Speaker of the House Mike Johnson speaks to the media after the House narrowly the One Big Beautiful Bill Act at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on May 22, 2025. Credit – Kevin Dietsch—Getty Images
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Once again, President Donald Trump seems not to understand the plank he’s asking his rank-and-file friends in the Republican Party to walk. Or maybe he just doesn’t care.
House Republicans early Thursday delivered on much of Trump’s domestic agenda with a tax-cutting bill that would cost 8.6 million Americans their access to health care through Medicaid or Obamacare subsidies. Separately, the 1,100-page measure would add so much red ink to the federal ledger that it may also trigger massive cuts to Medicare, the enormously popular program that covers older Americans. And the bill would also add trillions to the national debt.
In crass terms, Trump demanded exhausted Republicans vote for a package that will easily be weaponized against them without even bothering to come up with a decent argument for why it’s worth potentially making life worse for millions of aging, unemployed, working-poor, or disabled Americans.
And yet, just two Republicans voted against it, signaling their faith that being a Trump loyalist can stop any political bleeding from supporting cuts that are likely to hit many of those members’ poor and rural districts hard.
The to-the-wire negotiations had lawmakers and White House officials shuttling up and down Pennsylvania Avenue all week in a sprint that tested the patience of all corners of the fractured GOP family. Even the most enthusiastic Trumpists were worn down after having to come back to the Capitol for the final vote before dawn.
It was far from tidy. No House Republican feels completely whole and all feel a little cheated. High-tax states had sought relief in the form of exemptions for state and local taxes, which did see a boost in the cap but drew little sympathy because those places are typically deep-blue places like California and the Northeast. Some workers may land a tangible win with the proposed elimination of taxes on overtime and tips, but it’s not clear those savings will dampen the anger from folks booted from health care rolls. And deficit hawks may be happy to cut back on green-energy projects and rural-hospital funding pots of money, but that won’t ease the sting of this bill’s overall price tag.
Nonetheless, the deed is done, and it now falls to the Senate to take the next steps to correct some of the campaign-killing spending cuts. Cuts to the social-safety net protecting poor and elder populations are tough to defend, and Democrats are already highlighting how this measure will disproportionately benefit the richest Americans.
According to one independent analysis, roughly one-third of those who have coverage through Obamacare-era Medicaid expansion programs would lose it in states like North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. In must-win Wisconsin, more than half of the program would disappear, according to the non-partisan Center for Budget and Policy Priorities’ state-by-state look.
In another analysis, from the Center for American Progress, the data show Republican districts getting hard, too.
It’s precisely the style of cuts that Trump warned his pals against during a closed-door session on Tuesday. “Don’t f— around with Medicaid,” the President said.
But he also told them to fall in line and do whatever was needed to justify extending his 2017 tax cuts while still passing muster with congressional rule keepers. Again, Trump tries to have it both ways, and he’s hoping the party he has commandeered will forgive his disregard for their political futures.
To be clear: Republicans are not happy about any part of this. Trump showed up in the House on Tuesday and told lawmakers that dissent would be rewarded with an intra-party primary from a MAGA person who would exact revenge. Fiscal conservatives in particular hate that the bill does not do more to cut spending, but still bent to his will.
The clock now resets in the Senate, where Republicans have a 53-47 majority. Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky said he is a hard no on the measure because it would raise the debt ceiling. That means the GOP can lose just two other Republicans to get this across the finish line (with Vice President J.D. Vance crucially serving as the Senate’s tie-breaker). In a chamber fraught with parochial interests and personalities in spades, the sprint to finish this by the July 4 holiday is going to be clipped.
Senators are already promoting tweaks and rewrites, hoping to shave off some of the harsher cuts and restore some home-state projects that were slated for the dumpster. But this fact remains: Republicans may be delivering Trump his One Big Beautiful Bill Act—yes, it is actually named that—while drafting their own opposition file. Voters may like the extension of the first-term Trump tax cuts, but they will certainly feel the squeeze if they lose their health coverage, their elder neighbors risk losing access to worthwhile social-safety programs, and scores of hospitals find a critical pot of federal dollars empty.
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Write to Philip Elliott at philip.elliott@time.com.
