The 'big beautiful bill' heads to Trump's desk for Independence Day

President Donald Trump’s mega budget bill passed the House with a four-vote margin Thursday, advancing key pieces of Trump’s agenda by cutting taxes and increasing funding for immigration enforcement and the border wall.

The bill also makes major cuts to the social safety net, trimming close to $1 trillion from Medicaid, Medicare and subsidies from the Affordable Care Act, and $230 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, spending over the next 10 years.

The legislation balloons the deficit by $3.3 trillion, and could cause 11.8 million people to lose their insurance coverage, according to a nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimate. In New Mexico, close to 90,000 residents could lose health care coverage, state officials said Tuesday.

Trump is scheduled to sign the package on Independence Day.

“We know that thousands of New Mexicans are going to lose access to health care. What that looks like is higher premiums, coverage no longer covering medical needs like cancer screenings and other programs that help save people’s lives,” said Rep. Melanie Stansbury, D-N.M.

Every Democrat voted against the bill, as did two Republicans. The Republican Party of New Mexico celebrated Trump achieving some of his largest policy goals.

“With federal policy heading in the right direction, it’s time we fix what’s broken at home,” Republican Party of New Mexico Chair Amy Barela said in a statement. “We must reform state and local laws to make New Mexico a place where doctors want to practice and patients can receive quality, timely care.”

Republicans sped the massive bill through the House after the Senate narrowly passed it Tuesday, in an effort to meet Trump’s July 4 deadline. While House Democrats were unable to amend the legislation, which is identical to the Senate version, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries did delay the vote with a record-setting 8 hour and 44 minute floor speech.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said the bill lays a cornerstone for America’s “new golden age.”

“Working Americans stopped trusting Democrats a long time ago… They’re looking to the Republican Party and our principles to deliver the relief and the reform that they have long demanded and they most certainly deserve,” Johnson said.

The bill temporarily eliminates taxes on tips and overtime pay and permanently extends the 2017 tax cuts passed under Trump’s first term.

SNAP cuts may not be as damaging to the state as first expected, according to Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, D-N.M. To convince Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, to vote yes on the bill in the Senate, the plan to share SNAP costs with states was altered so that states like Alaska with an error rate above 13.3% can delay a new cost-sharing plan by up to two years. New Mexico was one of 10 states whose 2024 error rates were above 13.3%.

Still, the new work requirements will likely affect many New Mexico SNAP recipients, and state officials estimate 58,000 New Mexicans will lose SNAP benefits.

”These are the most damaging and substantial changes to health care and food safety-net programs in generations,” said Health Care Authority spokesman Tim Fowler.

The bill cuts $900 billion in Medicaid spending and makes changes to provider taxes and the Medicaid reimbursement rate that hospital associations lobbied against. But legislators also included a new $50 billion fund for rural hospitals.

“This carve out that some Republicans have included in the Senate bill to keep rural hospitals open is like putting a band-aid on a severed limb,” said Rep. Gabe Vasquez, D-N.M.

When it comes to Medicaid and SNAP cuts, the congressional delegation will “be working very closely with the governor and state Legislature,” to figure out how state resources can be used to help protect New Mexicans, Stansbury said. Leger Fernández said she encourages Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to hold a special legislative session. Lujan Grisham is prepared to a call a special session if necessary, she said in a statement Thursday.

Congress itself may revise some of the policies included in the bill over the next year, according to Stansbury, because of the deficit spending included.

“It’s very likely the Republicans themselves are going to have to revisit key pieces of this legislation because of the impacts to the U.S. economy and to interest rates and to American borrowing,” Stansbury said.

For Democrats, expansion of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which gives compensation to people who got certain illnesses after being exposed to above ground nuclear tests or working in uranium mining, was a silver lining in the budget bill.

It was not expanded as broadly as previously proposed, but does include New Mexico downwinders for the first time. That ended up in the bill because of the broad coalition working on it, Leger Fernández said. Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Sen. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., have led on the issue in the Senate.

“Over in the Senate, Republicans could withhold their vote and get something for it, right? Murkowski got some issues with regards to whale captains and with regards to SNAP benefits, and Hawley got RECA,” Leger Fernández said.

The next fight in Congress will likely be appropriations, according to Stansbury and Vasquez.