Speaker Mike Johnson delivered a major win for President Donald Trump early on Thursday morning, uniting a deeply divided House GOP to pass a bill that many of them were still pushing fiercely to change.
Passage of the sweeping tax and spending cuts package marked a stunning victory for both Johnson and Trump after the bill appeared doomed just days earlier.
“Sometimes it’s good to be underestimated, isn’t it?” a sleep-deprived Johnson said on the House floor early Thursday, after multiple all-night negotiating sessions with all corners of his conference.
More on the bill: Trump himself played a major role in passing the bill, which contains many of his campaign trail promises, such as extending his 2017 tax breaks and eliminating taxes on tips and overtime pay. It also devotes billions to border security, allowing for a major crackdown on immigration. In multiple sit-downs with GOP lawmakers this week, Trump made impassioned appeals to members to back his agenda.
The legislative package includes measures that would deeply cut into two of the nation’s key safety net programs – Medicaid and food stamps – while making permanent essentially all of the trillions of dollars of individual income tax breaks contained in the GOP’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
House Republicans unveiled a slate of changes to the bill on Wednesday evening in an effort to win over GOP holdouts. Those changes included speeding up work requirements for Medicaid to the end of 2026, from the start of 2029. Republicans also decided to phase out Biden-era energy tax credits sooner than planned, among other provisions.
Next steps: How much of the House’s version will survive in the Senate GOP is unclear. Republicans in that chamber have signaled they plan to make changes, but they are under intense pressure to move quickly: Trump and Johnson have told members they want to sign the bill into law by July 4.
And any changes in the Senate could upset the careful balance struck by House GOP leaders to pass the bill through its narrow majority. In the end, Johnson only failed to win over three GOP votes.
