President Donald Trump’s $3.3 trillion ‘big, beautiful bill’ has reportedly set the House record for the longest vote in the history of the lower chamber of Congress.
The procedural vote on the Senate-amended version of the bill lasted for more than seven hours. In 2021, the House spent seven hours and six minutes voting on former President Joe Biden’s ‘Build Back Better’ legislative package.
Wednesday night’s voting surpassed the previous record at 9:15 p.m. ET Wednesday by at least 15 minutes, according to Axios.
Assistant House Minority Leader Joe Neguse, D-Colo., goaded House Republicans by claiming the protracted voting period Wednesday violated House rules, Axios reported.
The extended voting period came as House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., wrangled with members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. They pushed back on the Senate’s version of the megabill over its projected increase to the federal deficit, as well as what they deemed insufficient Medicaid reforms and spending cuts. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, took issue with Senate revisions reintroducing green energy tax credits despite House efforts to roll back such programs.
With the Democrats united in opposition, the future of the more than 800-page, Trump-backed legislative package depends on a handful of GOP holdouts.
Following the overnight session, Johnson said Thursday he was determined to get the Senate-amended bill passed by the House and to the president’s desk by the Independence Day deadline on Friday.
Lawmakers voted to proceed with debate on the Trump agenda bill in the early hours of Thursday – a mechanism known as a ‘rule vote’ – teeing up a final House-wide vote sometime later Thursday morning.
Speaking to reporters Thursday morning, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., said that beyond the House Freedom Caucus, some moderate Republicans also have final questions about how the megabill would be implemented.
‘Some of them wanted to talk to some of the different agencies about, you know, how they’re planning on implementing it, which obviously the agency heads have been planning for months on these changes,’ Scalise said. ‘So they walk through those things and that was helpful to members just to at least get a good idea of what to expect once the bill becomes law. Of course, none of it happens if the bill doesn’t become law. So the focus has always been, let’s get this bill passed.’
The Senate passed the ‘big, beautiful bill’ by a razor-thin, 51-50 margin last week, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote.
Fox News’ Liz Elkind and Tyler Olson contributed to this report.
