Updated February 25, 2025 at 21:40 PM ET
The future of President Trump's domestic agenda cleared a decisive test in the House on Tuesday, as Republicans overcame internal divides over spending to pass a framework for a sweeping multitrillion dollar plan to address defense, energy, immigration and tax policy.
Tuesday's vote was a critical step forward for House Republicans, as passage allows them to unlock a complicated legislative tool known as reconciliation. It's a process that Republicans can use to avoid a filibuster from Democrats in the Senate, but in order to use it they had to first agree on a budget blueprint.
"We got it done," Johnson told reporters following the vote. "This is the first important step in opening up the reconciliation process. We have a lot of hard work ahead of us, but we are going to deliver the America First agenda."
House Republicans have a razor-thin majority, and needed virtually the entire conference to vote yes. Ultimately, the measure passed 217 to 215, with just one Republican voting against the budget resolution.
Tuesday's vote marks an early step forward in what promises to be a lengthy and difficult path in passing the party's policy priorities. The Republican-led Senate, impatient with delays on the House side, has already moved their own budget reconciliation plan forward. Now, the two chambers need to pass the same bill in order to move ahead.
At the start of the day, GOP leaders were still working to wrangle support. Johnson and his deputies spent weeks in painstaking negotiations, but struggled to balance competing demands from within a fractious GOP caucus.
While fiscal hawks were demanding steep spending cuts, other members voiced concern about those cuts having to come from Medicaid, the government insurance program that provides health coverage for millions of low-income and disabled Americans.
The House plan calls for an increase in funding to secure the southern border, a boost for military spending and raising the nation's debt limit by $4 trillion.
The plan also calls for $4.5 trillion in tax cuts over the next decade. Those cuts include renewing the 2017 Trump tax cuts, which are set to expire at the end of the year, as well as other proposals that the president campaigned on, like no taxes on tips, overtime or Social Security.
Spending cut concession
In order to get the budget plan just to this stage, Johnson was forced to concede to a demand from some conservative holdouts for $2 trillion in spending cuts. Under the budget framework, the exact details of those cuts will be sorted out later, by individual committees in the House.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee, for example, would be responsible for coming up with $880 billion in savings. But because the committee has say over spending for programs like Medicare and Medicaid, more moderate Republicans are worried about cuts coming from the social safety net.
Democrats also seized on the potential for cuts to the popular Medicaid program for low-income, elderly and disabled Americans.
"The House Republican budget resolution will set in motion the largest Medicaid cut in American history," House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., told reporters after the vote.
Ahead of Tuesday's vote, several members signaled opposition — but in the end just one Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, voted against it.
In a post on social media Monday, Massie wrote, "If the Republican budget passes, the deficit gets worse, not better." Elon Musk responded to the post by saying, "That sounds bad."
The chair of the House Budget Committee, Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, credited Johnson for the outcome. There were multiple holdouts before the vote, Arrington acknowledged, but the speaker he said, was "the difference maker."
"I think that small margin forces you to work together," Arrington said. "This was an historic election. We know this is a monumental opportunity for us to course correct, for us to reverse course on the last four years, to be frank, and nobody wants to miss that. And everybody had to make some sacrifice or some pain involved."
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