The House Rules Committee totally pushed through President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax bill super late on Wednesday after like 21 hours of debate and amendments. They shot the legislation to the floor where they were totally expecting a final vote super early on Thursday morning. The vote to move forward out of committee was like 8-4, which was a big win for the Republican leaders. They spent the whole day making last-minute changes to the ginormous 1,000-page bill in an effort to win over both moderates and hardline conservatives. Speaker Mike Johnson was all like, “We gotta get this done by Memorial Day, people!” No Democrats were really expected to jump on board with this tax bill, though.
So, there was this one conservative guy, Rep. Chip Roy from Texas, who didn’t even vote in the Rules Committee. It was like, “Where did he go?” on Wednesday night, and everyone was wondering if he would even vote when the bill finally made it to the floor. Johnson’s group of Republican folks is pretty slim, so he can only lose a few votes and still get this bill passed without the other party’s help. Roy and House Freedom Caucus chair Andy Harris from Maryland were part of the gang that met with Trump at the White House to try and convince the budget hawks to stop squawking and just support the tax cuts that would make the deficit explode.
The final version of the bill that made it out of the Rules Committee had like 42 pages of amendments tacked on. They were trying to give all the different groups in the party a little something to be happy about. They moved up the timeline for work requirements for Medicaid, which made the conservatives smile. But they also quadrupled the cap on the SALT deduction, so now it’s $40,000 for taxpayers making less than half a mil. The overall bill is all about making Trump’s campaign promises a reality and includes stuff like making his 2017 tax cuts permanent and getting rid of taxes on tips. The Congressional Budget Office thinks it’ll mostly help rich folks and not so much the poor ones, but who really knows for sure? If the House gives it the thumbs up, it still has to go through the Senate, where some Republicans are already saying, “Not so fast, buddy. We want changes.” So, who knows what’ll happen next? Stay tuned for updates, folks.
