WASHINGTON – The Landmark Act, which rewrites tax laws and collects programs that provide medical and food stamps to the poor, passed the House early Thursday.
The measure, entitled “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” will boost funding for the border security and the Department of Defense, eliminate tips and overtime taxes, provide new tax credits for seniors, and renew the 2017 tax cuts passed by the first Trump administration. To pay for these new funding commitments, the bill proposes elimination of Green Energy Tax benefits passed under President Biden, as well as a reduction in Medicaid’s estimated $1 trillion and a supplementary nutrition support program.
Still, the bill adds a lot of money to its debt, so Congress could be forced to cuts, including hundreds of millions, in a process known as quarantine.
The House vote fell in line with party policy. By opposing the bill, the Trump administration said Democrats have supported the biggest tax hike on middle-class Americans in decades.
Meanwhile, Democrats have accused Republicans of voting for the deepest cuts in modern healthcare. By creating new barriers to Medicaid coverage through the introduction of labor requirements and increasing premiums under the Affordable Care Act, CBOs and other nonpartisan organizations estimate that up to 14 million Americans could lose insurance coverage.
These dramatic changes to the healthcare landscape have been suspended for several Republican senators.
Maine Sen. Susan Collins said he is “very wary of cutting off Medicaid.” Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley said there could not be a significant reduction in Medicaid benefits. And after Thursday’s vote, Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall said material changes should be expected in the House bill.
“We need to bring that bill back with a fine tooth comb and improve it,” Marshall said in an interview with conservative cable channel Newsmax. “I think Medicaid has the opportunity to improve that bill and make sure we strengthen it.
A Senate rollback cuts on the Medicaid program could face resistance from the home free meeting during the settlement process. Members of that group, declaring their commitment to fiscal conservatism, are calling for even deeper cuts in their Medicaid programs.
Maryland Rep. Andy Harris, chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, voted “now” early Thursday morning, maintaining negotiation leverage as the bill proceeded that path across Capitol Hill.
“I voted to move the bill during the presidential course,” Harris wrote on social media. “There’s still a lot of work in the Medicaid program, in reducing deficits and ending waste, fraud and abuse.”
The vote comes hours after Trump met GOP Holdout at the White House. Before meeting with the president Wednesday afternoon, some of these lawmakers were questioning the prospects for the bill to pass this week ahead of the anniversary deadline set by Louisiana Republican Speaker Mike Johnson.
Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina denied the Freedom Caucus on Thursday, telling CNN that the cuts they are pushing on will hardly fall into national debt.
“I had a chance,” Graham told the Caucus. “Some of these cuts are unrealistic. We’ve been talking about over a decade – you know, if you’re going to do $1.5 trillion, that’s like a half percent. So don’t let us take this horse here that we’ve somehow made some big progress in reducing our spending, because we didn’t.”
North Dakota Sen. Kevin Cramer also laughs at the caucus, calling members “rich” to lecture Senate Republicans on fiscal conservatism, “and not that conservative bill.” The CBO estimates that the House law will result in a $3.8 trillion increase in the deficit.
If passed, new work requirements for Medicaid will begin at the end of 2026, shortly after the medium-term elections. The Green Energy Tax Credit will phase out projects that are not yet under construction 60 days after the law comes into effect.
The state and local tax credit limit, known as salt, increases from $10,000 to $40,000, and is gradually progressive for individuals and households making more than $500,000. And while the president campaigned on a promise to eliminate taxes on social security, Congressional rules prevented Republicans from including complete cuts. Instead, the bill proposes a step-up of tax credits for seniors up to $4,000.
On his social media platform, Trump wrote that the bill was “undetectedly the most important part of the law that will be signed into the history of our country.”
“There’s no time to waste,” he added. Speaker Johnson has set the goal of sending bills to the president’s desk by Independence Day.
White House spokesman Caroline Levitt said the president’s team will “sue” negotiations with the Senate now that the bill has passed the House. “We’ll see how that goes,” she said.
“One big beautiful bill” is named “One big beautiful bill” because it is one big beautiful bill that includes everything this president wants from the American public. It offers many of his core campaign promises. “He hopes they’ll be busy with this bill and send it to his desk as soon as possible.”
Two House Republicans who voted against the bill, Thomas Massey of Kentucky and Warren Davidson of Ohio, should face major challenges to resist the president’s orders, Leavitt added.
“What is the alternative, I’ll ask members of Congress. Did they want to see the tax hike? Did they want to see our country want to go bankrupt? That’s the alternative they’re trying to vote for,” she said. “The president believes that the Republican Party needs to be united.”
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