Senate passes Trump’s tax and spending cuts bill, faces final test in House
House Democrats are chiding Republicans for rushing to get President Trump’s tax and spending cut bill to his desk by Friday for a 4th of July signing ceremony.
Washington, US: Senate Republicans hauled President Donald Trump’s big tax breaks and spending cuts bill to passage Tuesday on the narrowest of votes, pushing past opposition from Democrats and their own GOP ranks after a turbulent overnight session.
Vice President JD Vance broke a 50-50 tie to push it over the top. The outcome capped an unusually tense weekend of work at the Capitol, the president’s signature legislative priority teetering on the edge of approval, or collapse.
The difficulty it took for Republicans, who have the majority hold in Congress, to wrestle the bill to this point isn’t expected to let up.
The package now goes back to the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson had warned senators not to deviate too far from what his chamber had already approved. But the Senate did make changes, particularly to Medicaid, risking more problems as they race to finish by Trump’s Fourth of July deadline.
House Democrats are chiding Republicans for rushing to get President Trump’s tax and spending cut bill to his desk by Friday for a 4th of July signing ceremony.
Members of the House Rules Committee immediately went to work setting terms for debate on the bill, barely an hour after the Senate approved it. Rep. Jim McGovern, the committee’s top Democratic lawmaker, said there’s no real deadline for getting the bill passed and the July 4th deadline was an arbitrary marker made up by the president.
“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.”
Rep. Virginia Foxx, the committee’s Republican chair, said Democrats are engaging in fearmongering about the bill and said American’s understand that.
She called the bill “the embodiment of the America First agenda.”
