Hard-fought win in Senate sets up round two throwdown in House for Trump's big bill

The Senate’s suspenseful but ultimately successful vote on President Trump’s sweeping tax and spending cuts bill will be quickly followed by a high-stakes final vote in the House on Wednesday.

The House is scheduled to take up the revised package as Republicans race to meet Mr. Trump’s self-imposed deadline to sign the One Big Beautiful Bill Act as a “gift to the nation” on Independence Day.

However, House Republican leaders have even more holdouts to wrangle than their Senate counterparts.

Senate Republicans narrowly passed the package Tuesday by a vote of 51-50. Vice President J.D. Vance cast the tiebreaking vote after Republican leaders labored for more than 24 hours to sway holdouts during a sleepless marathon voting session.

The bill features a bevy of Republican priorities, including sweeping tax and spending cuts, an overhaul of energy regulations, and funding for border security, immigration enforcement and the national defense.

A few Senate Republicans hesitated to support the bill. Some wanted more spending cuts, and others wanted less, but Republican leaders wore them down and won them over.

“This doesn’t happen easily, for sure,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, South Dakota Republican. “And in this case, it took a lot of time and probably a lot less sleep than I think most people were hoping for.”

“But in the end, we got the job done, and we’re delighted we’re able to be partners with President Trump and his agenda … the right one for the American people, the one that they voted for last November,” Mr. Thune said.

The split dynamics that plagued the Senate are similar to and arguably exacerbated in the House, so a successful vote Wednesday is not guaranteed.

House Republicans have complained about various Senate changes to the bill, which passed the House in late May. That was before last-minute tweaks were made to win over Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Alaska Republican.

“What the Senate did is unconscionable,” Rep. Ralph Norman, South Carolina Republican, said during a House Rules Committee meeting. “I’ll vote against it here and I’ll vote against on the floor until we get it right.”

A group of 16 House moderates said the Senate went too far with its Medicaid cuts. A similar, if not greater, number of fiscal hawks said the upper chamber didn’t cut enough spending to ensure the package wouldn’t add to the deficit after factoring in economic growth.

It’s not clear exactly how many of those Republican skeptics are firmly opposed to the bill, but there are more publicly declared “no” votes than the three House leaders can afford with their slim majority.

Mr. Trump celebrated the “great” Senate Republicans who passed the bill and urged House Republicans to ignore its occasional grandstanders, stay united and “have fun.”

“It is no longer a ‘House Bill’ or a ‘Senate Bill,’” the president posted on social media. “It is everyone’s Bill. There is so much to be proud of, and EVERYONE got a major Policy WIN.”

“But, the Biggest Winner of them all will be the American People, who will have Permanently Lower Taxes, Higher Wages and Take Home Pay, Secure Borders, and a Stronger and More Powerful Military,” he said.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, Missouri Republican and one of the bill’s chief architects, projected confidence that it would pass the House.

“We’re getting closer to a big bill signing on July Fourth,” Mr. Smith said Tuesday after visiting the Senate during the final stretch of the arduous negotiations.

The Senate’s victory could have easily gone the other way if the bill had not included a permanent extension of the 2017 Trump tax cuts, which are set to expire at the end of the year. Failing to renew those breaks would result in a $4 trillion tax increase, the largest in U.S. history.

“There is a tax impact coming forward that’s going to hurt the people in my state,” said Ms. Murkowski, who ultimately provided the last vote needed to pass the legislation.

To win her vote, she secured protections for her state from some of the bill’s cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as food stamps, and Medicaid.

Three Republicans — Sens. Susan M. Collins of Maine, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Rand Paul of Kentucky — ultimately joined all Democrats in voting against the bill.

Ms. Collins and Mr. Tillis primarily opposed the steep Medicaid cuts but also had concerns about aggressive phaseouts of clean energy tax credits. Mr. Paul took issue with the deficit impact and a $5 trillion debt limit increase.

Their positions were emblematic of larger Republican infighting over the Medicaid cuts and how far to roll back solar, wind and other subsidies from President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.

Ms. Collins is up for reelection in 2026 and is a top Democratic target. So too was Mr. Tillis until he announced Sunday that he would retire instead.

On Saturday night, Mr. Trump threatened to support a primary challenger to Mr. Tillis.

All House Republicans are up for reelection. If they vote to cut social safety net programs, they balance worries about a potential Trump-supported primary threat with their general election prospects.

All the Republicans voting against or considering opposing the Trump agenda bill support its marquee policy: a permanent extension of Mr. Trump’s first-term tax cuts, which include lower rates and a higher standard deduction for individuals and investment write-offs for businesses.

Democrats in both chambers oppose a blanket extension of the tax cuts. They said Republicans were providing tax breaks to the wealthy and paying for it with cuts to health care and food benefits for the lowest-income Americans.

“Shame on you guys,” Sen. Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with Democrats, shouted as he exited the chamber during the final vote. “Most disgusting vote I’ve ever been in in my life.”

Bill highlights

In addition to extending Mr. Trump’s first-term tax cuts, the bill creates deductions to fulfill Mr. Trump’s campaign promises of no taxes on tips, overtime pay and car loan interest. Those provisions sunset after 2028, when his term will be coming to a close.

The Senate version provides a $6,000 deduction for seniors, up from $4,000 in the House bill. Both would phase out for seniors whose income exceeds $75,000, or $150,000 for joint filers, and expire after 2028.

It’s a bid to fulfill Mr. Trump’s promise not to tax Social Security benefits. Senate rules prohibit changes to the entitlement program in budget reconciliation.

In a hard-fought priority for House Republicans from Democratic-majority states, the measure would temporarily raise the cap on the federal tax deduction for state and local taxes, known as SALT, from $10,000 to $40,000. To appease Republican senators, none of whom represents a high-tax state, the cap would drop back to $10,000 in five years.

It includes Trump administration funding priorities, including $46.5 billion to finish building the border wall and even more money for immigration enforcement.

It provides $150 billion for national defense priorities, including the Golden Dome.

The bill would cut spending by more than $1 trillion, mostly from overhauling Medicaid and SNAP.

Democrats have accused Republicans of slashing health care and food benefits, but Republicans say their cuts to Medicaid and SNAP target only waste, fraud and abuse.

The bill would implement Medicaid work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents younger than 14 and tighten existing SNAP work requirements to align with the new Medicaid requirements.

The bill would raise the debt limit by $5 trillion to ensure the government can continue paying its obligations beyond August.

Mr. Trump has prioritized including the debt limit increase in the reconciliation bill so Democrats can’t use it as leverage to extract concessions from Republicans in exchange for their votes.