Trump signs his tax and spending cut bill at the White House July 4 picnic
The White House was hung with red, white and blue bunting for the regular Fourth of July festivities. The United States Marine Band played patriotic marches — and, in a typical Trumpian touch, tunes by 1980s pop icons Chaka Khan and Huey Lewis. The two separate flyovers bookended Trump's appearance and the band playing the national anthem.
Democrats assailed the package as a giveaway to the rich that will rob millions more lower-income people of their health insurance, food assistance and financial stability.
'I never thought that I'd be on the House floor saying that this is a crime scene,' Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said during a record-breaking speech that delayed the bill's passage by eight-plus hours. 'It's a crime scene, going after the health, and the safety, and the well-being of the American people.'
The legislation extends Trump's 2017 multitrillion-dollar tax cuts and cuts Medicaid and food stamps by $1.2 trillion. It provides for a massive increase in immigration enforcement. Congress' nonpartisan scorekeeper projects that nearly 12 million more people will lose health insurance under the law.
The legislation passed the House on a largely party-line vote Thursday, culminating a monthslong push by the GOP to cram most of its legislative priorities into a single budget bill that could be enacted without Senate Democrats being able to block it indefinitely by filibustering.
It passed by a single vote in the Senate, where North Carolina Republican Thom Tillis announced he would not run for reelection after incurring Trump's wrath in opposing it. Vice President JD Vance had to cast the tie-breaking vote.
In the House, where two Republicans voted against it, one, conservative maverick Tom Massie of Kentucky, has also become a target of Trump's well-funded political operation.
The legislation amounts to a repudiation of the agendas of the past two Democratic presidents, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, in rolling back Obama's Medicaid expansion under his signature health law and Biden's tax credits for renewable energy.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates the package will add $3.3 trillion to the deficit over the decade and 11.8 million more people will go without health coverage.
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Law enforcement — investigations, prosecutions, adjudications and pardons — must be conducted according to law, with respect for human dignity and without regard to the personal or political interests of the executive. And the rule of law cannot be preserved without an independent judiciary that is neither subject to intimidation by the executive or legislative branches of government, nor beholden to the demands of political parties. For separation of powers, we stressed that a fundamental structural feature of the Constitution, and its chief safeguard of our liberty, is separating and placing limits upon the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government such that they check and balance one another's power. For democracy and elections, the crucial point is that the one depends on the other. We elect representatives to make the laws we must abide by. To succeed, elections must be transparent and fair. 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If it's in the news right now, the L.A. Times' Opinion section covers it. Sign up for our weekly opinion newsletter. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
