President Donald Trump said, “Our country has had so much to celebrate this Independence Day as we enter our 249th year. America’s winning, winning, winning like never before,” before signing his “big, beautiful bill” into law Friday. Multiple Republican members of Congress showed up at the White House for the Fourth of July signing and applauded as Trump showed the camera his signature on what he has described as “a declaration of independence from a national decline” and then repeatedly banged a gavel handed to him by House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La.
“We have officially made the Trump tax cuts permanent. That’s the largest tax cut in the history of our country,” the president said. “We’re setting all sorts of economic records right now, and that’s before this kicks in. After this kicks in, our country is going to be a rocket ship, economically.”
The bill’s passage and signing constitute a major policy win for a second-term president who displayed complete control over the Republican Party — not only by getting the bill passed but also by getting it passed by his self-imposed July 4 deadline.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune was among the Republicans who originally wanted to carry out Trump’s bill in two distinct legislative measures, but Trump wanted “one big, beautiful bill.” And he got it.
The passage of the massive, nearly 900-page package followed the GOP’s decision to ignore the Congressional Budget Office’s finding that the bill will increase the national debt by $3.3 trillion over a decade and use a trick known as “current policy baseline” to obscure the true cost of the plan. The legislation passed over the objections of a few Republicans and every Democrat in the House and the Senate.
“The Republicans in the House of Representatives have just passed the ‘ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL ACT,’” Trump wrote on his social media platform after the bill passed the House of Representatives on a 218-214 vote Thursday. “Our Party is UNITED like never before and, our Country is ‘HOT.’”
Trump unintentionally alluded to the number of Americans who are heated over the bill.
With that phrasing, Trump unintentionally alluded to the number of Americans who are heated over the bill, with its extension of tax cuts for the wealthy, its slashing of Medicaid, food stamps and clean energy funding and its massive budget increases for ICE and the U.S. military. NBC News reported on five polls near the end of June, with none showing support for the bill or its major provisions rising above 38%.
On Thursday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., channeling the general sentiments of the Democratic Party, called it a “big, ugly bill” and a “disgusting abomination.”
Ignoring the policy disagreements that compelled Democrats to unanimously oppose his bill, Trump told a crowd in Des Moines, Iowa, that they opposed it “only because they hate Trump.” He added: “But I hate them, too, you know? I really do. I hate them. I cannot stand them, because I really believe they hate our country.”