Trump Touts Tax Cuts, Immigration Measures in Megabill as Senate GOP Races to Advance Package
‘We will deliver no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on Social Security for our great seniors,’ the president says. Article by Jacob Burg from The Epoch Times.
(The Epoch Times)—President Donald Trump, during an event at the White House on Thursday, highlighted the tax cuts and immigration funding efforts included in his One Big Beautiful Bill Act as Senate Republicans race to pass the key piece of the president’s legislative agenda ahead of their deadline.
“Thank you all for being here to support one of the most important pieces of legislation in the history of our country,” Trump said. “The One Big Beautiful Bill to secure our borders, turbocharge our economy, and bring back the American dream.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said earlier on Thursday that Trump expects the bill to reach his desk by July 4, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has set the same deadline for his Republican colleagues.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act—a critical piece of legislation advancing core aspects of Trump’s sweeping policy agenda—is facing uncertainty after the Senate parliamentarian rejected a GOP plan to cap states’ use of health care provider taxes to collect additional federal Medicaid funding.
That provision was intended to offset many of the large costs expected from making Trump’s business tax cuts permanent, which are a key portion of the bill.
“We'll make the Trump tax cuts permanent, expand the child tax credit, and we will deliver no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on Social Security for our great seniors,” Trump said on Thursday.
Now, Senate Republicans are racing against Trump’s self-imposed July 4th deadline to rewrite portions of the bill to pass it before next week’s holiday. The Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, made the decision in line with the “Byrd Rule,” which allows reconciliation bills to move forward if they’re only related to taxes, government revenue, and the national debt.
Reconciliation avoids the usual 60-vote Senate filibuster threshold, which would likely prevent Trump’s bill from passing due to a lack of bipartisan support.
The bill also contains additional funding for immigration enforcement, a key provision that Trump highlighted on Thursday. He said the bill offers a “big number of dollars” to keep the border secure and to assist in his “record number of deportations.”
Trump described the bill as the “single most important piece of border legislation ever to cross the floor of Congress,” which will allow his administration to hire 3,000 new border patrol officers and 10,000 new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
He called on Paul Perez, president of the National Border Patrol Council, to speak on congressional Republicans’ efforts to pass the bill.
“President Trump made promises that he’s kept. Now it’s time for Congress to back him up,” Perez said. “We’ve got the funding, we’ve got the technology. We need everything in that bill to get it done so that no more families are victimized.”
Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, criticized the lawmakers opposing the bill.
“I think this issue, the Big Beautiful Bill, should be nonpartisan,” Homan said. “We’ve got over 600,000 illegal aliens with criminal histories walking the streets of this country. We’ve got less than 5,000 deportation officers.”
He said if the bill is passed, that means more ICE agents, beds, transportation, and flights for deportation efforts.
“More agents mean more bad guys arrested, taken off the streets of this country every single day,” Homan said. “We need money to help secure that border at a higher level, stop the fentanyl from coming in, stop the sex trafficking of women and children. Stop the known, suspected terrorists coming across that border.”
Jackson Richman contributed to this report.
it sounds like the Byrd Rule could be used to shut down any omnibus bill, as they invariably contain subsections which do not comply.
like the Big Buttiful Bill contains a section with a ten year ban on state/local legislation regulating AI.
And Trump is firing her.