The House of Representatives is beginning the final legislative sprint of President Donald Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ before the commander in chief signs it into law.
The powerful House panel is the final gatekeeper before most pieces of legislation get a chamber-wide vote.
It comes after the Senate spent more than 24 hours straight considering the bill, eventually passing it along the narrowest of margins around midday Wednesday. Vice President JD Vance was on Capitol Hill to cast the tie-breaking vote.
It’s not clear how long the House Rules Committee meeting will go; when the panel considered the House’s own version of the bill in May, Democrats introduced dozens of amendments to symbolically object to the bill and delay the process.
Meanwhile, two conservatives on the House Rules Committee, Reps. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., and Chip Roy, R-Texas, are among those in the lower chamber raising concerns about the bill.
Their opposition in committee would not be enough to stop it, but the legislation could face serious threats House-wide, where just four GOP ‘no’ votes would be enough to sink the bill.
The House first passed the bill – a mammoth piece of legislation advancing Trump’s agenda on taxes, the border, energy, defense and the national debt – in late May by just one vote.
Modifications made by the Senate in order to pass that chamber’s own razor-thin, three-vote majority must now be approved in the House before getting to Trump’s desk.
Republican leaders have a self-imposed deadline of getting the bill to Trump’s desk by the Fourth of July.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., told Fox News Digital early evening on Monday that he expected his chamber would begin considering the bill as early as 9 a.m. Wednesday.
But two members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, Norman and Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., told Fox News Digital earlier that same day that they believed the bill would not survive a House-wide procedural vote Wednesday if the Senate’s text did not materially change.
The bill would permanently extend the income tax brackets lowered by Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), while temporarily adding new tax deductions to eliminate duties on tipped and overtime wages up to certain caps.
It also includes a new tax deduction for people aged 65 and over.
The legislation also rolls back green energy tax credits implemented under former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which Trump and his allies have attacked as ‘the Green New Scam.’
The bill would also surge money toward the national defense, and to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the name of Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants in the U.S.
The bill would also raise the debt limit by $5 trillion in order to avoid a potentially economically devastating credit default sometime this summer, if the U.S. runs out of cash to pay its obligations.
