Trump Scores ‘Big, Beautiful’ Victory With House Budget Vote

In a major triumph for President Donald Trump, the GOP-led House passed a budget plan on Thursday morning that lays the groundwork for his domestic priorities in “one big, beautiful bill,” overcoming resistance from a group of conservatives disappointed by a lack of deeper spending cuts.

The amended resolution, already cleared by the Senate, provides a blueprint for lawmakers to craft legislation via the budget reconciliation process. Negotiations with GOP holdouts in the House stretched to the last moment, and ultimately, 216 Republicans and no Democrats voted in favor of the measure. Two Republicans and 212 Democrats voted against it.

President Trump immediately responded on Truth Social: “Congratulations to the House on the passage of a Bill that sets the stage for one of the Greatest and Most Important Signings in the History of our Country,” he wrote. “Among many other things, it will be the Largest Tax and Regulation Cuts ever even contemplated. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

The resolution seeks to extend the 2017 tax cuts set to expire this year, raise the debt ceiling by $5 trillion, and increase spending on border security and defense. It also includes several billion dollars in spending reductions — far less than the more than $2 trillion goal in the original resolution narrowly passed by the House in February.

When taking up the initial House resolution, the Byrd Rule constrained the Senate to focus solely on fiscal measures like extending tax cuts and raising the debt ceiling while stripping out non-budgetary provisions. The lesser spending-reduction goals that made it into the Senate’s amended version proved to be disagreeable for several House conservatives.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) held a joint press conference with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) on Thursday morning before the vote to assuage the concerns of the House GOP holdouts.

“Our ambition in the Senate is we are aligned with the House in terms of what their budget resolution outlined in terms of savings,” Thune said. “The speaker has talked about one and a half trillion dollars. We have a lot of United States senators who believe that is a minimum.”

On Tuesday evening, following a meeting at the White House with House Republicans, Trump chided the Republicans who still opposed the budget framework during remarks at the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) dinner in Washington, D.C.

“Just in case there are a couple of Republicans out there: you just gotta get there. Close your eyes and get there. It’s a phenomenal bill. Stop grandstanding,” Trump said. He also warned that those pushing for “a little bit more” would “end up getting a Democrat bill or worse.”

There had been as many as a few dozen GOP holdouts earlier in the week, but in the end, Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Victoria Spartz (R-IN) were the only House Republicans to vote against the Senate plan.

“If you were trying to hasten financial collapse of our country and bribe voters to go along with it, the strategy wouldn’t look much different than what Congress is doing today,” Massie said in a post on X. “The big beautiful bill cuts taxes while keeping spending on an increasingly unsustainable trajectory.”

Democrats who oppose the budget plan have warned that it could lead to $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid while benefiting the wealthy.

“House Republicans want to cut $880 billion from Medicaid to pay for tax breaks for billionaires,” the House Democrats said in a post on X. “One thing is clear: The Republican Budget will leave hardworking American families worse off.”

The resolution does call on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which oversees Medicaid, to work on reducing the deficit by at least $880 billion over the next 10 years. However, it does not have instructions that explicitly say Medicaid is a target for cutting.

“Democrats are purposefully terrifying the everyday Americans they profess to care about,” the GOP-led House Rules Committee said on X. “Why? For political gain. We’d tell them to read the resolution, but they already know there isn’t any targeting of specific programs.”

The White House has published a “fact check” page on its website highlighting Trump saying on multiple occasions that he would not mess with Medicaid, along with Medicare and Social Security, while noting that fraud and illegal immigrants would be rooted out from the system.

Before the Senate passed its version of the budget framework over the weekend, it held an overnight “vote-a-rama” with several amendment votes. During that process, the upper chamber rejected a Democrat amendment to remove the section that has stoked concerns about a potential $880 billion cut to Medicaid. Three Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Josh Hawley (R-MO), and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) — joined with Democrats and independents voting in favor of the change.

Now, with the budget framework approved by both chambers of Congress, lawmakers will work on developing legislation.

Under the budget reconciliation process, the Senate requires only a simple majority — or 51 votes — to pass whatever bill is devised, bypassing the three-fifths majority threshold needed to overcome a filibuster. Currently, the Senate GOP has a 53-47 majority.

Speaker Johnson emphasized in a post on X on Saturday that the budget resolution is not the law itself but only the “necessary kickoff” for the reconciliation process to begin. He said the “amended resolution in NO WAY prevents us from achieving our goals in the final reconciliation bill” and noted the process would “involve input from all Members and will keep us on track to send a bill to the President’s desk by Memorial Day.”

The White House released a policy statement that said Trump’s administration “strongly supports” the Senate plan, which it linked to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) effort.

“President Trump has demonstrated through numerous concrete actions his firm commitment to cutting wasteful spending,” the statement said. “This resolution aligns with his mission by paving the way for historic cuts to root out rampant waste, fraud, and abuse across the Federal Government, while responsibly addressing the debt extension.”