(Reuters) -President Donald Trump is scheduled to sign a massive package of tax and spending cuts into law at a ceremony at the White House on Friday, one day after the Republican-controlled House of Representatives narrowly approved the legislation.
The bill, which will fund Trump’s immigration crackdown, make his 2017 tax cuts permanent, and is expected to knock millions of Americans off health insurance, was passed with a 218-214 vote after an emotional debate on the House floor.
Trump is expected to sign the bill on Friday around 5 p.m. ET at a White House celebration for the July 4 Independence Day holiday. The ceremony is expected to include a flyover by stealth bombers and fighter jets that took part in the recent U.S. strikes on nuclear facilities in Iran.
The bill’s passage amounts to a big win for Trump and his Republican allies, who have argued it will boost economic growth while largely dismissing a nonpartisan analysis predicting it will add $3.4 trillion to the nation’s $36.2 trillion debt.
Vice President JD Vance, who cast the tie-breaking vote for the bill to clear the Senate, said on Friday that the legislation would support Trump’s goal of making it easier to invest in the United States and harder to invest abroad.
“We’re going to look back on this, I really do think, as the beginning of the golden age of the United States of America,” Vance told reporters during a visit to North Dakota.
While some lawmakers in Trump’s party expressed concerns over the bill’s price tag and its hit to healthcare programs, in the end just two of the House’s 220 Republicans voted against it, joining all 212 Democrats in opposition.
The tense standoff over the bill included a record-long floor speech by House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who spoke for eight hours and 46 minutes, blasting the bill as a giveaway to the wealthy that would strip low-income Americans of federally-backed health insurance and food aid benefits.
(reporting by Nathan Layne in Cincinnati and Trevor Hunnicutt and Timothy Gardner in Washington; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
Comments