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.
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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.
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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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House Republicans narrowly adopt budget plan in win for Trump
In a win for President Trump, House Republicans narrowly adopted a budget plan that lowers taxes and makes steep spending cuts. Democrats argue the spending cuts go too far. NBC News’ Ryan Nobles reports.
Feb. 27, 2025
© 2025 NBCUniversal Media, LLC
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Senate Republicans plot changes to House-passed blueprint for Trump’s agenda
WASHINGTON – House Republicans’ budget plan to enact President Donald Trump’s agenda has already hit a snag: Senate Republicans.
The upper chamber is already demanding changes to the budget blueprint passed late Tuesday night before they’ll vote on it, which would kick off the process of filling the shell bill with policy.
“Will there be changes in the Senate?” said Sen. John Kennedy, R-La. “The short answer is yes. The long answer is hell yes.”
The House plan sets out a total amount of money Congress can spend on Trump’s priorities and how much it must cut from the federal budget to offset those costs.
The proposal gives lawmakers room to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and implement new ones at a cost of $4.5 trillion. It would also allocate $300 billion for spending on defense and border security and would raise the debt ceiling by $4 trillion over two years.
But it would also necessitate at least $2 trillion in federal cost savings over 10 years. That includes $880 billion from the House Energy and Commerce Committee – an amount that tax policy experts say would likely necessitate cuts to Medicaid, the program that provides health insurance to 72 million low-income Americans.
“I don’t love that,” said Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who represents a state with 1.2 million residents enrolled in Medicaid. “I will predict to you that that resolution in that form will not be voted on on the Senate floor.”
Sen. Jim Justice, R-W.Va., also said Medicaid is “monstrously important” in his state, where almost 500,000 people are enrolled, but that something needs to be done about the federal deficit.
“I think it’s premature for us to run through the village with our hair on fire,” he said. “We absolutely will watch, and we’re concerned as we should be, but at the same time we all know we’ve got to do something about this mess.”
Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said Senate Republicans want to “make (Medicaid) more efficient, but not to hurt people.”
Other senators raised concerns about the package’s size: too big, or not big enough.
“I appreciate the efforts, but again it’s just not adequate,” said Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis. “Nobody can justify $7 trillion of spending. You can’t justify that now that the (2020 coronavirus) pandemic’s slowing down.”
“All my Republican colleagues probably ran on ‘zero-based budgeting,’ right? They obviously weren’t serious about it,” he added.
But most senators, including Senate GOP leadership, are concerned that the package extends the tax cuts enacted under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act but doesn’t make them permanent.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said he would like the tax cuts “bigger and bolder.”
And Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., chair of the Senate Budget Committee, wrote on X Wednesday morning “I appreciate the House’s efforts” and said he plans to work with them to “strengthen the tax cut provisions by making them permanent in order to meet President Donald Trump’s priorities.”
Their responses indicate a lengthy fight to come over the budget resolution. Both chambers will need to agree to the same plan to unlock the process of budget reconciliation, a procedural tool that will allow them to pass Trump’s agenda without the help of Democrats.
Reconciliation bypasses the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster threshold, but the policy must be related to spending or taxation to qualify. Former President Joe Biden also used the strategy when passing his agenda through the Inflation Reduction Act and the American Rescue Plan.
