House approves massive GOP wish list: What’s on it?

In a resounding victory for President Donald Trump and U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., the House of Representatives passed Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act in the wee hours of Thursday morning. A marathon of deliberation pushed the 1,116-page bill to a narrow 215-214 vote, after almost two full days of negotiations between Johnson, the White House, and key holdouts.

Last-minute changes to the bill ultimately secured the votes Johnson needed to bring the package over the finish line.

“Today, the house has passed generational, nation-shaping legislation that reduces spending, permanently lowers taxes for families and job creators, secures the border, unleashes American energy dominance, restores peace through strength, and makes government work more efficiently and effectively for all Americans,” Johnson said in a statement following the bill’s passage.

Only two Republicans, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, voted against the bill. One member, Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., voted present.

In its current form, the bill mandates cutting spending by $3.5 trillion over 10 years while increasing spending by $4 trillion. The biggest form of spending comes in the form of tax cuts—a change that takes away from the nation’s revenue and is counted as an expense. The bill also looks to trim down on government overspending, largely through changes to Medicaid’s reporting and eligibility requirements.

On taxes, the bill would extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts—which would have otherwise expired at the end of this year—and make most of them permanent. The bill also creates new carve-outs the president promised on the campaign trail, including no taxes on tips or overtime.

According to Erica York, vice president of federal tax policy at the Tax Foundation, those new provisions come with trade-offs.

“So, a couple of the most pro-growth provisions for research and development are only extended on a temporary basis,” York said, referring to some of 2017 tax cuts that the One Big Beautiful Bill expands on a limited basis. “They’re not made permanent,” she said. “When you shorten those provisions, when you don’t make them permanent, businesses don’t have the certainty they need to actually step up their investment in a permanent way.”

York noted that manufacturing industries or high-capital investment areas of the economy could face the most uncertainty when they phase out in five years.

Another notable last-minute change for the bill on taxes includes an increased cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions, allowing taxpayers to deduct up to $40,000 off their federal taxes if they pay at least that much at the state level. Republicans from states like New York and California—where earners pay substantially more state-level taxes compared to the rest of the country—had pressed to lift the cap from its current $10,000 ceiling.

“SALT was my No. 1 focus on Washington from day one and I’m proud to deliver tax relief for middle class and working families in New York,” Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., posted to X on Thursday morning.

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the bill would add $3.8 trillion to the national deficit between 2026-2034.

Just one day before its passage, the bill seemed headed for defeat, with many key conservatives saying they could not support the bill’s lack of action on spending. While many of them ultimately voted for the bill, Rep. Massie—a longtime critic of speaker Johnson and a pronounced fiscal hawk—maintained the bill would only hurt the country in the long haul.

“Well, I would love to stand here and tell the American people ‘we can cut your taxes, and we can increase spending and everything is going to be just fine,’” Massie said ahead of the floor vote. “But I can’t do that because I’m here to deliver a dose of reality. This bill dramatically increases deficits in the near term but promises our government will be fiscally responsible five years from now.”

Massie, like many other conservatives, worried that the 10-year outline of the plan would ultimately fall on future sessions of Congress to accomplish, laying the burden of fiscal restraint out of current representatives’ control.

Republicans concerned about the country’s fiscal health had hoped to make more structural reforms to Medicaid, the joint federal-state partnership that provides healthcare for low-income Americans, seniors, and individuals with disabilities. Lawmakers had floated imposing caps on how much individuals could cost the program and debated putting more of the funding burden on states.

Ultimately, the bill steers clear of the most aggressive reforms, instead settling for increased eligibility accountability.

Among other changes, the package would require states to verify recipient addresses to prevent enrollment in two states at once. It would require a quarterly evaluation of deceased recipients, monthly checks on providers to eliminate fraud, and proof of citizenship, nationality, or immigration status from participants. The bill would also implement a monthly 80-hour work requirement for able-bodied recipients over the age of 19 or under 64.

Although an earlier version of the bill slated these work requirements to begin after Trump’s time in office, an overnight concession to the fiscal hawks would make those new work requirements kick in at the end of 2026.

Rep. Harris—the lone member that voted present—had hoped to do more to limit the amount states could raise taxes on their own medical providers to secure federal funding through Medicaid’s matching program. Under Medicaid’s current framework, the government pays at least $1 dollar for every dollar the states raise to fund Medicaid on their own. That’s led some states to tax their medical providers to secure more government funding and then return initial tax once they’ve secured the federal match.

“I consider it abusive,” Harris had said. “Bottom line is it should be eliminated.”

Like Harris, many members told WORLD they were only partly satisfied with the bill’s many provisions headed into Thursday morning’s vote. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., one of the members of the Appropriations Committee, said he wanted to see more done to cut spending. But he approved of the overall aim of the legislation.

“With something of this magnitude, there are parts one doesn’t like, but the question is what’s the alternative?” he said on Wednesday. “The alternative is really catastrophic for the American people. We have to understand that no bill is perfect, but this is the best we were going to get under the circumstances.”

On Thursday morning, Diaz-Balart cast his vote in favor of the package.

Having cleared the House, the bill now heads to the Senate, where it could be subject to changes. Its passage there requires a simple majority, averting the 60-vote threshold that would normally be needed to break a filibuster.