America's Talking - Against Odds, GOP’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ Passes House, Heads to Trump’s Desk

Episode Date: July 3, 2025

(The Center Square) – Against all odds, U.S. House Republicans finally united around the Senate-revised “big, beautiful bill” and passed it in a 218-214 vote Thursday afternoon, sending the multitrillion-dollar budget reconciliation package to the president’s desk. The bill’s passage marks yet another herculean feat by House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who not only persuaded – with President Donald Trump’s help – the most recalcitrant GOP holdouts to vote for the bill as is, but also passed it by a self-imposed July 4 deadline. The $3.3 trillion megabill, formerly titled the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, hikes the debt ceiling by $5 trillion and implements the bulk of Trump’s tax, energy, border and defense agenda. Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxxFull story:  https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_0000b183-fc4d-4f26-b600-3dd62984e978.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings, everyone, and welcome to America's Talking, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, Chief Content Officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. U.S. House Speaker, Mike Johnson, and Republicans in the House, accomplished what many didn't think was possible just weeks ago. Passed President Donald Trump's one big, beautiful bill onto the president's desk for his signature. Joining me to discuss this is the Center Square congressional reporter, Therese Boudreau. Therese, you've been covering this ongoing story for well over a month now. And today, July 3rd, the House secured enough votes to pass it before President Trump's July 4th deadline.

Tell us how it came about. Yeah, so thanks for having me, Dan. As you said, it's been very long in the making. And it's one of, I would say, a career-defining moment, yet another for House Speaker Mike Johnson, because there were so many Republicans, not just Democrats who were all, united against the bill, but so many Republicans who also did not like it. There were the fiscal hardliners who said the bill, which is scored to cost $3.3 trillion of the next 10 years, they said that that's too expensive. There's not enough offsets. You had lawmakers who were

worried about the bill's Medicaid reforms, including implementing work requirements and capping the provider tax at 3.5% instead of the current 6%. You had other Republicans. You had other Republicans from blue states who they were worried that the state and local deduction tax was, cap was too low. And then you also had Republicans who, especially in the Senate, who wanted the Inflation Reduction Act subsidies for renewable energy projects to keep going because their states, in some cases, relied on them. So there were so many balls that Johnson and Thune were juggling. and they somehow did get it passed.

I mean, the Johnson got the first version of the one big beautiful bill through the House last week. He made a lot of really delicate compromises with Republican holdouts. He found $1.7 trillion in savings, or I should say House committees did. And their bill only extended the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act for 10 years. So assuming budget growth, it was deficit neutral. There were disagreements about whether that was true. But again, the math, you could show through math that it was a deficit neutral. They sent it to the Senate and Senate leaders really wanted to have some of their own things in there.

So one of the main things they did was they wrote in that the tax cuts would be made permanent, which if you're calculating it under normal accounting rules called parent law, baseline. That would explode the debt and deficit. And as I said, the bill costs $3.3 trillion over the next 10 years because of that. But they were able to essentially what most people say, most wedge organizations say paper over the cuts by adopting current policy baseline, which basically just says that, oh, this is current policy. So keeping the status quo is not going to cost anything. So again, there was a lot of controversy about. that not just with nebocrats and budget organizations, but with the fiscal hawks in the House who

felt betrayed by that. And then the Senate also, they slowed some of the phaseouts that the House had done for the Inflation Reduction Act and other things as well. So it came back to the House after the Senate barely passed it, Vice President J.D. Van Sutsu cast the tie-breaking vote. And most people, I think, thought that Johnson would have to allow House Republicans to make amendments to it and then sent it back to the Senate for it to be voted on again because it seemed like the Senate had just violated too many of the House's sections and changed them for it to work. But Johnson decided to muscle it through starting on Wednesday. A lot of procedural votes, lots of debate. One of the votes was kept open for six hours during the night so that Johnson and the president could talk to

the House Freedom Caucus and try to get them on board. And they did succeed. The only Republican who voted no on the bill's passage was Thomas Massey. And he is well known to essentially vote no on anything that costs anything. So like I said, it is a career defining moment for Johnson in particular, but also Senate Majority Leader John Boone. And this bill will implement the large majority of President Donald Trump's campaign promises about taxes, about energy deregulation, about national defense funding, and about border security, among other things, this bill does fund the complete construction of a border wall. Before the final vote, which just finished a few minutes before we started recording this,

Therese, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat, delayed the vote by speaking for what was it, eight hours and 40 minutes you were telling me? Around that time, yes. He was not thrilled with the bill. I'm taking it. No, it was, it was quite the delay. He spent, yes, eight hours and 45, 40-something minutes railing against it. There was a lot of applause from Democrats about that.

He had unlimited time during the debate leading up right to the vote on final passage. So he used that to his advantage. And so that means that given that this whole process started on Wednesday, lawmakers were up, at least most of them, for 29 hours. So this was, he also, he came Jeffrey's broke records for the longest floor speech during Bill reconciliation, budget reconciliation bill debate, excuse me. So again, quite quite the lead up, very dramatic at different points. And it's definitely, many people say that this, including Johnson, that this bill is going to be the most defining bill of their careers because it codifies the 2017 tax cuts. And that's going to affect virtually every American. And those were set to expire at the end of this year.

So every American worker was facing a tax increase. So that's certainly from a taxpayers' perspective. That's an accomplishment. Let's talk about, I think, one of the biggest concerns was the scaleback of Medicaid growth and the work requirements that would put on healthy Americans who are on Medicaid. Just tell us briefly about that. Yeah, so the Medicaid work requirements and different SNAP reforms were the majority, Those made up the majority of the $1.7 trillion in savings or offsets that the House found and that the Senate changed a bit, but mostly kept.

So for Medicaid, for instance, for people who are able-bodied, adults without dependence, they have to fulfill a 20-hour-per-week work or community engagement requirement in order to still be eligible for Medicaid. And so it also kicks off an estimated 1.4 million people who are living in the U.S. illegally non-citizens from Medicaid. Again, there was a lot of expansion of who could qualify for Medicaid under the Biden administration and during the COVID times. So that ballooned with spending. Interestingly, though, federal spending on Medicaid will still increase over the next 10 years. just at a lower rate. So that's an argument that a lot of Republicans

have been making that this isn't really cuts. We're just doing reforms. The CBO Congressional Budget Office estimates that another, a couple million are also going to be kicked off who are either fraudulently using it

or they're enrolled in both Medicare and Medicaid which isn't allowed or they're enrolled in two states, essentially cleaning up the rolls. So Republicans say that this won't harm any vulnerable people who really need it. Simply, you know, again, if there's able-bodied, dependent-less adults, they'll have to be looking for work, at least, to qualify for Medicaid. And again, if you're a non-citizen living in the country legally, or if you are enrolled in multiple states,

etc., then you will also not be eligible. So that found a couple hundred billion in savings. And then the SNAP, the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, they also made some changes to that. One of the big changes was states that have a certain percentage, 6% or above payment error rates, and the average payment error rate for states is 10%. Then they would have to chip in for part of the cost of SNAP, which the federal government currently fully funds. and states also would have to, instead of covering 50% of program administrative costs like they do now, they would cover 75%. And so there are, yes, exactly. And so there are concerns that some states won't be able to do this. And so they'll have to cut benefits. So that's another concern at Democrats brought up. But Republicans, you know, said, oh, it's not going to be a problem. So again, it's a very controversial bill because, there's it does a lot of reforms and many people aren't exactly sure how those reforms are going to

play out. Well, thank you for joining us today, Therese, and for your outstanding coverage throughout this process. Listeners can keep up with Therese's reporting and more at the centersquare.com.