Republicans unified behind a budget blueprint on Tuesday evening, just barely scraping together the votes to advance Donald Trump’s sprawling tax-cut and immigration agenda over unanimous Democratic opposition and widespread concern that it would slash social safety net programs.
The House approved the plan in a vote of 217-215, with the representative Thomas Massie, a prominent fiscal hawk, as the lone Republican voting in opposition. No Democrats supported the measure, which they have cast as a betrayal of middle and low-income voters on behalf of “billionaire donors” like Trump’s chief lieutenant, Elon Musk.
Passage of the “big, BEAUTIFUL bill” that Trump pushed for amounted to a major victory for Speaker Mike Johnson, whose bare-bones majority left him almost no room to spare. It followed an unusual series of maneuvers in which Johnson canceled a vote on the bill – when it appeared the measure did not have the votes to pass – and members of the House were advised there would be no further votes for the night. He then promptly reversed course, only to bring the budget up for a vote.
The fiscal year 2025 proposal includes approximately $4.5tn in tax cuts alongside increased spending for defense and border security. To offset these costs, the plan tasks congressional committees with finding about $2tn in spending reductions over the next decade.
But Democrats are warning that the budget will almost certainly result in substantial cuts – an estimated $800bn – from Medicaid, a federal program providing healthcare coverage to more than 72 million Americans. Though the resolution does not explicitly target Medicaid, and Trump has vowed the program would not be “touched,” even some Republican lawmakers have conceded that there are few alternatives to achieve the $880bn-reductions assigned to the energy and commerce committee.
“Children will be devastated. Families, devastated. People with disabilities, devastated. Older Americans, devastated. Hospitals, devastated. Nursing homes, devastated,” Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader, said after Tuesday’s vote. Previewing Democrats’ strategy for clawing back power in the midterm elections next year, Jeffries vowed to “make sure that every single one of these extreme Maga Republicans is held accountable for betraying the people they represent”.
Johnson and House Republican Steve Scalise said Trump himself had been contacting reluctant members about the need to advance the $4.5tn tax cut plan, which would also fund the deportation of migrants living in the US without documentation, tighten border security, energy deregulation and military spending.
“On a vote like this, you’re always going to have people you’re talking to all the way through the close of the vote,” Scalise told reporters before the roll call. “It’s that tight.”
Three Republican hardliners – Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Victoria Spartz of Indiana and Warren Davidson of Ohio – initially signaled their opposition, protesting that the cuts did not go far enough. They all ultimately wound up voting for the measure. On X, Spartz credited Trump’s “personal commitment” to improving Americans’ “physical and fiscal health” with persuading her to support the budget resolution.
With Democrats united in opposition, House speaker Mike Johnson’s slim Republican majority could not have afforded more than one defection. Several moderate Republicans from vulnerable districts had raised concerns, particularly those with constituents heavily reliant on Medicaid.
Eight House Republicans, including the California representative David Valadao and the New York representative Nicole Malliotakis, warned in a letter to Johnson last week that “slashing Medicaid would have serious consequences, particularly in rural and predominantly Hispanic communities”.
In a statement after the vote, Valadao qualified his support: “It’s simply the first step in the process before committees begin drafting legislation to determine priorities. I’ve made clear to House leadership that I will only support a final bill that protects essential resources like Medicaid or SNAP for Central Valley families.”
The Nebraska Republican Don Bacon, representing a district that backed Kamala Harris as the Democratic presidential candidate in November, has demanded leadership to prove the proposal “won’t overly cut Medicaid”.
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Opposition to the House budget resolution has been steadily building over the last few weeks. During last week’s recess, constituent anger over Republicans’ proposed cuts to Medicaid and other social safety net programs as well as Elon Musk’s efforts to dismantle the federal government boiled over at town halls and congressional offices across the country.
At an earlier Capitol Hill rally on Tuesday, Senator Chris Murphy assailed the Republican budget bill as the “most massive transfer of wealth and resources from poor people and the middle class to the billionaires and corporations in the history of this country”.
The vote comes after the Senate passed a competing budget bill last week, entailing a $340bn measure that covers Trump’s border, defense and energy priorities but leaves the thornier issue of tax policy for later in the year.
The House budget seeks $2tn in spending cuts over 10 years to pay for Trump’s agenda, including an extension of his signature tax cuts, passed during his first term and due to expire at the end of this year.
House and Senate Republicans must now reconcile the differences between the two blueprints. Republicans intend to use a special budget process known as reconciliation, which allows a party that controls both chambers of Congress to pass sweeping policy bills on a simple majority vote, sidestepping the Senate filibuster’s 60-vote threshold.
“We have a lot of hard work ahead of us, but we are going to deliver the America First agenda,” Johnson told reporters after the vote. “We’re going to celebrate tonight, and we’ll roll up our sleeves and get right back in the morning.”
