The diarrhea slides down the leg of congress..

House Republicans pass ‘big, beautiful bill’ after weeks of division

The sweeping measure heads to the Senate, where Republicans are expected to make changes.

By Katherine Tully-McManus and Jennifer Scholtes

House Republicans came together to pass their domestic policy megabill early Thursday, after weeks of internal conflict and last-minute intervention from President Donald Trump.

The 215-214 vote is a major victory for Speaker Mike Johnson, who largely kept his conference together after days of around-the-clock negotiations with holdouts. He kept his promise of passing the measure before next week’s Memorial Day recess. The bill includes a fresh round of tax cuts sought by Trump, as well as hundreds of billions of dollars in new funding for the military and border security.

The vote went almost entirely along party lines. Two Republicans joined Democrats in voting no: Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, whose opposition was expected, and Warren Davidson of Ohio, a somewhat surprising defection. The chair of the hard-right Freedom Caucus, Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland, voted present. Two other Republicans missed the vote.

In a rare all-nighter for the House, GOP leaders gaveled the chamber back into session just after 11 p.m. Wednesday evening, forcing lawmakers to work through debate and procedural votes until the bill passed just before 7 a.m. Thursday morning.

“And after a long week and a long night, and countless hours of work over the past year — a lot of prayer and a lot of teamwork — my friends, it quite literally is again ‘morning in America,’” Johnson said in his final floor speech before the passage vote, in a nod to former President Ronald Reagan’s signature 1984 campaign ad.

The speaker called the bill “historic,” “nation-shaping” and “life-changing,” while claiming that it is the “most consequential legislation that any party has ever passed, certainly under a majority this thin.”

Now heading to the Senate, the bill is titled the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” at Trump’s suggestion.

“This is arguably the most significant piece of Legislation that will ever be signed in the History of our Country!” Trump posted on Truth Social on Thursday morning. “Great job by Speaker Mike Johnson, and the House Leadership, and thank you to every Republican who voted YES on this Historic Bill! Now, it’s time for our friends in the United States Senate to get to work, and send this Bill to my desk AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!”

Democrats have their own names for the measure, including “the GOP tax scam” and “one big, ugly bill.” Minority party leaders are deriding the bill by pointing to nonpartisan forecasts that it would increase the federal deficit by trillions of dollars and cause more than 10 million people to lose health care coverage, while shifting resources away from the lowest-income households and to the wealthiest.

In a lengthy closing speech ahead of the final vote, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries accused Republicans of bankrolling tax cuts for the rich with cuts to safety-net programs like Medicaid and SNAP food assistance.

“And people will die. That’s not hype. That’s not hyperbole. That’s not a hypothetical,” Jeffries said, before a heated exchange about “decorum” with the Republican presiding over the floor.

The bill’s path to passage was smoothed by a 42-page amendment that the House Rules Committee approved after spending more than 21 hours on a markup. The package of changes was loaded with hand-tailored provisions to woo Republican holdouts.

Trump also made commitments beyond what is in the bill, including to take executive action to reduce “waste, fraud and abuse” in Medicaid, according to fiscal hawks who came around to supporting the measure in the final hours before the vote.

Revisions include moving up the start date of Medicaid work requirements from Jan. 1, 2029, to Dec. 31, 2026, and expanding the criteria for states that could lose a portion of their federal payments if they offer coverage to undocumented people.

The eleventh-hour changes would also weaken the clean electricity investment and production tax credits created by the Democrats’ 2022 climate law, a change that clean energy developers warn would make them largely unusable.

Republicans from blue states won a bigger boost to the cap on state and local tax deductions to $40,000 per household, with an income limit set at $500,000. Fiscal hawks hated the so-called SALT increase but swallowed it in exchange for the Medicaid changes.

The bill now heads to the Senate, where Republicans are expected to tear up many of the policy provisions sought by House GOP hard-liners.

Rep. Chip Roy said after the House passage vote that he will be laying out ultimatums for what the bill needs to look like when it bounces back from the Senate. The Texas Republican will oppose the measure if it is projected to increase the federal deficit over the next five years, he said, even if the price-tag balances out over a decade.

“I think the 10-year window is bullshit. So that’s why I’m still not happy with the bill,” Roy told reporters. “I’ll go ahead and draw one of my red lines.”