House Republicans are ready to vote on President Donald Trump’s $4.5 trillion tax breaks and spending cuts bill early Thursday after staying up all night with GOP leaders and the president himself working to persuade skeptical holdouts to drop their opposition by his Fourth of July deadline.
Final debates began in the predawn hours after another chaotic day and night at the Capitol following a series of closed-door meetings.
Putting the bill on Trump’s desk would be a milestone for the president and his party as Republicans have the votes to overcome Democratic opposition to a long list of GOP priorities. Trump’s “one big beautiful bill,” an 800-plus page package, is a defining measure of his return to the White House. Read what’s in the full bill for yourself.
Here’s the latest:
Billions to fund the military within the United States
The budget bill includes a hefty investment, some $350 billion, in national security and Trump’s deportation agenda and to help develop the “Golden Dome” defensive system over the U.S.
To help offset the costs of lost tax revenue, the package includes $1.2 trillion in cutbacks to the Medicaid health care and food stamps, largely by imposing new work requirements, including for some parents and older people, and a massive rollback of green energy investments.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the package will add $3.3 trillion to the deficit over the decade and 11.8 million more people will go without health coverage.
House speaker: ‘We will meet our July 4th deadline’
“Our way is to plow through and get it done,” Mike Johnson said as he emerged in the middle of the night from a series of closed-door meetings on Trump’s signature domestic policy package.
The package’s priority is extending $4.5 trillion in tax breaks enacted in Trump’s first term, and adding some new ones, like allowing workers to deduct tips and overtime pay, and a $6,000 deduction for most older adults earning less than $75,000 a year. Democrats say these savings will be wiped out by higher costs for most Americans as safety net benefits are cut.
Wisconsin governor signs budget in early morning to secure Medicaid funds
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers signed a new two-year budget in the early morning hours Thursday in a race against Congress to ensure the state gets a federal Medicaid match that it would lose under President Trump’s tax and spending cuts package.
In an extraordinarily rapid succession of events, Evers and Republican lawmakers unveiled a compromise budget deal on Tuesday, the Senate passed it Wednesday night and hours later just before 1 a.m. on Thursday the Assembly passed it. Evers signed it in his conference room minutes later.
Democrats who voted against the $111 billion spending bill said it didn’t go far enough in meeting their priorities of increasing funding for schools, child care and expanding Medicaid. But Evers, who hasn’t decided on whether he will seek a third term, hailed the compromise as the best deal that could be reached.
RELATED Wisconsin’s Medicaid deal
Alaska Democrats dial up pressure on Murkowski
Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego says Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski “folded like a cheap suit” on Trump’s big bill.
The newly elected Arizona senator spoke during a virtual town hall Wednesday night organized by the Alaska Democratic Party as it worked to dial up pressure on Murkowski, who faces re-election next year in a race crucial to Democrats in their difficult path to a Senate majority.
Gallego decried the Alaska carveouts Murkowski secured in exchange for her vote, calling the deal the “Kodiak kicker,” while Alaska’s other Republican senator, Dan Sullivan, “didn’t even attempt to fight.”
The bill hurts working class families nationwide, Gallego said, and Sullivan and Murkowski “screwed and rigged these working class people to benefit the Uber rich.”
US employers add a surprising 147,000 jobs despite uncertainty
The American labor market continues to show surprising resilience despite uncertainty over Trump’s economic policies. The unemployment rate ticked down 4.1% from 4.2% in May, the Labor Department said Thursday.
Hiring rose modestly from a revised 144,000 in May and beat economists expectations of fewer than 118,000 new jobs as Trump’s trade wars, the federal hiring freeze and immigration crackdown weigh on the American job market. U.S. applications for jobless aid fell to 233,000 last week as layoffs remain low.
A survey released Wednesday by the payroll processor ADP found that private companies cut 33,000 jobs last month, reflecting a hesitancy to hire and a reluctance to replace departing workers.
The president’s deportations, meanwhile, are driving immigrants out of the U.S. labor force. Those working and looking for work fell by 625,000 in May, the biggest drop in a year and a half.
What’s in the Big Beautiful Bill Act
At some 887 pages, the legislation includes tax breaks, spending cuts, a rollback of solar energy tax credits, new money for national defense and deportations. The bill does not eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits, despite what Trump says.
The bill rolls back past presidential agendas: In many ways, the package is a repudiation of the agendas of the last two Democratic presidents, a chiseling away at the Medicaid expansion from Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, and a pullback of Joe Biden’s climate change strategies in the Inflation Reduction Act.
Congressional Budget Office review: The nonpartisan CBO said Sunday the bill would pile nearly $3.3 trillion onto the nation’s debt load from 2025 to 2034, a nearly $1 trillion increase over the House-passed version of the bill. The analysis also found that 11.8 million Americans would become uninsured by 2034 if the bill passed.
White House: The big bill is kind of like the solution to a bad hair day
With Trump’s spending and tax cut bill nearing passage, the White House is getting creative in pitching it to Americans who haven’t been closely following the debate over the legislation.
The White House late Wednesday dropped a tongue-in-cheek video on social media that includes before and after shots of women who transform flat hair to voluminous bouffants as a narrator ticks off aspects of the bill that she says will make Americans’ lives better.
“Are you tired of government promises falling flat? Do you go through an outrageous amount of stress just trying to get by?” the narrator intones as a woman screams in frustration over her bad hair day. “Then bump it up with ‘one big, beautiful bill’ and get that relief fast and easy.”
By the end of the short video, the screaming woman and others are sporting new hairdos that are markedly more voluminous.
Hakeem Jeffries has been talking for three hours and counting
Republican leadership spent much of the night and early morning persuading a handful of holdouts to support the Senate-approved tax cuts and spending bill. But now, House Speaker Mike Johnson appears to have the votes, and Democrats are standing in the way.
As the House wrapped up its debate over passing Trump’s agenda, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries used a tool known as the “magic minute” that allows leaders unlimited time to speak. He started his address just before 5 a.m. ET. And it’s still going.
“I’m going to take my time,” he said, before launching into a speech criticizing Republicans’ deference to Trump, reading through personal accounts of people concerned about losing their health care coverage, and recounting American history.
Eventually, Jeffries will end his speech, and Republicans will move to final passage of the bill.
