The House of Representatives votes on President Trump’s “big beautiful bill” reconciliation package in the House chamber in the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, July 3, 2025.
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The House on Thursday afternoon began its final vote on President Donald Trump’s massive tax-and-spending bill, after Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries finished a nearly nine-hour speech decrying it on the chamber floor.
The legislation, which Trump has dubbed the “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” contains trillions of dollars in tax cuts and beefed-up immigration enforcement spending and is offset by significant cuts to Medicaid and other programs.
Republicans expressed confidence that the bill would pass, despite opposition in prior rounds of voting by a handful of GOP holdouts who warn that the package will exacerbate U.S. deficits.
Five of those Republicans initially voted no on a key procedural vote Wednesday evening to tee up the bill for final passage. Their opposition caused hours of delays, but four of them relented overnight and the motion passed around 3:30 a.m. ET.
Both House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Trump himself heaped pressure on the naysayers to clear the way, a White House official told NBC News. The president has spent months urging congressional Republicans to get the bill to his desk by the Fourth of July.
The legislation just barely passed out of the Senate on Tuesday, squeaking through on a 51-50 vote that required Vice President JD Vance to break the tie. Republicans hold slim majorities in both the House and Senate.
U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) speaks to reporters as he walks off the House floor after speaking for 8 hours and 45 minutes as the House debates the One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act at the U.S. Capitol on July 3, 2025 in Washington, DC.
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Democrats in both chambers uniformly oppose the bill, which they warn will disproportionately benefit the wealthy while throwing millions of low-income Americans off their health insurance.
Jeffries, the House minority leader from New York, hammered Republicans on those cuts at great length before the vote, when he turned his customary “magic minute” speech into an hourslong polemic.
“Republicans are trying to take a chainsaw to Social Security, a chainsaw to Medicare, a chainsaw to Medicaid, a chainsaw to the healthcare of the American people, a chainsaw to nutritional assistance for hungry children, a chainsaw to farm country and a chainsaw to vulnerable Americans,” he said on the House floor.
Jeffries spoke for eight hours and 44 minutes, breaking the record for the longest floor speech in House history. The previous record was set in 2021 by then-then Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy in opposition to President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better bill.
Following his remarks, Jeffries told reporters in the Capitol, “We’re in a more is more environment. And House Democrats are going to continue to do everything that we can to stand up on behalf of the American people.”
“And beyond that, I’ll just let my words speak for themselves,” he said.
Republicans argue that the bill’s changes to Medicaid will cut waste, fraud and abuse from the program, while defending new work requirements for eligibility. More than 71 million Americans are enrolled in Medicaid as of March.
The independent Congressional Budget Office warns that the bill could add $3.4 trillion to the $36.2 billion of the world’s largest economy’s existing debt over the next decade. The White House has contested the CBO’s estimates and labeled the agency as “partisan.”
The megabill push has been taking place at a time of broader economic volatility, as Trump presses ahead with a protectionist trade policy that could see the return of so-called “reciprocal” tariffs on most major U.S. trade partners on July 9.
This is developing news. Please check back for updates.
— CNBC’s Greta Reich contributed to this report.