Des Moines (United States) (AFP) – US President Donald Trump boasted of a “phenomenal victory” to cheering supporters at a rally in Iowa on Thursday after Congress narrowly passed his signature tax and spending bill, cementing his radical second-term agenda. The jubilant president kicked off America’s year-long 250th birthday celebrations with a victory lap hailing the unpopular bill, which has caused deep concern within his own Republican Party — as well as, polls show, among many Americans. Many fear that it will balloon the national debt, gut health and welfare support as well as clean energy, and supercharge Trump’s migrant crackdown.
“There could be no better birthday present for America than the phenomenal victory we achieved just hours ago,” Trump told supporters in the state capital, Des Moines. “Very simply, the one, big beautiful bill would deliver the strongest border on Earth, the strongest economy on Earth, the strongest military on Earth, and ensure the United States of America will remain the strongest country anywhere on this beautiful planet of ours.” The bill squeezed past a final vote earlier Thursday, 218-214, after a small group of Republican opponents in the House of Representatives finally fell in line, corralled by Speaker Mike Johnson. Trump said he would sign the bill into law on Friday, American Independence Day, adding that pilots who had carried out US strikes on Iran two weeks earlier would be in attendance.
The legislation is the latest in a series of big wins for Trump, including a Supreme Court ruling last week that curbed lone federal judges from blocking his policies, and US air strikes that led to a ceasefire between Israel and Iran. His sprawling mega-bill narrowly passed the Senate on Tuesday and had to return to the lower chamber for its approval of the senators’ revisions. The package honors many of Trump’s campaign promises: boosting military spending, funding a mass migrant deportation drive, and committing $4.5 trillion to extend his first-term tax relief.
“Everything was an absolute disaster under the Biden-Harris radical regime, and we took the best effort that we could, in one big, beautiful bill, to fix as much of it as we could,” Johnson said. “And I am so grateful that we got that done.” But it is expected to pile an extra $3.4 trillion over a decade onto the country’s fast-growing deficits, while shrinking the federal food assistance program and forcing through the largest cuts to the Medicaid health insurance scheme for low-income Americans since its 1960s launch. Some estimates put the total number of recipients set to lose their insurance coverage under the bill at 17 million. Scores of rural hospitals are expected to close.
While Republican moderates in the House fear the cuts will damage their prospects of reelection next year, fiscal hawks chafed over savings that they say fall far short of what was promised. Johnson had to negotiate tight margins, and could only lose a handful of lawmakers in the final vote, among more than two dozen who had earlier declared themselves open to rejecting the 869-page text. Trump spent weeks hitting the phones and hosting White House meetings to cajole lawmakers torn between angering welfare recipients at home and incurring the president’s wrath.
Democrats hope public opposition to the bill will help them flip the House in the 2026 midterm election, pointing to data showing that it represents a huge redistribution of wealth from the poorest Americans to the richest. “This bill, this one big, ugly bill — this reckless Republican budget, this disgusting abomination — is not about improving the quality of life of the American people,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said. After the bill was passed, Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, said it was “not only reckless — it’s cruel.” Extra spending on the military and border security will be paid in part through ending clean energy and electric vehicle subsidies — a factor triggering a bitter public feud between Trump and former key advisor Elon Musk.
© 2024 AFP
