The House of Representatives passed President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” bill following Speaker Mike Johnson barreling forward with a vote after an overnight session and convincing a cohort of conservative holdouts to support the legislation.
Members voted 218 to 214 to send the tax and immigration bill to the president’s desk Thursday afternoon. Two Republicans, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania joined House Democrats in voting against Trump’s signature policy bill. (RELATED: House Hardliners Waste Little Time Throwing Cold Water On Senate Version Of Megabill)
“It wasn’t beautiful enough for me to vote for it,” Massie, who also voted against the initial House-passed bill, told reporters following his “no” vote.
The successful vote on final passage came after House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries spoke on the House floor for more than eight hours in opposition to the president’s signature bill, setting a record for the longest speech on the lowest chamber’s floor in history.
“It takes a lot longer to explain a lie than to tell the truth,” Speaker Mike Johnson said in response during a subsequent speech prior to the vote on final passage.
Johnson could afford to spare just a handful of GOP defections given House Republicans’ narrow 220 to 212 majority.
Conservative members of the House Freedom Caucus, who railed against the Senate-amended bill and pledged to vote against the legislation citing its increase in budget deficits, ultimately gave the legislation their stamp of approval.
It was not immediately clear what specific commitments fiscal hawks received from the White House, but several holdouts said Trump’s assurance that he would strictly enforce the phase down of solar and wind tax credits persuaded them to vote “yes.”
The House did not make any changes to the Senate-amended bill given the White House and House GOP leadership’s desire to pass the bill immediately in advance of the president’s July 4 deadline.
The passage of Trump’s signature piece of legislation is the culmination of roughly 15 months of work that Congressional Republicans undertook to draft and pass a budget reconciliation bill. Congressional Republicans hit multiple snags throughout the so-called budget reconciliation process, but Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune managed to quickly steer the legislation through their respective chambers despite slim margins.
House GOP leadership attributed their success in part to not moving the deadline despite the pleas of conservative holdouts.
“Every time it looked like it might die, we just didn’t give anybody that chance to let the bill go down,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters Thursday morning. “There were members last night saying, ‘Let’s delay the vote again. Let’s close this vote and just go home and we’ll come back tomorrow and take it up again.’”
“We could have done that 100 times, and we’d be here till December and probably still not have a bill, but we never moved a deadline,” Scalise continued.
Johnson also touted the role Trump and officials in his administration also played in persuading holdouts to back the president’s signature bill.
“The president helped answer questions. We had Cabinet secretaries involved, and experts in all the fields, and I think they [holdouts] got their questions answered,” the speaker said.
Johnson, who spent the majority of Wednesday and overnight Thursday lobbying holdouts to back the president’s signature piece of legislation, moved forward with a procedural vote at 9:30 p.m. despite members of the House Freedom Caucus and other conservative lawmakers threatening to help defeat the rule by voting “no” or not casting a vote at all.
Johnson called the holdouts’ bluff and let the vote open for roughly six hours as his leadership team and the White House worked to flip the lawmakers. The House then voted to advance the president’s signature bill to a vote on final passage around 3:30 a.m.
Fitzpatrick was the lone GOP lawmaker to vote “no” on adopting the rule to kick off debate on the president’s bill.
Every single House Democrat was present and voted “no” on starting debate on the president’s domestic policy bill and the vote on final passage.
WASHINGTON, DC – JULY 02: Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) is surrounded by security and staff as he heads to the House Chamber for a procedural vote on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in the U.S. Capitol on July 02, 2025 in Washington, DC. Johnson, (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
“This is the legislative process,” Johnson told reporters prior to the procedural vote. “This is exactly how I think the framers intended for it to work.
“We feel very good about where we are, and we’re moving forward,” Johnson continued. “So we’re going to deliver the big, beautiful bill, the President’s America First agenda, and we’re going to do right by the American people.”
Trump, whom many congressional Republicans have referred to as “the closer,” due to his efficacy in flipping holdouts to support advancing his domestic policy bill in a spate of votes since March, fired off multiple statements excoriating the conservative holdouts after they refused to quickly advance his signature bill Wednesday evening.
“Largest Tax Cuts in History and a Booming Economy vs. Biggest Tax Increase in History, and a Failed Economy. What are the Republicans waiting for???” Trump wrote on the social media platform Truth Social. “What are you trying to prove??? MAGA IS NOT HAPPY, AND IT’S COSTING YOU VOTES!!!”
Three hours later, the holdouts would vote “yes” on the procedural vote shortly after 3 a.m. They would back the bill for a second time during a vote on final passage later Thursday afternoon.
The final budget reconciliation bill incorporates a staggering amount of Trump’s policy priorities into one 870-page bill.
The legislation would enact a permanent extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, deliver on the president’s campaign promises to eliminate taxes on tips and overtime pay and permanently raise the child tax credit to $2,200.
The budget bill would also provide for hundreds of billions of dollars in new border security and defense spending while slashing mandatory spending by more than $1.5 trillion over a decade, including slowing the growth of Medicaid spending by roughly a trillion dollars over a ten-year period.
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