Trump wins major victory as flagship bill passes Congress

RNZ News

2 days ago

By
Ben Sheppard
and
Frankie Taggart,
AFP
The US is the hottest country in the world, US President Donald Trump said just before theb ill was passed.
Photo:
SAUL LOEB / AFP
US President Donald Trump on Thursday (US time) has secured a major political victory when Congress narrowly passed his flagship tax and spending bill, cementing his radical second-term agenda and boosting funds for his anti-immigration drive.
The bill underlined the president's dominance over the Republican Party, which had been wracked by misgivings over a text that will balloon the national debt and gut health and welfare support.
A small group of opponents in the party finally fell into line after Speaker Mike Johnson worked through the night to corral dissenters in the House of Representatives behind the "One Big Beautiful Bill."
The bill squeezed past a final vote 218-214, meaning it can be on Trump's desk to be signed into law on the 4 July Independence Day holiday.
"One of the most consequential Bills ever. The USA is the 'HOTTEST' Country in the World, by far!!!" Trump said on social media as he scented victory.
The timing of the vote slipped back as Democratic minority leader
Hakeem Jeffries spoke against the bill for nearly nine hours
to delay proceedings.
Democrat Hakeem Jeffries after his marathon speech.
Photo:
AFP / Getty Images / Kevin Dietsch
The legislative win is the latest in a series of successes for Trump, including
a Supreme Court ruling last week that curbed lone judges
from blocking his policies, and US air strikes that led to a ceasefire between Israel and Iran.
His sprawling mega-bill just passed the Senate on Tuesday and had to return to the lower chamber for a rubber stamp of the senators' revisions.
The package honours many of Trump's campaign promises: boosting military spending, funding a mass migrant deportation drive and committing $4.5 trillion to extend his first-term tax relief.
"Today we are laying a key cornerstone of America's new Golden Age," Johnston said.
But it is expected to pile an extra $3.4 trillion over a decade onto the country's fast-growing deficits, while shrinking the federal food assistance programme and forcing through the largest cuts to the Medicaid health insurance scheme for low-income Americans since its 1960s launch.
Some estimates put the total number of recipients set to lose their insurance coverage under the bill at 17 million. Scores of rural hospitals are expected to close.
While Republican moderates in the House fear the cuts will damage their prospects of reelection, fiscal hawks chafed over savings that they say fall far short of what was promised.
Johnson had to negotiate tight margins, and could only lose a handful of lawmakers in the final vote, among more than two dozen who had earlier declared themselves open to rejecting Trump's 869-page text.
Trump has spent weeks hitting the phones and hosting White House meetings to cajole lawmakers torn between angering welfare recipients at home and incurring the president's wrath.
Democrats hope public opposition to the bill will help them flip the House in the 2026 midterm election, pointing to data showing that it represents a huge redistribution of wealth from the poorest Americans to the richest.
Jeffries held the floor for his Democrats ahead of the final vote, as he told stories of everyday Americans who he argued would be harmed by Trump's legislation.
"This bill, this one big, ugly bill - this reckless Republican budget, this disgusting abomination - is not about improving the quality of life of the American people," he said.
Extra spending on the military and border security will be paid in part through ending clean energy and electric vehicle subsidies, a factor triggering a bitter public feud between Trump and former supporter Elon Musk.
-AFP