WASHINGTON (AP) — With a push from President Donald Trump, House Republicans sent a GOP budget blueprint to passage Tuesday, a step toward delivering his “big, beautiful bill” with $4.5 trillion in tax breaks and $2 trillion in spending cuts despite a wall of opposition from Democrats and discomfort among Republicans. House Speaker Mike Johnson had almost no votes to spare in […]
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House GOP pushes ‘big’ budget resolution to passage, a crucial step toward delivering Trump’s agenda
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WASHINGTON (AP) — With a push from President Donald Trump, House Republicans sent a GOP budget blueprint to passage Tuesday, a step toward delivering his “big, beautiful bill” with $4.5 trillion in tax breaks and $2 trillion in spending cuts despite a wall of opposition from Democrats and discomfort among Republicans.
House Speaker Mike Johnson had almost no votes to spare in his bare-bones GOP majority and was fighting on all fronts — against Democrats, uneasy rank-and-file Republicans and skeptical GOP senators — to advance the party’s signature legislative package. Trump was making calls to wayward GOP lawmakers and had invited Republicans to the White House.
The vote was 217-215, with all Democrats opposed, and the outcome was in jeopardy until the gavel.
“On a vote like this, you’re always going to have people you’re talking to all the way through the close of the vote,” Majority Leader Steve Scalise said before the roll call. “It’s that tight.”
Passage of the package is crucial to kickstarting the process. Trump wants the Republicans who control Congress to approve a massive bill that would extend tax breaks, which he secured during his first term but are expiring later this year, while also cutting spending across federal programs and services.
Next steps are long and cumbersome before anything can become law — weeks of committee hearings to draft the details and send the House version to the Senate, where Republicans passed their own scaled-back version. And more big votes are ahead, including an unrelated deal to prevent a government shutdown when federal funding expires March 14. Those talks are also underway.
It’s all unfolding amid emerging backlash to what’s happening elsewhere as billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk is trimming the size of federal agencies with his Department of Government Efficiency.
Democrats during an afternoon debate decried the package as a “betrayal” to Americans. The Democrats booed the GOP budget blueprint. But as the minority party, they don’t have the votes to stop it.