Posted on Thursday, May 22, 2025
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by Shane Harris
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56 Comments
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After a marathon session on Wednesday that stretched into Thursday morning, the House of Representatives narrowly passed a budget reconciliation package containing many of President Donald Trump’s key domestic priorities – what he has termed the “One Big, Beautiful Bill.” AMAC Action had notably led a grassroots advocacy campaign empowering AMAC members to urge their representatives in Washington to pass the bill.
The final vote tally was 215-214, with every Democrat on the floor voting no. Two Republicans also voted no, and one voted present, but absences in the House allowed the bill to pass.
The vote was a major victory for both Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson, who had promised to pass the bill through the House before Memorial Day. After Republicans had worked on the bill for months, it appeared earlier this week that holdouts from some GOP members might sink the legislation. The bill failed a Budget Committee vote on Sunday before last-minute changes enabled it to pass on Monday and move to the House floor.
Still, concerns from some Republican members that the bill didn’t contain enough spending cuts made final passage dicey. On Wednesday, Trump made the short trip to the Capitol to personally lobby on-the-fence members to back the legislation – a move that may well have been the deciding factor.
The House debated the bill overnight before clearing the last major procedural hurdle around 2:40 am Thursday morning, a vote on the rule limiting debate on the bill. Just over four hours later, the chamber passed the bill, eliciting shouts and applause from Republicans who had stuck around to see the final count.
The version that ultimately passed the House delivers on many of Trump’s key 2024 campaign promises, primarily an extension of the tax cuts in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that were due to expire at the end of this year. Without an extension of those tax cuts, Americans would have seen what would effectively have been the largest tax hike in history.
The bill also eliminates taxes on tips and overtime pay, includes tax deductions for purchasing an American-made vehicle, slashes taxes on Social Security income, and increases the child tax credit. The average American family can expect a double-digit percentage decrease in their tax bill, coming out to around $5,000 more in their pocket come tax season.
One of the biggest sticking points for some Republicans was the state and local tax (SALT) deduction. After heated debate, the bill increases the maximum SALT deduction from $10,000 to $40,000 for taxpayers reporting less than $500,000 in income.
Another major provision of the bill is increased funding for border security. That funding should allow the Trump administration to complete the border wall, along with hiring 10,000 new ICE personnel, 5,000 new customs officers, and 3,000 new Border Patrol agents, and giving $10,000 bonuses to existing agents.
Democrats had centered their opposition to the bill on “cuts” to some social safety net programs, primarily Medicaid, specifically noting that “millions” of people would lose their coverage. But as Republicans stressed, the bill only targets populations who should never have been on Medicaid in the first place, such as illegal aliens and able-bodied, working-age adults who refuse to seek employment.
A bevy of other changes also fulfill the mandate voters delivered to Trump last November. The bill ends taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for minors, phases out most of the “green” subsidies in Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, incentivizes companies to build products in America, funds Trump’s vision for a “Golden Dome” missile defense shield, boosts military shipbuilding, opens up more oil and gas leases to provide cheaper energy, and increases mineral leases to reduce U.S. reliance on foreign suppliers of critical minerals.
The legislation now heads to the Senate, where it will face its next big test. Under the budget reconciliation process, the bill can pass the upper chamber with just 51 votes, rather than the usual 60 required by the filibuster rule.
Shane Harris is the Editor-in-Chief of AMAC Newsline. You can follow him on X @shaneharris513.
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