House passes Trump's "big beautiful bill". What's in it? - National & International News- THU 3Jul2025 -

House passes Trump’s “big beautiful bill”. Trump likely to sign tomorrow, July 4. What’s in it?

House passes Trump’s “big beautiful bill”. What’s in it?

The House managed to pass Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA) earlier today after some overnight horse-trading by Speaker Mike Johnson. The bill now heads to Trump’s desk for his signature, which will likely happen tomorrow, July 4.

The Congressional Budget Office projects that the bill will give the highest earners an extra $12,000 a year through tax cuts while costing the poorest households around $1600 a year due to losses in Medicaid coverage and SNAP benefits. By 2034, the CBO predicts nearly 12 million more Americans will receive health coverage and about 3 million will lose SNAP benefits as a result of this bill. The bill will also add $3.3 trillion to the deficit over 10 years.

Some key points will be summarized below, but click here if you want to know more about the many provisions in the 900-page bill.

Changes to taxes:

The bill makes Trump’s 2017 tax cuts permanent. The wealthiest Americans received the lion’s share of the benefits from these cuts.
For 5 years, the cap on state and local deductions (SALT) will quadruple from $10,000 to $40,000, another provision that will benefit the highest earners in high-tax states.
The OBBBA does contain some cuts that will benefit lower wage earners (for 5 years). These include ending taxes on tips, taxes paid on overtime pay, and taxes on car payments.
Older adults earning no more than $75,000 a year will also receive a $6,000 tax deduction.
The child tax credit will increase from $2000 to $2200/year, but lower-earning families will not receive the full benefit.
Numerous tax cuts for businesses, including a 100% write off for research and development costs.

Changes to Medicaid

Work requirements for recipients aged 18-65: Recipients will have to prove that they spend 80 hours a month either in work, job training, school or performing community service. The disabled and those caring for children under the age of 14 are exempt.
More frequent eligibility checks: Those already enrolled in Medicaid would have to prove their compliance with work requirements twice a year (showing compliance for at least one to three months). New applicants would have to prove that they met work requirements for at least 1-3 months before enrolling.
new $35 co-payment to be paid by patients for using certain Medicaid services.
Other changes to Medicaid could limit access to home- and community-based services.

Click here for more details on how Medicaid coverage and eligibility will change.

Massive spending on border security and deportation agenda

OBBBA gives ICE $150 billion over 4 years, or $37.5 billion/year, more than the total military budgets for most of the world’s countries.
The bill also dedicates over $61 billion to militarizing the border: $46.5 billion to complete Trump’s border wall; $5 billion for CBP facilities; and $10 billion for border security and surveillance.
$3 billion allocated to hire more immigration judges to get through massive backlog of immigration cases. However, the bill caps the number of judges at 800, which experts say is not enough to get through the estimated 4 million existing cases in a timely manner.

OBBBA also adds a $157 billion supplement to Pentagon spending, which combined with the separate spending in the National Defense Authorization, will bring total defense spending close to $1 trillion.