Trump's 'Big' Bill Passes House in 216-214 Vote

A budget framework advancing President Trump's agenda squeaked through the House on Thursday by the narrowest of margins, passing in a 216-214 vote. House Speaker Mike Johnson and other Republican leaders earlier expressed confidence that the measure would pass on Thursday—a day after GOP holdouts forced Johnson to delay a vote. The hard-line conservative lawmakers, who complained that the bill delivers tax cuts not paid for by spending cuts, huddled with Johnson for more than an hour before the vote was called off Wednesday night, the New York Times reports. "I believe we have the votes," he said Thursday morning in his first joint press conference with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, per the Washington Post. "Our two chambers are directly aligned."

Trump, who put pressure on the holdouts this week, posted on Truth Social: "Great News! 'The Big, Beautiful Bill' is coming along really well. Republicans are working together nicely." Johnson could only afford to lose a handful of Republican votes, and GOP Rep. Thomas Massie remained unconvinced. "If you were trying to hasten financial collapse of our country and bribe voters to go along with it, the strategy wouldn't look much different than what Congress is doing today," he said in a post on X Thursday. "The big beautiful bill cuts taxes while keeping spending on an increasingly unsustainable trajectory." Massie and Rep. Victoria Spartz were the only Republicans who voted against the bill, per USA Today.

On Wednesday, around 20 House Republicans remained against the budget framework passed by the Senate over the weekend, demanding much deeper spending cuts than those in the Senate version of the budget plan, the Post reports. The AP reports that the House lawmakers were also angered by an "unusual accounting method that does not count the costs of preserving the 2017 tax cuts, some $4.5 trillion, as new spending." Thune said Wednesday that he was against the House sending back an amended version of the plan, which would require another all-night voting session. (More federal budget stories.)