On Thursday, 22 May the United States House of Representatives passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in an extremely narrow, 215–214 vote. However, it is still a major victory for House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana to get the bill through before the Memorial Day recess as promised, given that the GOP majority only has 220 seats currently in the lower chamber.
The bill runs for over 1,000 pages, and encompasses most of President Trump’s domestic agenda. All this had to be done in one act to bypass the filibuster in the Senate, through a process called ‘reconciliation’. Normally, a new act would have to get 60 votes in the Senate to stop the minority party from filibustering it. However, amended federal budget legislation is exempt from the filibuster rules, and can be passed with a simple majority.
Two Republicans joined 212 Democrats in voting against the bill, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Warren Davidson of Ohio. They are part of the so-called ‘Freedom Caucus’ in the House, which is typically advocating for measures to the right of President Trump’s agenda. Meanwhile, Representative Andy Harris of Maryland voted present.
The House pulled an all-nighter to get that mega bill passed, with the final session starting at 11pm on Wednesday, and the vote taking place at 7am on Thursday.
What Is in the One Big Beautiful Bill?
The bill extended the tax cuts originally enacted through the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, passed under the first Trump administration in 2017, which were set to expire at the end of 2025. That bill reduced the federal income tax from 39.6 per cent to 37 per cent in the highest tax bracket, and from 15 per cent to 12 per cent in the second lowest tax bracket, while keeping the lowest tax bracket at 10 per cent. It also reduced the corporate tax rate from 39 per cent to 20 per cent—these cuts can now stay on the books.
In addition, it gives tax exemption to income made through tips and overtime work. President Trump started promoting the idea of no taxes on tips at a campaign rally in Las Vegas, Nevada, a city with a high density of service workers, in June 2024, and it immediately became one of his most popular agenda points. So much so that Kamala Harris tried to co-opt it once she became the Democratic nominee in August 2024. Now, that popular policy is enshrined into federal law. Separately from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the US Senate unanimously passed the No Tax on Tips Act earlier this week.
The newly passed reconciliation bill also provides $4.1 billion in funding for border patrol agents and $46.5 billion in funding for expanding the border wall on the Southern border of the United States—the press release on the White House’s official website refers to these as ‘the largest border security investment in history’.
Cutting down on the spending for entitlement programmes has been a popular conservative mantra for decades. This bill just passed by the House GOP puts work requirements in place for able-bodied individuals to access Medicaid payments; and bars illegal immigrants from receiving Medicaid payments as well. In additional spending cuts, it does away with the corporate subsidies given by Democrats to companies that are following arbitrary environmental guidelines.
In addition, the tax credit per child hence has been raised from $2,000 to $2,500 to help families; and the cap on the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction for federal taxes has been quadrupled, from $10,000 to $40,000 for households making under $500,000 per year.
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