Donald Trump’s ‘big beautiful bill’ wins congressional approval

“The focus of this bill, the justification for all of the cuts that will hurt everyday Americans, is to provide massive tax breaks for billionaires,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in an eight-hour, 46-minute speech that was the longest in the chamber’s history.

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Trump kept up the pressure throughout, cajoling and threatening lawmakers as he pressed them to send him the legislation by the July 4 Independence Day holiday. “FOR REPUBLICANS, THIS SHOULD BE AN EASY YES VOTE. RIDICULOUS!!!” he wrote on social media.

Republicans raced to meet that deadline, working through last weekend and holding all-night debates in the House and the Senate. The bill passed the Senate on Tuesday in 51-50 vote in that saw Vice President JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote.

According to the CBO, the bill would lower tax revenues by $US4.5 trillion over 10 years and cut spending by $US1.1 trillion.

Those spending cuts largely come from Medicaid, the health program that covers 71 million low-income Americans.

The bill would tighten enrolment standards, institute a work requirement and clamp down on a funding mechanism used by states to boost federal payments – changes that would leave nearly 12 million people uninsured, according to the CBO. Republicans added $50 billion for rural health providers to address concerns that those cutbacks would force them out of business.

Nonpartisan analysts have found that the wealthiest Americans would see the biggest benefits from the bill, while lower-income people would effectively see their incomes drop as the safety-net cuts would outweigh their tax cuts.

The increased debt load created by the bill would also effectively transfer money from younger to older generations, analysts say. Ratings firm Moody’s downgraded US debt in May, citing the mounting debt, and some foreign investors say the bill is making US Treasury bonds less attractive.

On the other side of the ledger, the bill staves off tax increases that were due to hit most Americans at the end of this year, when Trump’s 2017 individual and business tax cuts were due to expire. Those cuts are now made permanent, while tax breaks for parents and businesses are expanded.

The bill also sets up new tax breaks for tipped income, overtime pay, seniors and auto loans, fulfilling Trump campaign promises.

The final version of the bill includes more substantial tax cuts and more aggressive healthcare cuts than an initial version that passed the House in May.

During deliberations in the Senate, Republicans also dropped a provision that would have banned state-level regulations on artificial intelligence, and a “retaliatory tax” on foreign investment that had spurred alarm on Wall Street.

Reuters