House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., left, speaks in the House chamber as House Democrats stand to applaud him, prior to the final vote for President Donald Trump’s signature bill of tax breaks and spending cuts, at the Capitol, Thursday, July 3, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.) 
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., pauses to speak to reporters as he enters the chamber to prepare for final passage of President Donald Trump’s signature bill of tax breaks and spending cuts, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, July 3, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) 
Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., the top Democrat on the House Rules Committee, waits on the marble stairway outside the House chamber before the vote on President Donald Trump’s signature bill of tax breaks and spending cuts, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, July 3, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) 
House staffers carry American flags through a corridor outside the House chamber which will be used for a ceremony with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., after final passage of President Donald Trump’s signature bill of tax breaks and spending cuts, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, July 3, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
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WASHINGTON | House Republicans propelled President Donald Trump’s $4.5 trillion tax breaks and spending cuts bill to final congressional passage Thursday, overcoming multiple setbacks to approve his signature second-term policy package before a Fourth of July deadline.
The tight roll call, 218-214, came at a potentially high political cost, with two Republicans joining all Democrats opposed. GOP leaders worked overnight and the president himself leaned on a handful of skeptics to drop their opposition and send the bill to him to sign into law. Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York delayed voting by holding the floor for more than eight hours with a record-breaking speech against the bill.
“We have a big job to finish,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La. “With one big beautiful bill we are going to make this country stronger, safer and more prosperous than ever before.”
COLORADO COMMENT
Sen. John Hickenlooper, D-Colorado: “House Republicans – including our colleagues from Colorado – didn’t need to do this. Excessive tax cuts for the wealthy few are NOT worth mortgaging our future economy, sacrificing health care for 17 million Americans, and forfeiting our clean energy dominance. The choice should have been clear.”
Rep. Gabe Evans, R-Thornton: “As a father, second-generation American, Army combat veteran, and former cop, I came to Congress to fight for Coloradans. The One Big Beautiful Bill is a bold, commonsense blueprint for how to secure the border, lower costs for families, crack down on dangerous illegal immigrants, and give local law enforcement the tools needed to keep our communities safe. I will always have Coloradans’ backs and work to make Colorado a better place to live, work, and raise a family.”
Democratic Gov. Jared Polis: “The One Big Budget-Busting Bureaucracy-Building Act will raise health care costs for everyone, raise our deficit and national debt, hurt kids who need access to food, and increase costs on Coloradans. It will divert money from health care to bureaucrats, leading to an unprecedented expansion of government bureaucracy. It’s deeply disappointing that all the Republican members of our delegation voted for this bill, despite being warned repeatedly of the damage it will cause for their constituents and our state. Colorado Republicans and Trump now own the devastating impacts, cost increases, and chaos this bill will impose on hardworking Coloradans and Americans.”
Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Windsor: “After listening to constituents and community leaders from across the 4th District and securing wins for Colorado, I am proud to vote YES on President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill. With the passage of OBBB, we are delivering major tax cuts for Colorado families and small businesses, no taxes on tips and overtime, a record investment in border security, and funding the Golden Dome defense system. This bill also reduces the terrible Green New Scam subsidies I’ve fought against, supports our ranchers and farmers with major investments in our ag sector, and secures $50 billion in funding for our rural hospitals and health care providers.”
Rep. Brittany Pettersen, D-Lakewood: “It’s hard for me to hold back tears when trying to articulate how bad this bill truly is and what it will do to families and communities across this country. We only needed a few Republicans to stand up and do the right thing for their constituents, but unfortunately too many caved to Trump’s threats. Today, I’m thinking of people like my mom who work low-wage jobs and wouldn’t be able to survive without Medicaid. I’m thinking of the thousands of Coloradans who have reached out to my office, terrified about what this means for their kids, people with disabilities, seniors who live on a fixed income, and families in need. It threatens to shutter rural hospitals and nursing homes, fire frontline health workers, and destroy the behavioral health system we’ve spent years building – one that’s saved countless lives, including my mom’s, through addiction treatment and recovery services.”
Rep. Jason Crow, D-Aurora: “In all my time in Congress, President Trump’s budget bill is the worst I’ve ever seen. It shamefully is one of the largest transfers of wealth from the working class to the rich in history. With his signature, President Trump will kick millions of Americans off of their health care and take away food assistance from the working class. Republicans are taking from working people in order to give massive tax breaks to the rich. Their bill is also fiscally reckless and irresponsible, adding trillions to the national debt. Republicans pretend they’re for the working class, but with one bill, Donald Trump and Republicans just made life more difficult for many hardworking Americans who were already struggling to get by — all to give their billionaire friends a tax cut. It’s an awful bill that will hurt Colorado and our country. I voted NO.”
Rep. Jeff Hurd, R-Grand Junction: “I voted for it not because it’s perfect, but because it delivers on so many of the priorities we campaigned on: securing the border, stopping the largest tax hike on working families in history, letting hardworking Coloradans keep their tips and overtime pay, supporting our men and women in uniform, revitalizing America’s industrial defense base, lowering costs by expanding responsible oil and gas development—and so much more”
Rep. Jeff Crank, R-Colorado Springs: “Today was a win for the American people. The One Big Beautiful bill now heads to Trump’s desk. This bill will help further secure our borders, make the Trump Tax Cuts permanent, unleash American energy, and make our nation stronger than ever before.”
The outcome delivers a milestone for the president, by his Friday goal, and for his party,. It was a long-shot effort to compile a lengthy list of GOP priorities into what they called his “one big beautiful bill,” an 800-plus page measure. With Democrats unified in opposition, the bill will become a defining measure of Trump’s return to the White House, aided by Republican control of Congress.
Tax breaks and safety net cuts
At its core, the package’s priority is $4.5 trillion in tax breaks enacted in 2017 during Trump’s first term that would expire if Congress failed to act, along with new ones. This includes allowing workers to deduct tips and overtime pay, and a $6,000 deduction for most older adults earning less than $75,000 a year.
There’s also a hefty investment, some $350 billion, in national security and Trump’s deportation agenda and to help develop the “Golden Dome” defensive system over the U.S.
To help offset the lost tax revenue, the package includes $1.2 trillion in cutbacks to the Medicaid health care and food stamps, largely by imposing new work requirements, including for some parents and older people, and a major rollback of green energy tax credits.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the package will add $3.3 trillion to the deficit over the decade and 11.8 million more people will go without health coverage.
“This was a generational opportunity to deliver the most comprehensive and consequential set of conservative reforms in modern history, and that’s exactly what we’re doing,” said Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, the House Budget Committee chairman.
Democrats united against ‘ugly bill’
Democrats unified against the bill as a tax giveaway to the rich paid for on the backs of the working class and most vulnerable in society, what they called “trickle down cruelty.” Tensions ran high in the chamber.
Jeffries began the speech at 4:53 a.m. EDT and finished at 1:37 p.m. EDT, 8 hours, 44 minutes later, a record, as he argued against what he called Trump’s “big ugly bill.”
“We’re better than this,” Jeffries said, who used a leader’s prerogative for unlimited debate and read letter after letter from Americans writing about their reliance of the health care programs.
“I never thought that I’d be on the House floor saying that this is a crime scene,” Jeffries said.
“It’s a crime scene, going after the health, and the safety, and the well-being of the American people.”
And as Democrats, he said, “We want no part of it.”
Hauling the package through the Congress has been difficult from the start. Republicans have struggled mightily with the bill nearly every step of the way quarreling in the House and Senate, and often succeeding only by the narrowest of margins: just one vote.
The Senate passed the package days earlier with Vice President JD Vance breaking the tie vote. The slim majority in the House left Republicans little room for defections.
Political costs of saying no
Despite their discomfort with various aspects of the sprawling package, in some ways it became too big to fail — in part because Republicans found it difficult to buck Trump.
As Wednesday’s stalled floor action dragged overnight Trump railed against the delays.
“What are the Republicans waiting for???” the president said in a midnight post. “What are you trying to prove???”
Johnson relied heavily on White House Cabinet secretaries, lawyers and others to satisfy skeptical GOP holdouts. Moderate Republicans worried about the severity of cuts while conservatives pressed for steeper reductions. Lawmakers said they were being told the administration could provide executive actions, projects or other provisions in their districts back home.
The alternative was clear. Republicans who staked out opposition to the bill, including Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, and Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, were being warned by Trump’s well-funded political operation. Tillis soon after announced he would not seek reelection.
Rollback of past presidential agendas
In many ways, the package is a repudiation of the agendas of the last two Democratic presidents, a chiseling away at the Medicaid expansion from Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, and a pullback of Joe Biden’s climate change strategies in the Inflation Reduction Act.
Democrats have described the bill in dire terms, warning that cuts to Medicaid, which some 80 million Americans rely on, would result in lives lost. Food stamps that help feed more than 40 million people would “rip food from the mouths of hungry children, hungry veterans and hungry seniors,” Jeffries said.
Republicans say the tax breaks will prevent a tax hike on households and grow the economy. They maintain they are trying to rightsize the safety net programs for the population they were initially designed to serve, mainly pregnant women, the disabled and children, and root out what they describe as waste, fraud and abuse.
The Tax Policy Center, which provides nonpartisan analysis of tax and budget policy, projected the bill would result next year in a $150 tax break for the lowest quintile of Americans, a $1,750 tax cut for the middle quintile and a $10,950 tax cut for the top quintile. That’s compared with what they would face if the 2017 tax cuts expired.
Associated Press writers Kevin Freking, Joey Cappelletti and Matt Brown contributed to this report.
Well, the gutless GOP proved their loyalty to Trump and also proved that they are NOT for working-class people. The GOP cares only about corporations, profit, and the wealthy. Yesterday, the oligarchy got its way, again! According to every estimate I’ve read, the wealthy will gain more than $12,000 per year on average and the working poor will pay more than $1,600 per year. That’s not helping everyone out, that’s a gift to the top 10%!
Politicians do lie to us frequently. Statistics frequently lie. Democrats are moved to tears and Republicans are ecstatic as stated above. I say let’s see how this works out for our nation after two tax periods have passed. Then let’s have the AP give us what they think about this bill.
I predict we’ll have a few more $$ in our pocket and the AP will have moved on to another way to hate The Donald, (as well as the Democratic citizens). This will be forgotten by the passage of time. Wait and see.
“Nothing to see here. Move along. Move along.”
When the reality hits, no one who voted for this abomination should be spared.