NEW YORK, July 3 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. House of Representatives passed President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill with a vote of 218 to 214 on Thursday.
The bill will be sent to the president's desk for signing by the deadline of July 4, which was set by Trump.
Two Republican representatives, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, voted against the bill.
The House passed an earlier draft of the bill in May and sent it to the Senate, but the draft was broadly revised there and narrowly passed senators' vote with Vice President JD Vance breaking the tie on Tuesday.
The tax and spending bill includes tax cuts and funding boosts for military expenditure and border security. What's contentious is that the bill is forecast to add 3.3 trillion U.S. dollars to the national debt currently at a high level while stripping millions of people of Medicaid and food stamps.
This is Trump's first major legislative achievement in his second term. Republican Congress members were widely divided on the bill, which passed the Senate and House voting only after the president and his Capitol Hill allies pressured those Republicans with different ideas to stand in line.
When signing the legislation that will be sent to the president, House Speaker Mike Johnson said that with the passage of the bill, "we'd have to quite literally fix every area of public policy."
"Everything was an absolute disaster under the Biden-Harris, radical, woke, progressive Democrat regime, and we took the best effort that we could, in one big, beautiful bill, to fix as much of it as we could," he added.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt hailed the passage of the bill Thursday, commenting in a statement that "President Trump's One Big, Beautiful Bill delivers on the commonsense agenda that nearly 80 million Americans voted for -- the largest middle-class tax cut in history, permanent border security, massive military funding, and restoring fiscal sanity."
"The pro-growth policies within this historic legislation are going to fuel an economic boom like we've never seen before. President Trump looks forward to signing the One Big, Beautiful Bill into law to officially usher in the Golden Age of America," she added.
She said that the bill-signing ceremony is planned in the White House at 5 p.m. Friday Eastern Time (2100 GMT), which happens to be the Independence Day holiday.
The White House posted on its website that "Now, the largest middle-class tax cut in American history -- and so much more -- is on its way to President Trump's desk."
"Again and again, Democrats tried to block historic tax relief, increased border security, higher wages, an expanded Child Tax Credit, No Tax on Tips, No Tax on Overtime, No Tax on Social Security, savings accounts for newborns, and so much more -- but again and again, President Trump and Republicans fought and won for the American people," the post said.
