Green New Scam Deal fixed, and I want us to get to the place where we’re honoring our commitments to reduce deficits. We can do those things; amend it; and send it back to the Senate,” Roy added. He ultimately voted “yes” even after pledging to abstain from a procedural vote.
A senior White House official wouldn’t get into specific guarantees or assurances that were made to lawmakers, but noted there were questions over the last two days from lawmakers on “implementation, questions of interpretation, [and] questions of analysis that only administration officials are really strongly equipped to answer.”
“Ultimately, we were able to come to an agreement and pass the legislation based on those conversations and mutual affirmations of our shared goals,” the official added.
It was a close call. GOP leaders held votes open for hours as they juggled concerns that weather would prevent members’ returns to Washington and, overnight, that a handful of members with outstanding concerns would prevent them from adopting the rule that set up the bill’s consideration.
Despite their threats, hardliners like Roy wound up voting “yes” on that resolution. But other holdouts including Reps. Thomas Massie and Keith Self voted “no” before a multi-hour whipping operation eventually swayed them to flip their votes.
Throughout their pressure campaign, House Republican leaders leaned on the possibility of again wielding the filibuster-proof reconciliation process to pass additional partisan spending packages later this Congress.
Trump and top White House aides were also heavily involved in the effort to win over skeptical lawmakers: The president spent Wednesday in meetings with holdouts including moderates and House Freedom Caucus members, some of whom said afterward the administration had promised to use executive action to address their concerns.
The president became openly frustrated overnight, posting on Truth Social early Thursday that this “should be an easy yes vote” for the GOP.
Trump now heads to Iowa to launch “the Great American State Fair” — he’s likely to tout the bill as a win for his campaign agenda while there, too.
Meanwhile, White House officials are already discussing how to best message the bill, with one possibility having cabinet members, the vice president, and possibly Trump himself travel across the country to sell it to Americans, one person familiar with the discussions told Semafor.
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Leaders logged an early win Wednesday when Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio — one of just two House Republicans who voted “no” on the bill the first time it came to the floor out of concerns over its hefty price tag — said he’d decided to support the legislation.
He told reporters that Senate’s decisions to rein in the House’s boosted cap on state and local tax deductions, strike its proposed ban on state regulation of artificial intelligence, and pare back Medicaid more aggressively helped convince him to vote yes — despite outstanding concerns over its handling of clean energy tax credits and Planned Parenthood funding.
“I do think this is probably the best thing that we can get done before we hit the debt limit” later this year, Davidson said.
The senior White House official, shortly after the bill’s passage, told reporters that the administration focused on addressing “financial impacts” in lawmakers’ districts and states as well as “how particular provisions would be implemented and administered by the administration on the Medicaid side.”
“What members are looking to hear is how this affects my district in very granular terms, and administration, technical career political officials, and obviously the cabinet had worked to provide that analysis,” the official said.
House Democrats are already laying the groundwork to hit their GOP colleagues over cuts to Medicaid, SNAP and student loans in the 2026 elections — boosted by skepticism from voters about the legislation.
Their campaign arm sent a memo Tuesday that said swing-seat Republicans would be “punch[ing] their pink slip” by voting for the bill.
“Every single House Democrat will stand up for your health care [and] nutritional assistance,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who held up passage Thursday morning by spending several hours on the House floor sharing constituent stories, said at a press conference before voting began Wednesday.
“That is why every single House Democrat will vote ‘hell no’ against this one big, ugly bill.’”
Notable
- Semafor’s Dave Weigel looked in depth on Wednesday at provisions that didn’t entirely make good on Trump’s campaign promises — but were marketed as if they did.