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Donald Trump’s signature tax-and-spending bill is hanging in the balance as Republicans struggle to muster sufficient votes in the US House of Representatives.
House speaker Mike Johnson is determined to pass the bill as soon as possible, but has been frustrated by lawmakers who object to its provisions and overall cost. They have blocked House Republicans from approving a rule, which is necessary to begin debate on the measure and set the stage for its passage.
The vote was still open as the clock struck midnight on Thursday in Washington DC, with five Republicans and all Democrats voting against it. Eight GOP lawmakers had yet to cast their votes, though that group contains several of the bill’s detractors. Enough Republicans have already voted to block it but Johnson is hoping to change their minds.
“I’ll keep it open as long as it takes to make sure we got everybody here and accounted for and all the questions answered,” Johnson told Fox News.
Trump has demanded the legislation, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, be on his desk by Friday, the Independence Day holiday, and spent much of Wednesday holding meetings and phone calls with skeptical Republican lawmakers.
As the rule stalled, he threatened holdout lawmakers, writing on Truth Social: “What are the Republicans waiting for??? What are you trying to prove??? MAGA IS NOT HAPPY, AND IT’S COSTING YOU VOTES!!!”
The chamber began taking procedural votes on the bill earlier in the day, but in a sign of the measure’s challenges, one was kept open for more than seven hours, making it the longest vote in the history of the House of Representatives.
The Senate passed the bill, with vice-president JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote, on Tuesday, after an all-night session that saw a record number of amendments proposed. Now the House must approve the version passed by the Senate, which Johnson has acknowledged “went a little further than many of us would have preferred” in its changes, particularly to Medicaid, a program that provides healthcare to low-income and disabled Americans.
As he headed to the floor for the rule vote, Johnson told reporters: “We’re in a good place right now. This is the legislative process, this is exactly how I think the framers intended for it to work.”
But after voting against the motion, Keith Self, a conservative Texas congressman, blasted the bill as having failed to save enough money, curb green energy incentives or crack down on transgender rights.
“The Senate broke the House framework, and then they stomped all over it. Now, House leadership wants to cram this broken bill down our throats by rushing it to the floor while in the middle of discussions, completely disregarding their promises,” he wrote on X.
The House rules committee advanced the measure early on Wednesday morning, sending it to the floor for consideration and prompting lawmakers to flock back to the Capitol.
“I think these votes will take a little bit or a lot longer than usual. But that’s Washington. You guys are watching how the sausage is made, and that’s how business is run,” said congresswoman Nancy Mace.
Like several other members, Mace wound up driving from her South Carolina district to Washington after a flurry of thunderstorms on Tuesday prompted major flight delays and cancellations around the capital.
Smoking a cigar, Congressman Troy Nehls of Texas said: “There’s things in the bill I don’t like, but would I change the bill because I didn’t get what I wanted? I don’t think that would be good for America.”
The House approved an initial draft of the legislation in May by a single vote, overcoming Democrats’ unanimous opposition. But many fiscal conservatives are furious over cost estimates that project the Senate version would add even more to the federal deficit than the House-passed plan.
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the bill in its current form would add $3.3tn to the US budget deficit through 2034.
Johnson’s wafer-thin Republican majority risks losing decisive votes from rightwing fiscal hardliners demanding steep spending cuts, moderates wary of dismantling safety-net programs and Republicans from Democratic-led states expected to make a stand on a contentious tax provision. Any one of these groups could potentially derail the bill’s passage through a chamber where the GOP can afford to lose no more than three votes.
Trump celebrated the Senate’s passage of the bill as “music to my ears”. He has described the bill as crucial to his second-term agenda, and congressional Republicans made it their top priority.
It will extend tax cuts enacted during the president’s first term in 2017, and includes new provisions to cut taxes on tips, overtime and interest payments for some car loans. It funds Trump’s plans for mass deportations by allocating $45bn for Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities, $14bn for deportation operations and billions of dollars more to hire an additional 10,000 new agents by 2029.
It also includes more than $50bn for the construction of new border fortifications, which will probably include a wall along the border with Mexico.
To satisfy demands from fiscal conservatives for cuts to the US’s large federal budget deficit, the bill imposes new work requirements on enrollees of Medicaid. It also imposes a limit on the provider tax states use to fund their program, which could lead to reductions in services. Finally, it sunsets some incentives for green-energy technologies created by Congress under Joe Biden.
In a floor speech on Wednesday, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, warned: “This bill is a deal with the devil. It explodes our national debt. It militarizes our entire economy, and it strips away healthcare and basic dignity of the American people.
“For what? To give Elon Musk a tax break and billionaires, the greedy, taking of our nation. We cannot stand for it and we will not support it. You should be ashamed.”
Speaker emerita Nancy Pelosi said of the policy bill: “Well, if beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then you, GOP, you have a very blurred vision of what America is about.
“Is it beautiful to cut off food from seniors and children? Is it beautiful to cut off 17 million people from healthcare? Is it beautiful to do this? To give tax cuts to billionaires in our country? Is it beautiful to take money from education and the rest? The list goes on and on.”
