--- title: House Passes Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill,’ Heads to Senate description: The bill's passage in the Republican-led House marks a major win for Trump, who had grown increasingly impatient with Republican holdouts. canonical: https://time.com/7287722/trump-big-beautiful-bill-house-rules-committee-floor-vote-republicans/ author: Nik Popli article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2025-05-22T03:15:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2025-05-22T22:02:25.000Z article:section: Politics og:title: House Passes Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill,’ Heads to Senate og:description: The Republican-led House narrowly passed President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax and spending bill late early Thursday morning, sending the package to the Senate where it is likely to be revised. og:url: https://time.com/7287722/trump-big-beautiful-bill-house-rules-committee-floor-vote-republicans/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt744adfb814a31dcf/6998c6e3a97fc0075ca745fe/house-rules-committee.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: House Rules Committee Holds Late Night Meeting On Budget Bill og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: House Passes Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill,’ Heads to Senate twitter:description: The Republican-led House narrowly passed President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax and spending bill late early Thursday morning, sending the package to the Senate where it is likely to be revised. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt744adfb814a31dcf/6998c6e3a97fc0075ca745fe/house-rules-committee.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ Narrowly Passes in House, Heads to Senate > Sponsored content. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, twice a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=25d88e9e-4835-492e-b313-9dd5da67de6f&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1)  by [Nik Popli](https://time.com/author/nik-popli/)  ## Nik Popli Staff Writer Updated: May 22, 2025 10:02 PM UTCPublished: May 22, 2025 3:15 AM UTC  The House Rules Committee holds a hearing on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act at the U.S. Capitol on May 21, 2025. The House Rules Committee holds a hearing on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act at the U.S. Capitol on May 21, 2025. Anna Moneymaker—Getty Images  by [Nik Popli](https://time.com/author/nik-popli/)  ## Nik Popli Staff Writer Updated: May 22, 2025 10:02 PM UTCPublished: May 22, 2025 3:15 AM UTC The Republican-led House narrowly passed President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax and spending bill early Thursday morning, sending the package to the Senate where it is likely to be revised. The vote was 215-214, with one Republican voting present, and came after a key House committee voted late Wednesday evening to advance the bill, clearing a major hurdle after days of internal Republican infighting. That breakthrough was the product of frenzied, late-night negotiations that yielded just enough concessions to bring key GOP holdouts back on board, despite deep divisions over the bill’s cost and proposed changes to Medicaid. Reps. Warren Davidson of Ohio and Thomas Massie of Kentucky were the only Republicans to vote against the measure, arguing it didn’t do enough to rein in deficit spending. Another two Republicans—Reps. David Schweikert of Arizona and Andrew Garbarino of New York—missed the vote. All Democrats voted against the bill. Passing the bill out of the House marked a major win for Trump, who has been lobbying aggressively for Congress to pass his “One Big, Beautiful Bill” to cement a host of conservative priorities central to his second-term agenda. Trump had grown increasingly impatient with Republican holdouts, labeling some of them as "grandstanders" who should leave the party. “Great job by Speaker Mike Johnson, and the House Leadership, and thank you to every Republican who voted YES on this Historic Bill!” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Now, it’s time for our friends in the United States Senate to get to work, and send this Bill to my desk AS SOON AS POSSIBLE! There is no time to waste.” The House vote happened just hours after White House and Republican leaders released a number of changes to the bill to address concerns from members of the House Freedom Caucus, who were demanding faster, larger spending cuts and energy tax-credit phaseouts. The previous day, Trump had invited House Speaker Mike Johnson and key holdouts to meet at the White House to bridge their differences. Several of those holdouts emerged from that meeting saying it helped them get on the same page as Trump. A review of the revised House bill text shows that it was changed to accelerate new Medicaid work requirements to December 2026; end many tax credits for wind energy, solar energy, and battery storage by 2028; nix a tax on firearm silencers; formally lock in a $40,000 cap on the state and local tax (SALT) deduction; and provide $12 billion in funding to reimburse states for assisting with border security since January 2021. **The D.C. Brief**: [_Why the House’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Reads Like a Republican Oppo File_](https://time.com/7288139/big-beautiful-bill-medicare-medicaid-national-debt/) House Republicans are operating with one of the thinnest majorities in the chamber’s history, with 220 Republicans and 212 Democrats. That means Johnson could only afford to lose three members of his caucus if all Democrats were opposed. Johnson’s room for dissent would have been even tighter if three elderly House Democrats had not passed away in recent months, including 75-year-old [Gerry Connolly](https://time.com/7287510/gerry-connolly-dies-federal-workers-advocacy/), who died Wednesday. House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris, one of the holdouts who ultimately voted ‘present’ to advance the legislation, told reporters he still wants to see more deficit reduction. “I don’t think it was completely where I would need it to be,” Harris said, “but it was a vote to move along. Obviously if I voted no, it would’ve gone nowhere today.” He added that House Republicans “do need to eliminate all the waste, fraud and abuse in Medicaid—and the bill didn’t do it.” Johnson had insisted that the House pass the bill before Memorial Day so that it could be sent to Trump’s desk by July 4, about a month before the U.S. is expected to run out of cash to cover its obligations. The bill raises the nation's debt ceiling by $4 trillion. The package now heads to the Senate, where Republicans have a slim 53-47 majority, and more changes are likely. Republicans are moving the bill using a parliamentary process called reconciliation, which allows them to pass it in the Senate with a simple majority, rather than the 60 votes they would need to overcome a filibuster. Trump’s legislation, at more than 1,100 pages, would permanently extend his 2017 tax cuts set to expire at the end of this year while introducing new policies like tax exemptions for tips and overtime wages. It also boosts spending on defense and border security, while reducing spending on Medicaid and food stamps. The measure would also roll back green energy tax credits from the Biden Administration, including the $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit incentive. Nonpartisan research groups studying the proposal have estimated that it would [add more than $2.5 trillion to the federal debt](https://time.com/7286837/what-trumps-big-beautiful-bill-would-do-to-the-national-debt/) over the next ten years. A senior White House official refuted those projections to TIME, claiming that the legislation would actually reduce the nation’s debt by generating an additional $2.6 trillion in revenue over the next ten years through increased economic growth. Some hardline conservatives were previously not convinced the legislation cuts spending enough, complaining that the bill should halt clean-energy tax breaks sooner than proposed, and that new work requirements for some Medicaid recipients should start earlier than 2029. Democrats have warned that the measure would force millions of low-income Americans off Medicaid and food assistance programs, to fund tax cuts for the wealthy. “The structure of this bill is such that low- and middle-income households bear the brunt, while the wealthy reap significant benefits,” says Daniel Hornung, the former Deputy Director of the National Economic Council under President Joe Biden. An [analysis](https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2025-05/61422-Reconciliation-Distributional-Analysis.pdf) from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released Tuesday shows that the wealthiest households are expected to gain from the bill, while the lowest-income households would lose out on resources because of the spending cuts. A separate CBO report estimated that the proposed changes to Medicaid could leave [7.6 million Americans](https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/05/13/congress/cbo-megabill-medicaid-00345235) without insurance. “President Trump promised to lower the high cost of living in America. He has failed,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement on Wednesday. “Costs aren’t going down, they are going up. The GOP Tax Scam will make life more expensive for everyday Americans and it’s his toxic legislation that represents the ultimate betrayal.” _—With reporting by Chad de Guzman_ ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/7287722/trump-big-beautiful-bill-house-rules-committee-floor-vote-republicans/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/7287722/trump-big-beautiful-bill-house-rules-committee-floor-vote-republicans/"},"headline":"Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ Narrowly Passes in House, Heads to Senate","datePublished":"2025-05-22T03:15:00.000Z","dateModified":"2025-05-22T22:02:25.000Z","description":"The bill's passage marks a major win for Trump, but the Senate will revise the measure","url":"https://time.com/7287722/trump-big-beautiful-bill-house-rules-committee-floor-vote-republicans/","keywords":["republicans","Donald Trump","overnight","News Desk"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt744adfb814a31dcf/6998c6e3a97fc0075ca745fe/house-rules-committee.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Nik Popli","jobTitle":"Staff Writer","url":"https://time.com/author/nik-popli/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt744adfb814a31dcf/6998c6e3a97fc0075ca745fe/house-rules-committee.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"House Rules Committee Holds Late Night Meeting On Budget Bill","caption":"House Rules Committee Holds Late Night Meeting On Budget Bill","creditText":"Anna Moneymaker—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/republicans/","name":"republicans"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/7287722/trump-big-beautiful-bill-house-rules-committee-floor-vote-republicans/","name":"Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ Narrowly Passes in House, Heads to Senate"}}]}] ```