Under intense pressure, House must now decide if Trump's bill is good enough

BBC News

9 hours ago

After nearly 24 hours of debate - starting yesterday morning and stretching overnight - the US Senate approved Donald Trump's massive tax-cut and spending billPassing by the narrowest of margins, the bill, as it stood on Tuesday, contained key parts of the agenda he campaigned on last year.Trump celebrated its passage during a visit to a migrant detention facility in Florida. "It's a great bill," he said. "There is something for everyone."But in fact, while lawmakers may have gotten "something" they wanted, they likely faced concessions to achieve that - and ultimately to push the bill through the House on Tuesday.Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski said she worked hard to ensure the bill provided for her state and ultimately voted for it, but was still unhappy. She called the process "rushed"."My hope is that the House is going to look at this and recognise that we're not there yet," she told reporters just outside the Senate floor, moments after the vote. A look at the key items in Trump's 'big, beautiful bill'Watch: Trump's 'big, beautiful bill' triggers Senate face-offThe woman who could bust Trump's 'big beautiful bill'In a game of political ping-pong, the bill now returns to the House, which passed its version of the bill weeks ago. If the narrow Republican majority in that chamber gives final approval, perhaps as early as Wednesday, the legislation can be presented to the president for his signature.But it may be a tough pill for some House Republicans to swallow. It includes massive new funding -$70bn - for Trump's immigration priorities. It boosts defence spending and makes the tax cuts Republicans passed in Trump's first term permanent. To offset this loss, it cuts funding for Biden-era environmental programmes and Medicaid, the health insurance programme for low-income Americans.
The financial ledger isn't nearly balanced, however, as the package adds more than $3tn to the federal debt and raises the US borrowing authority by $5tn.Fiscal hard-liners have complained that the Senate watered down some of their original budget cuts. The right-wing House Freedom Caucus said the Senate proposal could add $650bn (£472bn) to the deficit each year. "It's not what we agreed to," caucus members said in a social media post on Monday.And centrists still are concerned about cuts in the bill, including reductions in federal payments covering health insurance for low-income Americans.The original House version was a balancing act that kept the various factions within the Republican Party just satisfied enough to vote yes. The Senate version now landing back in their laps may disrupt that balance.But the pressure on House Republicans to sign off on what Trump has called his "big, beautiful bill" will be enormous. The president has said he views the legislation as an integral part of his political legacy – a lasting change in government policy that, unlike executive orders, a future president cannot easily undo.