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Chicago Tribune
3 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
House Republicans race toward a final vote on Trump's tax bill, daring critics to oppose
WASHINGTON — Republican leaders in the House are sprinting toward a Wednesday vote on President Donald Trump's tax and spending cuts package, determined to seize momentum from a hard-fought vote in the Senate while essentially daring members to defy their party's leader and vote against it. 'The American people gave us a clear mandate, and after four years of Democrat failure, we intend to deliver without delay,' the top four House GOP leaders said Tuesday after the bill passed the Senate 51-50, thanks to Vice President JD Vance's tiebreaking vote. It's a risky gambit, one designed to meet Trump's demand for a July 4 finish — and there's a steep climb ahead. Since launching early this year, Republicans have struggled mightily with the bill nearly every step of the way, often succeeding by only a single vote. Their House majority stands at only 220-212, leaving little room for defections. Some Republicans are likely to balk at being asked to rubber stamp the Senate bill less than 24 hours after passage, having had little time to read or absorb the changes that were made, many at the last minute to win the vote of Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski. House Republicans from competitive districts have bristled at the Senate bill's cuts to Medicaid, while conservatives have lambasted the legislation as straying from their fiscal goals. It falls to Speaker Mike Johnson and his team to convince them that the time for negotiations is over. The bill would extend and make permanent various individual and business tax breaks that Republicans passed in Trump's first term, plus temporarily add new ones that Trump promised during the campaign, including allowing workers to deduct tips and overtime pay, and provide a new $6,000 deduction for most older adults. In all, the legislation contains about $4.5 trillion in tax cuts over 10 years. The bill also provides some $350 billion for defense and Trump's immigration crackdown. Republicans partially pay for it all through less spending on Medicaid and food assistance. The Congressional Budget Office projects that it will add about $3.3 trillion in federal deficits over the coming decade. The House passed its version of the bill back in May, despite worries about spending cuts and the overall price tag. Now, they are being asked to give final passage to a version that, in many respects, exacerbates those concerns. The Senate bill's projected impact on federal deficits, for example, is significantly higher. Trump praised the bill profusely in a social media post, saying 'We can have all of this right now, but only if the House GOP UNITES, ignores its occasional 'GRANDSTANDERS' (You know who you are!), and does the right thing, which is sending this Bill to my desk.' Speaker Johnson, R-La., is intent on meeting the president's July 4 timeline. He's also betting that hesitant Republicans won't cross Trump because of the heavy political price they would have to pay. They need only look to Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who announced his intention to vote against the legislation over the weekend. Soon, the president was calling for a primary challenger to the senator and personally attacking him on social media. Tillis quickly announced he would not seek a third term. Others could face a similar fate. One House Republican who has staked out opposition to the bill, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, is already being targeted by Trump's well-funded political operation. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., said leadership was not entertaining the possibility of making changes to the bill before the final vote. He said the two chambers already agree on the vast majority of what's in it. 'It's not as easy as saying, 'hey, I just want one more change,' because one more change could end up being what collapses the entire thing,' Scalise said. Democratic lawmakers, united against the bill as harmful to the country, condemned the process as rushed. Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said there's no real deadline for getting the bill passed by July 4th. 'We're rushing not because the country demands it, but because he wants to throw himself another party,' McGovern said. 'This isn't policy. It's ego management.' House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries described the bill in dire terms, saying that cuts in Medicaid spending would result in 'Americans losing their lives because of their inability to access health care coverage.' He said Republicans are 'literally ripping the food out of the mouths of children, veterans and seniors.' 'House Democrats are going to do everything we can for the next few hours, today, tomorrow, for the balance of this week and beyond to stop this bill from ever becoming law,' Jeffries said. Republicans say they are trying to rightsize the safety net programs for the population they were initially designed to serve, mainly pregnant women, the disabled and children, and root out what they describe as waste, fraud and abuse. The package includes new 80-hour-a-month work requirements for many adults receiving Medicaid and applies existing work requirements in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to more beneficiaries. States will also pick up more of the cost for food benefits, with the amount based on their payment error rates, which include both underpayments and overpayments. The driving force behind the bill, however, is the tax cuts. Many expire at the end of this year if Congress doesn't act. 'Passing this bill means smaller tax bills and bigger paychecks for the American people — permanently,' said Senate Majority Leader John Thune. 'It will also help get our economy firing on all cylinders again.' The Tax Policy Center, which provides nonpartisan analysis of tax and budget policy, projected the bill would result next year in a $150 tax break for the lowest quintile of Americans, a $1,750 tax cut for the middle quintile, and a $10,950 tax cut for the top quintile. That's compared to what they'd face if the 2017 tax cuts expired.
Bloomberg
6 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Trump Threatens 35% Japan Tariffs, 'Big Beautiful Bill' Faces Resistance
resident Donald Trump threatened Japan with tariffs of up to 35% as he ramped up tensions for a third straight day, fueling fears of a worst-case scenario among market players. Japan should be forced to 'pay 30%, 35% or whatever the number is that we determine, because we also have a very big trade deficit with Japan,' Trump said, again flagging the possibility that across-the-board tariffs could go much higher than the 24% initially penciled in for July 9. Trump's multitrillion-dollar tax bill is running into Republican resistance in the House as moderate and ultraconservative GOP lawmakers threaten to defy the president. House lawmakers vote Wednesday on the Senate version of the bill, which squeaked through that chamber on Vice President JD Vance's tie-breaking vote. (Source: Bloomberg)
Miami Herald
15 minutes ago
- Miami Herald
Exits by Tillis and Bacon demonstrate Trump's enduring grip on modern GOP
WASHINGTON - The looming departures of North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis and Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon represent the latest retreat by members of the Republican mainstream and another sign of President Donald Trump's firm grip on his party. Tillis, especially, surprised political observers over the weekend when he announced his retirement after getting slammed by Trump over his opposition to the president's signature domestic policy legislation. "Trump is growing more confident in his leadership of the Republican Party,'' GOP strategist Alex Conant said. "You can't just get on his good side with some nice tweets. You have to vote for his agenda. ... Clearly, he's learned a lot about politics over the last 10 years, and one of the things he's learned is that political power is useless if you don't use it to advance your goals." Still, the president's brand of politics doesn't play in every House district, particularly the purple ones like Bacon's that the GOP needs to maintain its majority. And on the Senate side, while Republicans have a favorable map going into next year's midterms, Tillis' retirement gives Democrats an opening to gain a seat the party lost in 2014. Neither Bacon nor Tillis identifies as a moderate, and both have, by and large, voted with their party on most issues. Bacon, a retired Air Force brigadier general who reveres Ronald Reagan, has had to navigate Trump's demands while representing an Omaha-area district that's become increasingly Democratic on the presidential level - Kamala Harris carried it by 5 points last year, according to calculations by The Downballot. Yet his occasional criticisms of Trump, his support for Ukraine and his condemnation of Russia have made him an outlier in the modern GOP. Tillis has long been a reliable conservative, who, as North Carolina House speaker, helped steer the state rightward. He pushed for changes to the tax code that implemented a flat income tax and lowered corporate tax rates; backed a state ban on gay marriage; supported anti-abortion laws; and endorsed requiring drug testing for welfare recipients. In announcing their retirements, both men lamented the rise of tribal politics in the Trump era. "It's disconcerting to get attacked from the right,'' Bacon said Monday at a news conference in Omaha, at which he also highlighted his ability to work across the aisle. Tillis bemoaned the decline in bipartisanship in Washington and suggested his own party bore some culpability. "When people see independent thinking on the other side, they cheer. But when those very same people see independent thinking coming from their side, they scorn, ostracize, and even censure them," the two-term senator said in a statement Sunday. The sprawling GOP budget reconciliation bill - which passed the Senate on Tuesday by the slenderest of margins - has exposed deep rifts among congressional Republicans. Along with Tillis, two other GOP senators voted no: Kentucky's Rand Paul and Maine's Susan Collins, who is among the chamber's most vulnerable members on the ballot next year. The measure heads back to the House, where fiscal hawks have publicly railed against changes in the Senate version, leaving the bill's prospects for final passage uncertain. Trump, who threatened to back a primary challenger against Tillis after he voted against advancing the reconciliation bill, cheered the senator's impending departure from the chamber. "I had it out with this guy two nights ago, and he resigned, which I was happy about,'' the president told reporters aboard Air Force One on Tuesday after a trip to a new detention center for migrants in South Florida. "He did us all a favor." Tillis now joins a cadre of past senators, including Arizona's Jeff Flake, Tennessee's Bob Corker and Utah's Mitt Romney, who opted to walk away from politics rather than continue tangling with Trump. As Trump marks a decade in politics - and almost six months into his second term as president - most Republicans know that challenging him carries a steep price, said Jonathan Weiler, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "Once (Tillis) decided to actually vote against the budget, he certainly knew what would be coming," he said. Trump's ever-shifting policy positions can at times complicate efforts by his fellow Republicans to remain in his good graces. "I found it difficult when I was in the Senate," Flake, who denounced Trump on the chamber floor in 2017 after deciding not to run for reelection, said in an interview. "We'd go to the White House in the morning and strike an immigration deal that was no longer valid in the afternoon." Flake, who bristles at the notion of being called a moderate, said Trump and his supporters demand that Republican lawmakers not only express their unyielding loyalty, but also emulate his combative style. "It's not just the issues," the former senator said. "You're expected by that subset of a subset of a subset that votes in Republican primaries to be mean and angry now. … That was never me, and that's not really Thom either." Trump's refusal to tolerate dissent could at least partly be attributed to the narrowness of the GOP's majority in both chambers, Conant said. "There's no room for dissent within the conferences,'' he said. "If [Trump] had huge majorities, he could look past dissent, but since he needs every vote, he has to wield his power aggressively.'' A successor to Tillis Senate Democrats greeted the news of Tillis' retirement with glee. "Thom Tillis' decision not to run for reelection is another blow to Republicans' chances as they face a midterm backlash that puts their majority at risk," Maeve Coyle, a spokesperson for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said in a statement. As the Republican field to succeed the senator takes shape, Trump is expected to play an outsize role. While a few Republicans had already lined up to challenge Tillis before he ended his reelection bid, higher-profile hopefuls are certain to jump in. Potential contenders include Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley and several congressmen such as Rep. Richard Hudson, who leads the House Republican campaign arm, and Rep. Pat Harrigan, a freshman lawmaker and retired Green Beret. Then there's presidential daughter-in-law Lara Trump, a North Carolina native and former RNC co-chair. The Trump name remains strong in a state that backed her father-in-law in all three of his elections. On Tuesday, Trump said Lara Trump would "always be my first choice" and that "she really knows North Carolina well." But he also noted that she now lives in Florida, where she was the subject of speculation for another Senate vacancy earlier this year. "I don't know who the candidates (in North Carolina) are going to be," Trump told reporters Tuesday. "I think you're going to have one of the congressmen step up, and should do very well." ------- (CQ-Roll Call's John T. Bennett contributed to this report.) ------- Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
