NEWS ALERT: House votes on Trump’s budget bill with $4.5T in tax cuts

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From the Washington Examiner: The House adopted its GOP budget resolution after leadership briefly pulled it from the floor Tuesday night, a dramatic win for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) after hard-line conservatives seemed poised to sink the vote.

In a 217-215 vote, only Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) joined all Democrats in voting “no” on the measure, allowing the resolution to survive. It now heads to the Senate, where intense negotiations will begin as the upper chamber already adopted part one of its two-bill reconciliation plan.

An earlier vote was left open for over an hour as leadership attempted to sway holdouts like Reps. Victoria Spartz (R-IN), Warren Davidson (R-OH), and Tim Burchett (R-TN) on the measure. Those three Republicans eventually changed their votes to “yes,” allowing the floor math to work in Johnson’s favor.

Democrats had repeatedly called for the House to come to order and vote on the resolution, with multiple members yelling, “Do you have the votes or not?” or “You don’t have the votes.”

As the drama unfolded on the House floor Tuesday night, President Trump reportedly placed a phone call to one of the Republican holdouts, Rep. Victoria Spartz.

In a statement later, Spartz wrote, “I appreciate President Trump’s personal commitment to save healthcare and make it better for physical and fiscal health for all Americans, He is the only person who is able to accomplish it and I trust his word. We will Make America Healthy Again! #MAHA. Therefore, I voted for these budget instructions to move forward.”

One Democrat congressman, Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), who has been diagnosed with cancer, was not in attendance.  Two other Democrats reportedly arrived at the last minute. Rep. Brittany Pettersen (Col.), who recently had a baby, returned to the House floor with her infant to vote against the bill. And Rep. Kevin Mullin, R-Calif., who was recently hospitalized for knee surgery, arrived to vote against it, aided by a walker.

The House budget resolution calls for up to $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and up to $2 trillion in spending cuts, as well as a $4 trillion debt ceiling increase, the report states.

In a separate report, Fox News explained: The next step is now for the relevant House committees to meet and build their own proposals, which will eventually be returned into the framework and negotiated into a compromise deal with the Senate.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) raged against the budget resolution, claiming that “House Republicans passed a budget which steals taxpayer dollars from Medicaid to give tax breaks to their billionaire donors and big corporations.”

However, X user William Sievers explained that the bill does NOT directly cut Medicare of Medicaid:

Today, February 25, 2025, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H. Con. Res. 14, a budget resolution for fiscal year 2025. This resolution does not directly cut Medicare or Medicaid. Instead, it sets a framework for future legislative action by instructing various committees to find savings in mandatory spending. Specifically, it directs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees both Medicare and Medicaid, to identify at least $880 billion in cost savings over the next decade. The resolution itself does not specify that these savings must come from Medicare or Medicaid, leaving the details to be determined in subsequent reconciliation legislation.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has stated that the focus is on eliminating “fraud, waste, and abuse” rather than cutting these programs outright, and the text of H. Con. Res. 14 does not explicitly mention cuts to Medicare or Medicaid. However, Democrats and some analysts argue that achieving $880 billion in savings from the Energy and Commerce Committee’s jurisdiction would likely involve significant reductions to Medicaid, given its size and the political sensitivity of cutting Medicare. President Trump has also publicly claimed that Medicare and Medicaid would not be touched, though this contrasts with the resolution’s savings targets.

In short, H. Con. Res. 14, as passed today, does not enact immediate cuts to Medicare or Medicaid but sets the stage for potential reductions depending on how the instructed savings are implemented in future bills. The actual impact on these programs remains uncertain until specific legislation clarifies the source of the savings.

House Speaker Mike Johnson released the following statement:

My joint statement with Majority Leader @SteveScalise, @GOPMajorityWhip, and @HouseGOP Chairwoman @RepLisaMcClain on the passage of the House Budget Resolution:

Today, House Republicans moved Congress closer to delivering on President Trump’s full America First agenda — not just parts of it.

This momentum will grow as we work with our committee chairs and Senate Republicans to determine the best policies within their respective jurisdictions to meet budgetary targets. We have full confidence in their ability to chart the best path forward.

While there is still much more to do, we are determined to send a bill to President Trump’s desk that secures our border, keeps taxes low for families and job creators, restores American energy dominance, strengthens America’s standing on the world stage, and makes government work more effectively for all Americans.

Pettersen claimed, “Unfortunately, Republican Leadership denied my ability to vote remotely after giving birth to my son, Sam, but that’s not stopping us from showing up to vote NO on this disastrous budget proposal. They want to rip away health care from 400,000 CO kids, take food off the plates of seniors & veterans, and make life more expensive for hardworking Coloradans – all so they can give tax breaks to corporations and billionaires like Elon Musk.”

Mullin alleged, “Republicans voted to slash Medicaid – the program 80M Americans rely on for health care. This fight is not over.”

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