Trump budget bill extending first-term tax cuts survives House vote
Fired pipeline worker Bugsy Allen joins ‘America Reports’ to discuss President Donald Trump’s calls to revive the Keystone XL pipeline project.
The House of Representatives has adopted a resolution that will eventually become a massive multi-trillion-dollar bill full of President Donald Trump’s priorities on the border, defense, energy and taxes.
In a major victory for House GOP leaders, the resolution passed in a 217 to 215 vote.
All Democrats voted against the measure, along with lone Republican rebel Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who was concerned about its effect on the national deficit.
The next step is now for the relevant House committees to meet and build their own proposals, which will eventually be returned into the framework and negotiated into a compromise deal with the Senate.
BLACK CAUCUS CHAIR ACCUSES TRUMP OF ‘PURGE’ OF ‘MINORITY’ FEDERAL WORKERS
Speaker Mike Johnson is advancing a reconciliation bill aimed at Trump’s priorities through the House of Representatives. (Getty Images)
It was a dramatic scene in the House chamber on Monday night as Republican leaders delayed formally ending a vote for roughly 45 minutes as they worked to convince conservative fiscal hawks to support the legislation.
Impatient Democrats called out loud for the vote to be closed as Republicans huddled in varied groups.
Two people on the House floor told Fox News Digital that President Donald Trump got involved at one point, speaking to one of the holdouts, Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., by phone.
Reps. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., and Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, could be seen on the phone at other points on the House floor as well, but it’s not clear if they were speaking with Trump.
At one point, House GOP leaders appeared to lose confidence that they had enough support and abruptly canceled the planned vote.
Moments later, however, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle were rushing back to the House floor and Fox News Digital was told the vote would be held.
Meanwhile, three House Democrats who had been absent early in the day returned for the Tuesday evening vote in dramatic fashion.
Rep. Brittany Pettersen, D-Colo., who had a baby roughly a month ago, returned to the House floor with her infant to oppose the bill. And Rep. Kevin Mullin, R-Calif., who was recently hospitalized for an infection, appeared in the chamber aided by a walker.
House and Senate Republicans are aiming to use their majorities to advance Trump’s agenda via the budget reconciliation process.
It’s a Senate maneuver that lowers the threshold for passage from two-thirds to a simple majority, but it’s used when a party controls both houses of Congress and the White House because it allows that party to pass its policy goals even under the slimmest margins.
And Republicans are dealing with slim margins indeed; with current numbers, the House GOP can afford no more than one defection to pass anything without Democratic votes if all liberals are voting.
On the Senate side, Republicans can lose no more than two of their own in the reconciliation process.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune is waiting in the wings with a Plan B. (Getty Images)
The House resolution aimed to increase spending on border security, the judiciary and defense by roughly $300 billion, while seeking at least $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion in spending cuts elsewhere.
As written, the House bill also provided $4.5 trillion to extend President Donald Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act provisions, which expire at the end of this year.
An amendment negotiated by House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, and conservatives on his panel would also force lawmakers to make $2 trillion in cuts, or else risk the $4.5 trillion for Trump’s tax cuts getting reduced by the difference.
The resolution also fulfilled Trump’s directive to act on the debt limit, raising it by $4 trillion or roughly two years.
NONCITIZEN VOTER CRACKDOWN LED BY GOP AHEAD OF 2026 MIDTERMS
A bipartisan deal struck in 2023 saw the debt limit suspended until January 2025. Now, projections show the U.S. could run out of cash to pay its debts by spring if Congress does not act.
The resolution’s odds were touch and go for much of the week so far, since House lawmakers returned from a week-long recess period Monday.
Several fiscal conservatives had demanded more assurances from House GOP leadership that Republicans would seek deep spending cuts to offset the cost of Trump’s priorities.
Republican lawmakers in more competitive districts are concerned some cuts may go too far, however.
The resolution directs the House Energy & Commerce Committee to find at least $880 billion in spending cuts – which those lawmakers fear will mean severe cuts for federal programs like Medicaid.
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Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., pushed back against fears of such cuts during his weekly press conference on Tuesday.
“Medicaid is hugely problematic because it has a lot of fraud, waste and abuse. Everybody knows that. We all know it intuitively. No one in here would disagree,” Johnson said. “What we’re talking about is rooting out the fraud, waste, and abuse. It doesn’t matter what party you’re in, you should be for that because it saves your money, and it preserves the programs so that it is available for the people who desperately need it.”
It was also supported by a wide swath of Republicans, including conservative Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, a member of the House Budget Committee that approved the bill earlier this month.
“It’s the best bill we’re going to get,” Gill said while praising Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, for his efforts. “If I were writing it then I’d write it differently, but this is the best we’re gonna get it.”
Rep. Randy Feenstra, R-Iowa, said he was eager to begin working on “cutting taxes for Iowans, securing our border, unleashing American energy production, and eliminating waste and fraud in our government.”
Elizabeth Elkind is a politics reporter for Fox News Digital leading coverage of the House of Representatives. Previous digital bylines seen at Daily Mail and CBS News.
Follow on Twitter at @liz_elkind and send tips to elizabeth.elkind@fox.com
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The massive GOP bill would also direct $4 trillion toward raising the debt limit
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The Latest: House GOP pushes ‘big’ budget resolution to passage
WOODTV.com
by: The Associated Press
Posted: Feb 26, 2025 / 08:12 AM EST
Updated: Feb 26, 2025 / 08:12 AM EST
With a push from President Donald Trump, House Republicans have sent a GOP budget blueprint to passage, a step toward delivering Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.” The bill includes $4.5 trillion in tax breaks and $2 trillion in spending cuts, despite a wall of opposition from Democrats and discomfort among Republicans.
Meanwhile, Trump’s effort to suspend the system for resettling refugees in the U.S. is on hold after a federal judge in Seattle blocked it.
Here’s the latest:
The turmoil that enveloped the federal workforce over the last few days is unlikely to cease anytime soon as the U.S. government’s human resources agency considers how to fulfill Elon Musk ’s demands.
The Office of Personnel Management told agency leaders Monday that their employees did not have to comply with a Musk-inspired edict for workers to report their recent accomplishments or risk getting fired. But later that evening, OPM sent out another memo suggesting that there could be similar requests going forward — and workers might be sanctioned for noncompliance.
OPM originally sent employees an email over the weekend with the subject line “what did you do last week?” Recipients were asked to respond with “approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished.”
President Donald Trump did little to clear up the situation while talking to reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday.
“It’s somewhat voluntary,” he said, but added that “if you don’t answer, I guess you get fired.”
▶ Read more about Musk’s demands for the federal workforce
House Republicans Tuesday night sent a GOP budget blueprint to passage, 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 fought on all fronts — against Democrats, uneasy rank-and-file Republicans and skeptical GOP senators — to advance the party’s signature legislative package. Trump made calls to wayward GOP lawmakers and invited Republicans to the White House.
The vote was 217-215, with a single Republican and all Democrats opposed, and the outcome was in jeopardy until the gavel.
▶ Read more about the passage of the budget resolution
Trump said Tuesday that he plans to offer a “gold card” visa with a path to citizenship for $5 million, replacing a 35-year-old visa for investors.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the “Trump Gold Card” would replace EB-5 visas in two weeks. EB-5s were created by Congress in 1990 to generate foreign investment and are available to people who spend about $1 million on a company that employs at least 10 people.
Lutnick said the gold card — actually a green card, or permanent legal residency — would raise the price of admission for investors and do away with fraud and “nonsense” that he said characterize the EB-5 program. Like other green cards, it would include a path to citizenship.
Trump made no mention of the requirements for job creation. And, while the number of EB-5 visas is capped, Trump mused that the federal government could sell 10 million “gold cards” to reduce the deficit. He said it “could be great, maybe it will be fantastic.”
▶ Read more about Trump’s “gold visa” plan
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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House Republicans advance Trump’s tax cut plan
The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives late on Tuesday advanced President Donald Trump’s tax-cut and border security agenda, delivering a major boost to his 2025 priorities.
The vote on passage was 217-215 with Representative Thomas Massie, a prominent fiscal hawk, as a lone Republican voting in opposition, and no Democrats supporting the controversial measure. One Democrat did not vote.
The measure is a preliminary step to extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts later this year. Tuesday’s vote sent the budget resolution to the Senate, where Republicans are expected to take it up.
“We have a lot of hard work ahead of us, but we are going to deliver the American First agenda,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters after the vote. “We’re going to celebrate tonight, and we’ll roll up our sleeves and get right back in the morning.”
The final vote came after Johnson and No. 2 House Republican Steve Scalise spent hours persuading holdouts to back the move.
The measure’s passage followed an unusual series of maneuvers in which Johnson canceled a vote on the bill, because it lacked the votes for passage, and then promptly reversed course.
Both leaders said Trump himself had been contacting reluctant members about the need to advance the $4.5 trillion tax-cut plan, which would also fund the deportation of migrants living in the U.S. illegally, tighten border security, energy deregulation and military spending.
Several hardline conservatives sought deeper spending cuts and stronger control over separate government funding legislation to avert a potential shutdown after current funding expires on March 14.
Three Republican hardliners seen initially as firm no votes – Tim Burchett, Victoria Spartz and Warren Davidson – wound up voting for the measure in the end.
Doubts about House Republican unity prompted Senate Republicans to enact their own budget resolution as a Plan B ploy last week: a $340 billion measure that covers Trump’s border, defense and energy priorities but leaves the thornier issue of tax policy for later in the year.
Both chambers need to pass the same budget resolution to unlock a parliamentary tool that Republicans will need later this year to circumvent Democratic opposition and the Senate filibuster and enact legislation containing the Trump agenda.
The House budget seeks $2 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years to pay for Trump’s agenda. The tax cuts Trump is seeking would extend breaks passed during his first term in office, his main legislative accomplishment, that are due to expire at the end of this year.
Passing a budget resolution is just the first deadline facing lawmakers in the coming months.
Lawmakers also need to enact fiscal 2025 spending legislation to keep federal agencies operating after current funding expires on March 14. Later this year they will need to act on the federal government’s self-imposed debt ceiling or risk triggering catastrophic default on its $36 trillion in debt.
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