WASHINGTON (AP) — President Trump has signed his sweeping package of tax breaks and spending cuts into law, after his cajoling produced almost unanimous Republican support in Congress for the domestic priority that could cement his second-term legacy.
Against odds that at times seemed improbable, Trump achieved his goal of celebrating a historic — and divisive — legislative victory in time for the nation’s birthday. Fighter jets and a stealth bomber streaked through the sky over the annual White House Fourth of July picnic as Trump and first lady Melania Trump stepped out onto the White House balcony.
“America’s winning, winning, winning like never before,” Trump said, noting last month’s bombing campaign against Iran’s nuclear program, which he said the flyover was meant to honor. “Promises made, promises kept and we’ve kept them.”
The White House was hung with red, white and blue bunting for the regular Fourth of July festivities. The United States Marine Band played patriotic marches — and, in a typical Trumpian touch, tunes by 1980s pop icons Chaka Khan and Huey Lewis. The two separate flyovers bookended Trump’s appearance and the band playing the national anthem.
The legislation extends Trump’s 2017 multitrillion-dollar tax cuts, preventing a huge tax increase if they had not be extended. It provides for a massive increase in immigration enforcement.
The legislation passed the House on a largely party-line vote Thursday, culminating a monthslong push by the GOP to cram most of its legislative priorities into a single budget bill that could be enacted without Senate Democrats being able to block it indefinitely by filibustering.
It passed by a single vote in the Senate, where North Carolina Republican Thom Tillis announced he would not run for reelection after incurring Trump’s wrath in opposing it. Vice President JD Vance had to cast the tie-breaking vote.
In the House, where two Republicans voted against it, one, conservative maverick Tom Massie of Kentucky, has also become a target of Trump’s well-funded political operation.
The legislation amounts to a repudiation of the agendas of the past two Democratic presidents, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, in rolling back Obama’s Medicaid expansion under his signature health law and Biden’s tax credits for renewable energy.
Trump exulted in his political victory Thursday night in Iowa, where he attended a kickoff of events celebrating the country’s 250th birthday next year.
“I want to thank Republican congressmen and women, because what they did is incredible,” he said. The president complained that Democrats voted against the bill because “they hate Trump — but I hate them, too.”
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