It looks like Speaker Mike Johnson and President Donald Trump will make their July 4 deadline.
The House is on the cusp of passing the One Big Beautiful Bill after an unprecedented and exhausting marathon day in the Capitol. This will be a massive victory for Johnson, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Trump and Senate Majority Leader John Thune.
As of press time, the House was debating the package. Final passage is expected at some point early this morning.
But the path that led to this moment was unbelievably tortured and — at times — unbelievable.
The House held back-to-back votes open for a combined 14 hours, as Johnson, his leadership team, Trump and senior administration officials furiously whipped holdout GOP lawmakers to back the $3.3 trillion package.
The GOP bill will extend and expand the 2017 Trump cuts — including new tax cuts for tips, overtime and Social Security recipients, all presidential priorities – while also making huge cuts to Medicaid and SNAP funding. This will leave millions of Americans without health insurance. Republicans also included hundreds of billions of dollars in new defense and border security money.
Trump and GOP leaders assert the package is needed to boost the U.S. economy after years of Democratic mismanagement under former President Joe Biden. Democrats and budget experts counter that it will add trillions to the national debt. Democrats blasted the bill as “cruel,” “disgusting” and “a huge benefit to billionaires.”
The last chapter of this drama over the last 24 hours had more twists and turns than the final episode of White Lotus.
At around 3:20 a.m., after holding the vote open for nearly six hours while Johnson and Trump lobbied them furiously, several hardline conservative holdouts voted to move forward with the measure, ending a dramatic floor stalemate.
The holdouts included Reps. Josh Brecheen (Okla.), Eric Burlison (Mo.)., Keith Self (Texas), Scott Perry (Pa.), Bob Onder (Mo.), Andy Harris (Md.) and Chip Roy (Texas).
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), a moderate, was the only no vote.
What makes this so remarkable is that Harris, Roy and Self spent a huge chunk of this week dumping all over the bill, only to vote for it with absolutely no changes a day later. Roy went as far as to say that he wouldn’t vote for a rule at all and indicated he wanted to revise the package and send it back to the Senate. That’s not going to happen now.
“We made some progress on some fiscal issues,” Self told us early this morning.
The House Freedom Caucus caved once again.
They will lose a tremendous amount of sway in the wake of this episode.
Much of the conversation overnight centered around the implementation of the bill, the nation’s fiscal trajectory and what kinds of executive orders the Trump administration might issue to assuage the concerns of conservatives.
Johnson said the Senate made more changes “than I anticipated.” Johnson added that rank-and-file House Republicans needed to “process that, ask questions about it, make sure they fully understood it and all the implications and some of that was still going on tonight.”
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) was a one-man rollercoaster for the GOP leadership. Massie railed against the bill all week. He initially voted for the rule. But then at 11:30 p.m., Massie entered a mostly empty House chamber and switched his vote from yes to no.
However, Massie – who Trump has personally targeted for defeat in 2026 – switched again back to yes when all the hardliners flipped. The GOP leadership hopes that Massie will vote for final passage later this morning. And he has made clear that he would like Trump to stop attacking him.
Surprising yes votes on the procedural rule vote included Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.), who represents a district chock full of Medicaid recipients. Valadao voted for the motion at 11:20 p.m. as most of the members were already gone. Valadao lost his seat in 2018, only to regain it in 2020.
The implications. The giant GOP bill’s passage gives some firm definition to the 119th Congress and an early peek at the political stakes of the 2026 midterm elections.
Johnson, Trump and Thune have gambled that the reconciliation bill is a large enough grab bag that it has something for every Republican to like and tout at home. The GOP leadership is hoping that House Republicans will talk about extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts and the new tax breaks for overtime pay and tips.
The massive gamble is that voters won’t be turned off by Republicans cutting $1 trillion from Medicaid and SNAP.
On Wednesday, GOP lawmakers threw their caution to the wind to advance the OBBB over these reservations. For example, Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.), a physician in his fourth term, told reporters he was worried about the bill’s steep funding cuts to rural hospitals. Murphy eventually voted for the bill.
On Johnson. Today is Johnson’s 617th day as speaker, a job he won in 2023 despite his lack of leadership experience. Johnson’s best trait was that no one disliked him.
Now, six months into full GOP control of Washington, it’s best to think of Johnson’s speakership as a joint venture with Trump.
The 53-year-old Louisiana Republican has a power-sharing agreement, of sorts, with Trump and can’t get anything done without the ever-powerful president. This is both a strength and a weakness. About 90% of the GOP conference quickly falls in line with Johnson, his tactics and his agenda. The last 10% needs direct cajoling, convincing and constant care from Trump.
On the reconciliation bill, one can argue that Johnson put himself in this position. He set an arbitrary July 4 deadline. He told Republicans that the Senate would not change the House’s reconciliation package. And when the Senate did overhaul the legislation significantly, Johnson insisted on barrelling through, pushing the bill through the House over an exhausting 48-hour period instead of pausing and waiting a few days.
All of these decisions could be viewed as unforced errors. But Johnson has a patience, steadiness and calm that is unusual in congressional leadership. He chooses a path and sticks to it, despite bumps or curves in the road.
So Johnson deserves a good deal of credit here. He pushed for one bill instead of two. He developed the framework that served as the skeleton for this package. And he got it through in 164 days.
