President Donald Trump will sign the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law today. This will be the 21st bill Trump has signed during his second term.
The GOP-run Congress has been almost completely consumed with reconciliation over the last six months. In that half year, we’ve learned a lot about the key figures that we track – top leaders and key rank-and-file Republicans. Let’s dive right in.
1) Trump got what he wanted. This is Trump’s biggest legislative victory during his two terms as president. The 2017 Trump tax cuts got extended, with populist new tax cuts for tips and overtime. Trump got Medicaid and SNAP spending cuts too, but those don’t kick in until after the 2026 elections. Republicans jammed through $325 billion in new funding for the Pentagon and border security. Trump will now finish his border wall while ramping up deportations. Trump got the debt limit lifted for two years, months before the “X Date.”
Most importantly, Trump got it all in time for a big July 4 bill signing at the White House with B-2s flying overhead. Flags, fireworks, tax cuts – Trump gets it all now.
2) RIP to the HFC? The House Freedom Caucus may have to change its name to “The Freedom to Vote However Trump Says Caucus” after what happened this week.
The Freedom Caucus was always going to have a difficult time in a Trump-run Washington. You can’t simultaneously pledge loyalty to Trump and then vote against a vengeful president’s agenda.
The HFC talked tough but caved repeatedly throughout this process. This latest episode was perhaps the most embarrassing. A number of HFC members said they were going to vote no, issued a three-page document outlining huge problems with the Senate GOP bill, and then they all voted yes, getting nothing substantive in return.
3) What to think about Hill leaders. This was Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s first major legislative project together. And it ended in a win. But there may be a steep cost, especially for Republican moderates in ‘26.
Johnson and Thune kept in close touch throughout the process, although the coordination frayed at the end. Thune and GOP senators changed much of the House bill – as most predicted they would – and it seemed to chafe on Johnson.
Johnson, along with House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, worked very closely with the White House to get the bill across the finish line. Much of the last-minute wrangling was handled by Trump and top administration officials, not House leaders. Yet the relationship between Johnson and Trump has grown ever closer. Trump listens to and buys into Johnson and Scalise’s advice. This was a major win for the speaker.
Thune’s biggest problem ended up being not the conservative hardliners but rather those worried about the steeper Medicaid cuts Thune was pushing.
For Thune, this included an eleventh-hour (literally) negotiation with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) to soften the blow for Alaska. Thune also agreed to delay implementation of the cuts in order to “minimize the political impact” for 2026.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries finally showed the fight that the Democratic base is looking for. Jeffries spoke for eight hours and 45 minutes against the OBBB. Republicans say that he didn’t impact the end result, which is true. However, Jeffries got headlines all over the country about what Democrats see as the bill’s adverse impacts – and that was exactly the point.
4) The Senate will always jam the House. After the House just barely passed the initial version of reconciliation in May, Johnson pleaded with Thune publicly and privately to resist changing the bill too much, pointing to his razor-thin vote margin.
Sure, Thune ultimately acquiesced to the House’s SALT demands. But the South Dakota Republican made major adjustments to the structure of the Medicaid cuts, extracting an extra $200 billion. Thune happily noted to us this week that the Senate’s version was more conservative than the House’s, in his view.
Some of Thune’s own senators were upset about the Medicaid overhaul. When Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) warned Thune that this approach wouldn’t fly with the House, Thune responded confidently: The House will pass what we send them.
Thune was right. While it was a gamble, Thune made the calculation that with Trump pressuring them, House Republicans would pass the measure as is. They did.
5) Nobody cares about the national debt anymore. After years of voting against debt-limit increases – and bragging about it – nearly every Republican has now voted for a $5 trillion debt-limit increase. This is a radical change in GOP orthodoxy, and all because Trump didn’t want to have to cut a deal with Democrats. Only Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) refused to go along, and Trump lashed out at them repeatedly.
Republicans attacked CBO’s estimate that the GOP reconciliation package would add $3.4 trillion to the national debt by 2034, but that’s actually at the low end of estimates. The libertarian Cato Institute projects the total will be more than $6 trillion.
FY2026 funding. Now that the reconciliation odyssey is finally over, the next big issue – and the biggest one for Congress – is government funding. The White House and House Republicans are seeking huge spending cuts and billions in rescissions despite overwhelming Democratic opposition, setting up a potential government shutdown this fall. The Senate is, uh, being the Senate and heading in a different direction. What that direction is isn’t entirely clear yet.
The Senate Appropriations Committee has scheduled a full-committee markup of three FY2026 bills next week: Commerce-Justice-Science, Agriculture and Legislative Branch.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Sen. Patty Murray (Wash.), the ranking Democrat, haven’t released drafts of the three bills yet. There are a lot of questions about whether a bipartisan deal is possible heading into next Thursday’s markup.