House GOP adopts budget framework, paving the way for Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’

Politico – Thursday, April 10, 2025
By Katherine Tully-McManus, Jennifer Scholtes and Meredith Lee Hill

The House finally approved a budget Thursday, uncorking the filibuster-skirting power Republicans need to build and enact President Donald Trump’s dream bill along party lines this year.

The final vote was 216-214, with two Republicans — Reps. Victoria Spartz of Indiana and Thomas Massie of Kentucky — joining all Democrats in voting “no.”

Now Republicans on both sides of the Capitol can begin the even-heavier lift of writing — and then whipping support for — the behemoth package of tax cuts, military spending, energy policy, border security investments and more. That process will pit fiscal hawks against moderate Republicans as GOP leaders try to square their conflicting demands to protect safety-net programs like Medicaid while cutting trillions of dollars from that slice of the federal budget.

“Republican unity, huh? Can’t be done,” hard-liner Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) quipped after the vote.

In a significant win for Trump and GOP leaders in Congress — and after days of suspense — dozens of Republican holdouts ultimately agreed to vote to clear the Senate-adopted blueprint after Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune publicly promised to seek at least $1.5 trillion in spending cuts to safety-net programs in the final package.

Johnson told fiscal conservatives in a meeting Wednesday night that House committee chairs will write their pieces of the bill to meet the House’s higher standards for shrinking the federal deficit, not the Senate’s lower benchmarks. He told them that they could boot him from the speakership if the final bill doesn’t meet the House standard, which included $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, according to three people with direct knowledge of the commitment.

Massie, using a “Jack and the Beanstalk” analogy, predicted that the spending cuts will never become law. “I knew all along they would trade the cow for magic beans,” the Kentucky Republican said of his colleagues after the vote. “These beans are like the rest. They don’t sprout.”

Johnson and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise met privately with fiscal hawks past 10 p.m. Wednesday, after the GOP leaders canceled a vote on the fiscal framework earlier in the evening. Before that, House hard-liners met privately with Thune about ensuring deeper spending cuts.

“I think at some point these guys just have to take yes for an answer,” said Thune.

Adopting an identical budget in the House and Senate is just the first step in the arduous process of steering Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” to enactment. It was far from easy. Republicans in each chamber had to vote twice on the fiscal blueprint over the course of seven weeks, in order to arrive at a final product GOP lawmakers on both sides of the Capitol could accept.

The budget framework gives Republicans a great deal of wiggle room to decide what goes into the final package House GOP leaders say they are aiming to finalize by late May. Besides tax cuts and spending cuts, they are allowed to boost military spending by $150 billion, along with another $175 billion for border security and immigration enforcement work.

“We will now get the committees operating on all cylinders,” Johnson told reporters after the vote.

While lawmakers have already started boarding flights for a two-week recess, the speaker said panel chairs will work over the break to craft their pieces of the bill, taking only a couple of days off to celebrate Easter.

Until now, Republican leaders in the House and Senate have been operating with an us-against-them mentality as Senate GOP leaders first rooted for breaking the agenda into two measures while top House Republicans favored the one-bill approach Trump has endorsed. But the speaker said that will change.

“This really is a one-team approach by Republicans in both chambers,” Johnson said.

While there are ways Republicans can skirt some of their own mandates to reduce the deficit in the final bill, Senate Republicans are requiring a total of at least $4 billion in savings over a decade from new policy crafted by committees that handle agriculture, nutrition and housing, along with energy, health, education and labor policy.

If Republicans don’t go far beyond those Senate minimums for reducing the deficit, House fiscal hawks are threatening to revolt.

“We made it pretty clear that if any of this varies — if we don’t pay for what we spend, no more deficits — then we can go right back. And we will. And they know that,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) told reporters after the vote.

Because Senate Republicans plan to employ a seldom-used approach to tallying the price tag of their tax policies, GOP leaders plan to extend the 2017 Trump tax cuts while also enacting up to $1.5 trillion in new tax breaks — all while claiming they are only increasing the federal deficit by that $1.5 trillion. For their new tax perks, Republican leaders are considering Trump’s own ideas, including nixing taxes on tips, as well as restoring key tax breaks for businesses and expanding the Child Tax Credit.

Democrats are eager to hone their attacks on the GOP as the bill comes together and are seizing on an estimate Congress’ nonpartisan budget scorekeeper released Thursday.

The new Congressional Budget Office analysis predicts that the GOP tax plans would increase the federal deficit by $6 trillion over a decade. That counts the extension of the 2017 tax cuts, plus the $1.5 trillion worth of new tax perks Republicans are seeking. Over 30 years, the tax cuts are estimated to add $52 trillion to a national debt that currently tops $36 trillion.

“If they need to rack up a trillion-dollar bill on the middle-class credit card in order to finance tax cuts for their wealthy friends, they are willing to do it every single time,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said in an interview. “They’re willing to break the Senate, if that’s what’s necessary, to give away tax breaks to corporations and wealthy people.”

Republicans will also now have to grapple with how to fulfill the House mandate to reduce the deficit by $880 billion through policies crafted by the Energy and Commerce Committee — with a major focus on Medicaid. Moderates are wary of changes that could lead to benefit cuts, while conservative hardliners want to make deep cuts to the program.

There could even be division over eliminating green energy tax credits from the much-vilified 2022 climate law passed under the Biden administration. There are some within the party in both chambers who are agitating to preserve an array of these credits benefitting red districts and states.

While Republicans are broadly in favor of extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts, many other tax questions could divide lawmakers, including caps on state and local tax deductions and expanding the Child Tax Credit.

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