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The US House of Representatives has passed a budget blueprint that calls for trillions of dollars in tax and spending cuts, in a victory for President Donald Trump as he seeks to enact sweeping changes in fiscal policy.
The resolution passed by 217 votes to 215 after a campaign by House Speaker Mike Johnson to push Republican holdouts to back the measure so they and Trump could pass a “big beautiful bill” extending tax cuts.
The resolution, a critical step in Congress’s budget and tax process, proposes $4.5tn in tax cuts, about $2tn in spending cuts and hundreds of billions of dollars more for the military and border security over a decade.
“Today, House Republicans moved Congress closer to delivering on President Trump’s full America First agenda — not just parts of it,” House Republican leadership said in a statement.
Since Republicans hold a razor-thin majority in the House, even a small number of dissenting votes from within the party could have prevented passage of the bill. Three House Republicans — Tim Burchett, Victoria Spartz and Warren Davidson — had indicated they would vote against it, but all fell in line behind the Speaker. Thomas Massie was the only Republican to vote against it.
Budgets are nonbinding resolutions that outline fiscal goals. They signal to congressional committees how much to increase or reduce spending but do not lay out specific programmes that should be targeted.
After the House and Senate each pass the budget, Republicans in Congress can start a process known as “reconciliation” and ultimately pass without Democratic support legislation extending tax cuts enacted during Trump’s first term in 2017.
The bill instructs the House Energy and Commerce committee to slash $880bn in spending, a move widely seen as targeting the Medicaid health insurance programme for low-income Americans. Similarly, a call for the Agriculture committee to reduce spending by $230bn is aimed at a food aid scheme called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
According to the non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the instructions in the budget resolution that passed on Tuesday evening would add at least $2.8tn to the deficit by 2034.
The House budget also would raise the debt ceiling by $4tn, something that would temporarily remove the threat of a self-inflicted debt default.
Johnson faced resistance from Republicans concerned about the potential impact on Medicaid, as well as those who felt the bill should go even further in reining in spending.
Before the vote, Republican Kentucky representative Massie posted on X: “If the Republican budget passes, the deficit gets worse, not better.”
The party’s leaders have defended the cuts, insisting they will stimulate economic growth and, along with other Trump measures such as tariffs, limit increases to the deficit. Independent analysts dispute the extent to which economic gains will offset the deficit increases.
The bill’s passage comes as congressional leaders are separately battling to pass legislation to avoid a government shutdown on March 14.
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