Trump close to victory on flagship tax bill

AFP | London

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US lawmakers teed up a final vote on Donald Trump’s marquee tax and spending bill for yesterday morning after bruising Republican infighting nearly derailed the centerpiece of the president’s domestic agenda.

Almost 24 hours after debate began, Trump appeared close to victory as Congress edged towards passing his “One Big Beautiful Bill,” despite misgivings in his party over a text that would balloon the national debt while launching a historic assault on the social safety net.

The bill would be a major landmark in Trump’s political life, sealing his vision of US domestic policy into law -- and coming after he scored recent wins including in the Supreme Court and with US strikes that led to a ceasefire between Israel and Iran.

Speaker Mike Johnson struggled through the night to corral his rank-and-file Republican members after the package scraped through a series of “test” votes in the House of Representatives that laid bare deep divisions in the party.

It was on course for a final vote that would put it on Trump’s desk to be signed into law after passing its last procedural hurdle in the early hours of yesterday.

“We feel very good about where we are and we’re moving forward,” an upbeat Johnson told reporters at the Capitol.

“So we’re going to deliver the Big, Beautiful Bill -- the president’s ‘America First’ agenda -- and we’re going to do right by the American people.”

Funds for mass deportation

The timetable could slip however as Democratic minority leader Hakeem Jeffries continued a long speech opposing the bill that delayed proceedings by several hours.

Originally approved by the House in May, Trump’s sprawling legislation squeezed through the Senate on Tuesday but had to return to the lower chamber for a rubber stamp of the senators’ revisions.

The package honors many of Trump’s campaign promises, boosting military spending, funding a mass migrant deportation drive and committing $4.5 trillion to extend his first-term tax relief.

But it is expected to pile an extra $3.4 trillion over a decade onto the country’s fast-growing deficits, while shrinking the federal food stamps program and forcing through the largest cuts to the Medicaid health insurance scheme for low-income Americans since its 1960s launch.

While Republican moderates in the House are anxious that the cuts will damage their prospects of reelection, fiscal hawks chafed over savings that they say fall far short of what was promised.

Johnson has to negotiate tight margins, and can likely only lose three lawmakers in the final vote, among more than two dozen who had declared themselves open to rejecting Trump’s bill.