After nearly 29 hours of debate, the United States House of Representatives have passed the “One Big Beautiful Bill”, an enormous tax cut and spending package that represents a pillar of President Donald Trump’s agenda.

The lower house of the US Congress voted by a margin of 218 to 214 in favour of the bill on Thursday.

All 212 Democratic members of the House opposed the bill. They were joined by Representatives Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, who broke from the Republican majority.

After the bill’s passage, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, the top Republican, applauded his fellow party members.

“I believed in this vision. I believed in the group. I believe in America,” Johnson said to applause.

The bill now heads to the White House for Trump to sign it into law. The Republican president had called on his fellow party members to pass the legislation before July 4, the country’s Independence Day.

As a result of the new legislation, the US will lift its debt ceiling — the amount the federal government is allowed to borrow — by $5 trillion.

The bill also pours tens of billions of dollars into immigration enforcement, one of Trump’s top priorities, and it will also cement the 2017 tax cuts that Trump championed during his first term as president.

To pay for those expenditures, the bill scales back social initiatives like Medicaid — government health insurance for low-income households — and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), otherwise known as food stamps.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the bill will increase the number of people without health insurance by 17 million over the next 10 years.
It also projected that the country’s deficit — the amount of money the US owes — would climb by about $3.3 trillion over the same period.

Democratic lawmakers had slammed the bill as a massive redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich, noting that the tax cuts will mainly benefit the wealthiest earners.

Republican supporters like Trump have countered that the bill will fuel growth and cut waste and fraud in programmes like Medicaid.

Yet, not all conservatives initially backed the “One Big Beautiful Bill” as it wound its way through the chambers of Congress. There were several Republican holdouts who feared how the Medicaid cuts would impact low-income and rural communities, and some fiscal conservatives objected to the increase in the national debt.

“FOR REPUBLICANS, THIS SHOULD BE AN EASY YES VOTE,” Trump said in a social media post on Wednesday night. “RIDICULOUS!!!”

Even Trump’s erstwhile ally, billionaire Elon Musk, has publicly opposed the bill over provisions he described as “pork”.