After a vote that remained open for several hours as House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., tried to convince five holdouts to advance President Trump's signature legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, House Republicans have cleared a key hurdle, setting the bill up for final passage ahead of a self-imposed July 4 deadline.
It is unclear what concessions Johnson made, if any, to secure the support of the few lawmakers who held up the vote. With just a narrow majority in the House, Republicans could only afford to lose three votes. The final tally was 219-213.
Johnson's persistence allowed him and other Republican leaders to muster enough support to move the bill forward while navigating that slim majority and a slew of internal party divisions.
At the heart of the legislation is an extension of President Trump's 2017 tax cuts. It would also end taxes on tips and overtime, at least temporarily, which was one of the big campaign promises Trump made.
The bill also includes new spending on defense and immigration enforcement, and it lifts the nation's debt limit by $5 trillion.
To pay for that, the bill cuts spending across a range of programs, most notably Medicaid, the joint federal and state program that provides health care for roughly 70 million low-income, elderly and disabled Americans.
Early estimates suggest around 11 million people could lose coverage under the GOP bill, and that's one of the main reasons why negotiations around this bill were so contentious in both chambers.
Overall, the sprawling GOP bill — clocking in at nearly 1,000 pages — represents a dramatic realignment of the federal government's role in American life, shifting resources from the social safety net and investments in clean energy, and reorienting them to finance trillions of dollars in new spending on tax cuts, immigration enforcement and national defense.
Up next, lawmakers will debate the bill on the floor. Once that's done, they can proceed to a final vote.
That's a process that could take several more hours, but assuming Republicans have the votes, they will have made good on their promises to have this bill to President Trump's desk by Friday.
Even with its likely passage, the fight over this bill is far from over. Democrats have made clear they plan to make this legislation the centerpiece of their push to win back control of Congress in the 2026 midterm elections.
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