Northwest Republicans help House pass ‘Big Beautiful Bill,’ extending tax cuts while cutting Medicaid, increasing debt

WASHINGTON – Northwest Republicans helped the House pass President Donald Trump’s signature tax-and-spending legislation on Thursday, as nearly all GOP lawmakers backed the massive bill even as many of them said they disliked parts of it.

Rep. Dan Newhouse of central Washington and Rep. Russ Fulcher, who represents North Idaho, were among the Republican holdouts who delayed a key procedural vote until the early hours of Thursday morning. But despite voicing concerns about the bill a day earlier, the congressmen joined all but two of their GOP colleagues to pass the bill in the afternoon, narrowly overcoming universal opposition from Democrats. Had just two more of the House’s 220 Republicans opposed the bill, they could have stalled it to force changes.

“At the start of this Congress, we made a commitment to reduce government spending, keep taxes low for hard-working Americans, and make reforms to federal assistance programs to ensure their long-term sustainability,” Newhouse said in a statement after voting. “This is by no means a perfect bill, but it delivers on our commitment while benefiting farmers, families, and small business owners across central Washington.”

The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” extends the sweeping tax cuts Republicans passed during Trump’s first term in 2017, cuts other taxes temporarily, boosts spending on the military and immigration enforcement and cuts spending on health care and food assistance for low-income Americans, people with disabilities, pregnant women and young children. It pairs $4.8 trillion in new costs with just $1.4 trillion in spending cuts, adding $3.4 trillion to the national debt over 10 years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Newhouse was part of a small group of GOP moderates that met with Trump, Vice President JD Vance and other officials at the White House on Wednesday morning. Later that day, he told The Spokesman-Review he had brought up his concerns with the bill cutting roughly $1 trillion over a decade from Medicaid.

Newhouse pledged that he would “make sure that what we do is not going to negatively impact my district, particularly, and the state of Washington.” His constituents rely more heavily on Washington state’s Medicaid program, called Apple Health, than people in any other congressional district.

The GOP bill aims to cut Medicaid spending by imposing new work-reporting requirements that would deny coverage to able-bodied adults who don’t file monthly paperwork to prove they are working. Critics of that approach, including Republican state lawmakers in Olympia, have warned that eligible patients could lose their health insurance coverage due to confusing bureaucracy, and that cutting Medicaid funding will force hospitals to reduce their services or even close, especially in rural areas.

In the statement explaining his vote, Newhouse said Republicans “are protecting Medicaid” and a food assistance program the bill also cuts “for those who truly need it,” touting a $50 billion fund for rural hospitals. That fund would make grants available to subsidize hospitals at risk of closure, rather than simply paying for Americans to receive health care at those hospitals. Newhouse also pledged to use his role on the House Appropriations Committee, which directs federal spending, to protect rural hospitals.

Fulcher, a member of the hardline House Freedom Caucus, was among a group of fiscal conservatives that were unhappy that the bill doesn’t pay for itself and would add an estimated $3.4 trillion in net deficits to the national debt over 10 years. After House Republicans passed the bill in May, their Senate counterparts made changes to increase cuts to Medicaid spending yet still raised the total cost of the bill.

“Today, I voted to deliver what effectively will result in the single-largest tax cut in American history for the American People, and to bolster border and military resources to keep our communities safe,” Fulcher said in a statement. “While I believe there are additional provisions that should have been included in the final bill, this legislation delivers significant wins for hard-working families, codifying key aspects of President Trump’s policy agenda into law.”

Most Americans won’t see a significant tax cut from the bill, which largely maintains taxes at their current level. New tax cuts, including one for tipped wages that Trump made a central part of his campaign platform, were pared down in the final version of the bill and may not apply to all workers who earn tips.

To skirt congressional rules designed to prevent Congress from increasing the debt, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo of Idaho and other GOP leaders used what critics called an accounting gimmick to make most of the $4.5 trillion in tax cuts – the same tax cuts Fulcher called the largest in American history – appear to cost nothing at all.

After the House passed its version of the bill, Senate Republicans made numerous changes, including reducing an increase to the child tax credit from $500 to $200. But despite Trump floating the idea of letting tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans expire, GOP senators dismissed that suggestion and preserved the tax cuts for the highest income bracket, choosing instead to cut more spending from Medicaid.

With just a few exceptions – including Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who opposed his party’s bill while announcing he wouldn’t run for re-election – Republicans who publicly objected to the Medicaid cuts ended up voting for the bill without getting any major concessions. In a speech on the Senate floor on Sunday, Tillis referred to Trump’s repeated promise that the bill would only target fraud in the Medicaid program.

“It is inescapable this bill will betray the promise Donald Trump made,” Tillis said. “I’m telling the president that you have been misinformed. You supporting the Senate mark will hurt people who are eligible and qualified for Medicaid.”

Rep. Michael Baumgartner, R-Spokane, argued that the cuts to Medicaid represent a first step toward what would ultimately need to be a bipartisan effort to reform the country’s entitlement programs – including Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security – before the trust funds that support them run out of money.

In a statement after he voted for the bill, Baumgartner repeated a line he has frequently used to describe the bill, saying it “isn’t a silver bullet” but is “a bold, serious step toward getting our economy back on track and restoring real accountability in Washington, D.C.”

“Hard-working Americans deserve a government that rewards work, drives growth, and knows when to get out of the way,” he said. “The One Big Beautiful Bill does just that – keeping more money where it belongs: in the pockets of working families. It locks in the Trump Tax Cuts, supports small businesses, secures our southern border, and invests in rural health care and energy independence.”

The investment in rural health care Baumgartner mentioned, the $50 billion fund meant to patch holes left by the Medicaid cuts, was added to the Senate bill to win the support of Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, one of the final Republican holdouts in the upper chamber. She secured a handful of other changes, including exemptions for Native Americans and Alaska Natives from the work-reporting requirements for Medicaid and food assistance.

After casting the decisive vote to pass the legislation in the Senate on Tuesday, Murkowski called it “a bad bill” in a lengthy statement.

“Let’s not kid ourselves,” Murkowski said. “This has been an awful process – a frantic rush to meet an artificial deadline that has tested every limit of this institution. While we have worked to improve the present bill for Alaska, it is not good enough for the rest of our nation – and we all know it. My sincere hope is that this is not the final product. This bill needs more work across chambers and is not ready for the President’s desk. We need to work together to get this right.”

It was the final product, and the bill heads to Trump’s desk just before that artificial deadline, the nation’s 249th birthday.