WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — The U.S. House of Representatives voted 218-214 on Thursday morning to approve the Senate version of President Donald Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” without revising any of the controversial changes made by the Senate that raised concerns among both fiscal and social conservatives.
As passed by the House in May, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (BBB) aims to enact large portions of Trump’s legislative agenda through the budget reconciliation process, which requires only a simple majority vote in the Senate rather than the typical 60-vote threshold for standalone legislation.
It contained extensions of the 2017 Trump tax cuts, various other tax changes proposed by Trump on the campaign trail, and several other conservative priorities, including funding for border security efforts, eliminating many “green” energy subsidies, and more.
However, it faces conservative opposition over estimates that it will add a minimum of $2.4 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade, with the bill’s failure to include or be prefaced by codifying the spending cuts of the administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project led to a dramatic falling out between Trump and former DOGE head Elon Musk.
On Tuesday, senators voted 50-50 on the BBB, with three Republican defections requiring Vice President JD Vance to cast the tie-breaking vote despite many conservatives objecting to the Senate’s various changes, including preserving various so-called “green” energy subsidies the House version would have cut, reducing the period in which the abortion industry would lose federal funding from 10 years to just one, and losing language that would have forbidden “gender transition procedures” from receiving taxpayer dollars. The Senate also voted to reject an amendment criticized by conservatives that would have banned states from regulating artificial intelligence for 10 years.
The socially conservative Family Research Council went so far as to threaten to score against voting to advance the BBB over the changes, but later backed down, with FRC president Tony Perkins citing “negotiations and conversations on key policy issues that had been removed or modified from the House version,” which led him to forecast unspecified “policy outcomes that offset the changes made by the Senate.”
Following the vote, onlookers braced for a potentially ugly and drawn-out process of resolving the differences between the two chambers. Holdouts delayed House vote to proceed Wednesday night, prompting Trump to complain it was “RIDICULOUS” for Republicans to not see it as an “EASY VOTE” and threaten, “MAGA IS NOT HAPPY, AND IT’S COSTING YOU VOTES!!!”
ABC News reports that Trump met with holdouts at the White House and made phone calls through the night to get them on board, resulting in no actual changes to the bill but rather, according to Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC), “assurances” that future executive action could “make the bill better.”
CNN adds that Republicans eventually voted to clear a procedural hurdle to proceed to debate, but Democrat House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries delayed things further still with a floor speech lasting more than eight and a half hours, denouncing the Trump agenda (exploiting House leaders’ prerogative to speak as long as they want).
“In just a few moments, we will remind the world why the American experiment still endures today and why its best days are still ahead of us,” Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said on the House floor after Jeffries finally stopped talking. “With one big, beautiful bill, we are going to make this country stronger, safer and more prosperous than ever before. And every American is going to benefit from that.”
Ultimately, all Democrats united to vote against the bill. Only two Republicans broke party ranks to vote no: Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania. A signing ceremony is expected on Friday, for the Fourth of July.
The White House previously assured fiscal conservatives that spending cuts would come in the form of separate rescission bills, starting with a $9.4 billion package of cuts to public broadcasting and foreign aid programs. It cleared the House, but no action has yet been taken in the Senate, and no further rescission packages have been announced.
