Washington -- The House passed a massive spending and tax bill that includes signature policies of President Trump's second-term agenda Thursday, sending the so-called "big, beautiful bill" to the president's desk ahead of a July 4 deadline.
The House approved the bill in a 218 to 214 vote Thursday, after the Senate narrowly approved the bill Tuesday in a 51-50 vote that required Vice President JD Vance to break a tie.
At the center of the "big, beautiful bill" is an extension of Mr. Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which was slated to sunset at the end of the year. The legislation would make most of the tax cuts permanent while increasing spending for border security, defense, and energy production.
The bill is partially paid for by significant cuts to health care and nutrition programs, like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill would add $3.4 trillion to federal deficits over the next 10 years and leave millions without health insurance. Republicans and the White House dispute those forecasts.
Senate Republicans used a process known as budget reconciliation to pass the bill, which limits the types of policies that can be included in a simple majority vote. A handful of provisions that initially appeared in the bill were ultimately removed, including one that would have ordered the sale of public lands and another that would have paused state regulations on artificial intelligence.
The House passed its own initial version of the legislation last month, with some key differences to the final Senate-crafted version. The lower chamber approved the Senate's changes Thursday, sending the measure to the president's desk.
Here's what is in the 887-page bill:
The legislation includes restrictions on Medicaid, which provides government-sponsored health care for low-income and disabled Americans. The bill imposes work requirements for some able-bodied adults and more frequent eligibility checks. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the bill would result in 11.8 million Americans losing health coverage under Medicaid over the next decade.
The Senate parliamentarian determined that a measure cutting federal funds to states that use Medicaid infrastructure to provide health care coverage to undocumented immigrants, along with banning Medicaid from covering gender transition services, wasn't in compliance with Senate reconciliation rules. The parliamentarian also weighed in on what's known as the provider tax, which states use to help fund their portion of Medicaid costs, in a blow to the Senate GOP's initial plan.
Senate Republicans proposed steeper cuts to Medicaid funding, in part by incrementally lowering provider taxes from 6% to 3.5% by 2032. The timeline is delayed by one year from the Senate GOP's initial proposal after the issue became one of the bill's sticking points in recent weeks. It's a departure from the initial House-passed bill, which sought to lower federal costs by freezing states' provider taxes at current rates and prohibiting them from establishing new provider taxes.
The bill also includes a rural hospital stabilization fund after some GOP senators expressed concern over how rural hospitals could be impacted by the Medicaid restrictions, allocating $50 billion for rural hospitals over the same period that the provider taxes would be lowered.
The legislation includes more than $46.5 billion for border wall construction and related expenses, $45 billion to expand detention capacity for immigrants in custody and about $30 billion in funding for hiring, training and other resources for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
It also includes a minimum $100 fee for those seeking asylum, down from the $1,000 fee outlined in the initial House bill. The Senate parliamentarian ruled out the $1,000 fee for anyone applying for asylum.
The package also includes an increase to the cap on the state and local tax deduction, raising it from $10,000 to $40,000. After five years, it would return to $10,000, a departure from the initial House-passed bill.
The issue was a major sticking point in the House, where blue-state Republicans threatened to withhold their support without the increase to the deduction. But with no Republicans hailing from blue states in the Senate, the upper chamber has been contending with its own dynamics.
Before the rule, taxpayers could deduct all their state and local taxes from their federal taxes, which some policymakers have said mainly benefits wealthy homeowners in states with high taxes, such as New York and California. But advocates for increasing the caps argue that the $10,000 cap is increasingly impacting middle-class homeowners who live in regions where property taxes are rising.
The final bill passed by the Senate would largely terminate numerous tax incentives from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act for clean energy, electric vehicles and energy efficiency programs that benefited consumers.
It would end tax credits for new and used electric vehicles, installation of home EV charging equipment and insulation or energy efficient heating and cooling systems.
The bill also ends the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which gives funding to nonprofit organizations providing financing for projects that reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emissions in communities. Existing contracts and grants under the program are not affected.
The bill still shifts the costs of SNAP, or food stamps, to some states. The program is currently fully funded by the federal government.
The federal government would continue to fully fund the benefits for states that have an error payment rate below 6%, beginning in 2028. States with error rates above 6% would be on the hook for 5% to 15% of the costs. States are also given some flexibility in calculating their share.
The package also aligns with the initial House version on age requirements for able-bodied adults to qualify for SNAP benefits. Currently, in order to qualify, able-bodied adults between 18 and 54 must meet work requirements. Both the Senate and House bills would update the age requirement to 18 and 64, with some exemptions for parents.
Alaska and Hawaii could receive waivers for the work requirements if it's determined that they're making a "good faith effort" to comply.
The legislation would raise the debt ceiling by $5 trillion, going beyond the $4 trillion outlined in the initial House-passed bill. Congress faces a deadline to address the debt limit later this summer.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has urged Congress to address the debt limit by mid-July, saying that the U.S. could be unable to pay its bills as early as August when Congress is on recess.
By addressing the debt ceiling as part of the larger package, Republicans in Congress aimed to bypass negotiating with Democrats on the issue. Unlike most other legislation in the Senate, the budget reconciliation process that governs the package requires a simple majority rather than a 60-vote threshold to move forward with a bill.
The current $2,000 child tax credit is set to return to the pre-2017 level of $1,000 in 2026. The tax credit would permanently increase to $2,200 under the bill, $300 less than the initial House-passed hike.
The bill would allow individuals to deduct a certain amount of tip wages and overtime from their taxes. The provisions would expire in 2028.
The "no tax on tips" provision in the spending bill would create a new deduction for tipped workers, eliminating what they owe in federal income tax. Tipped workers would still have to pay state and local income tax and payroll taxes.
The Senate version varies from the initial House-passed provisions on a few key points including how much a worker could claim in deductions. The Senate proposal limits that deduction to $25,000 while the early House version was uncapped.
Under the initial House measure meanwhile only people with annual income of $160,000 or less would have qualified for the tipping tax break while the Senate version phases out benefits for individuals whose income exceeds $150,000 or couples whose income exceeds $300,000.
The bill seeks to permanently expand the basic standard deduction which was nearly doubled in 2017. The increases will expire at the end of the year.