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President Donald Trump signed his $3.3 trillion “big, beautiful bill” on Friday, after the House passed the final version of the measure Thursday to ensure it arrived at the president’s desk by his self-imposed July 4 deadline.
The bill includes key provisions that would permanently establish individual and business tax breaks included in Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and incorporates new tax deductions to cut duties on tips and overtime pay.
Before signing the bill, the president said the bill would “fuel massive economic growth” and “lift up the hard-working citizens who make this country run.”
“We have officially made the Trump tax cuts permanent,” Trump said. “That’s the largest tax cut in the history of our country. … After this kicks in, our country is going to be a rocket ship economically. We’ve delivered no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on Social Security for our great seniors. … It makes the child tax credit permanent for 40 million American families. … The Golden Age of America is upon us.”
The measure also raises the debt limit by $5 trillion — a provision that has faced scrutiny from figures including SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who formerly led a war against wasteful government spending at the Department of Government Efficiency.
Furthermore, the bill rescinds certain Biden-era green energy tax credits, and allocates approximately $350 billion for defense and Trump’s mass deportation initiative to weed out illegal immigrants from the U.S.
“Wind. It doesn’t work,” Trump said. “I will tell you, aside from ruining our fields and our valleys, killing all the birds, [and] being very weak and very expensive, [they are] all made in China. You know, I noticed something … with all of the windmills that China sends us … I have never seen a wind farm in China.”
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The measure also institutes Medicaid reforms, including new 80-hour-a-month work requirements for Medicaid recipients, and expands work requirements for those on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
Republicans in the Senate were sent scrambling on June 26 to reform and pass the measure ahead of Trump’s July 4 deadline after Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough determined that several Medicaid reforms in the sweeping tax and domestic policy package did not follow Senate rules and must be removed.
Ultimately, the Senate barely passed the measure on Tuesday by a 51-50 margin. Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, and Rand Paul of Kentucky all voted against the bill, requiring Vice President JD Vance to step in and cast the tie-breaking vote.
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The legislation then headed back to the House to hammer out a few differences in the versions passed in both chambers of Congress.
On Wednesday evening prior to the House’s passage, Vance turned up the heat on lawmakers to get the measure through the finish line, citing provisions in the measure that would bolster border security.
“The Big Beautiful Bill gives the president the resources and the power to undo the Biden border invasion,” Vance said in a Wednesday post on X. “It must pass.”
“Congrats to everyone. At times I even doubted we’d get it done by July 4! But now we’ve delivered big tax cuts and the resources necessary to secure the border. Promises made, promises kept!”
Trump also zeroed in on the measure’s border provisions when he urged lawmakers to get the legislation completed at a “One, Big, Beautiful Event” at the White House on June 26, labeling the bill the “single-most important piece of border legislation ever to cross the floor of Congress.”
“This is the ultimate codification of our agenda to — very simply, a phrase that’s been used pretty well by me over the past 10 years, but maybe even before that — make America great again,” Trump said at the event.
Other administration officials also cautioned that failure to pass the bill would wreak havoc on the economy. For example, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought told lawmakers in June that failure to pass the measure would result in a 60% tax hike for Americans and would trigger a recession.
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Meanwhile, no Democrats in either chamber of Congress backed the measure. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., labeled the bill “cruel” during floor remarks that lasted hours on Thursday, pointing to Medicaid and SNAP reforms that reports suggest would remove millions of beneficiaries from the programs.
“What is contemplated in this one big, ugly bill is wrong. It’s dangerous, and it’s cruel, and cruelty should not be either the objective or the outcome of legislation that we consider here in the United States House of Representatives,” Jeffries said.
Fox News Liz Elkind contributed to this report.
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