WASHINGTON — At some 940-pages, the legislation is a sprawling collection of tax breaks, spending cuts and other Republican priorities, including new money for national defense and deportations. Now it’s up to Congress to decide whether President Donald Trump’s signature’s domestic policy package will become law.
Trump told Republicans, who hold majority power in the House and Senate, to skip their holiday vacations and deliver the bill by the Fourth of July.
Senators were working through the weekend to pass the bill and send it back to the House for a final vote. Democrats are united against it.
Here’s the latest on what’s in the bill. There could be changes as lawmakers negotiate.
Republicans say the bill is crucial because there would be a massive tax increase after December when tax breaks from Trump’s first term expire. The legislation contains roughly $3.8 trillion in tax cuts.
The existing tax rates and brackets would become permanent under the bill. It temporarily would add new tax breaks that Trump campaigned on: no taxes on tips, overtime pay or some automotive loans, along with a bigger $6,000 deduction in the Senate draft for older adults who earn no more than $75,000 a year.
It would boost the $2,000 child tax credit to $2,200 under the Senate proposal. Families at lower income levels would not see the full amount.
A cap on state and local deductions, called SALT, would quadruple to $40,000 for five years. It’s a provision important to New York and other high tax states, though the House wanted it to last for 10 years.
There are scores of business-related tax cuts.
The wealthiest households would see a $12,000 increase from the legislation, which would cost the poorest people $1,600 a year, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office analysis of the House’s version.
Middle-income taxpayers would see a tax break of $500 to $1,500, the CBO said.
The bill would provide some $350 billion for Trump’s border and national security agenda, including $46 billion for the U.S.-Mexico border wall and $45 billion for 100,000 migrant detention facility beds, as he aims to fulfill his promise of the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history.
Money would go for hiring 10,000 new Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, with $10,000 signing bonuses and a surge of Border Patrol officers, as well. The goal is to deport some 1 million people per year.
The homeland security secretary would have a new $10 billion fund for grants for states that help with federal immigration enforcement and deportation actions. The attorney general would have $3.5 billion for a similar fund, known as Bridging Immigration-related Deficits Experienced Nationwide, or BIDEN, referring to former Democratic President Joe Biden.
To help pay for it all, immigrants would face various new fees, including when seeking asylum protections.
For the Pentagon, the bill would provide billions for ship building, munitions systems, and quality of life measures for servicemen and women, as well as $25 billion for the development of the Golden Dome missile defense system. The Defense Department would have $1 billion for border security.
To help partly offset the lost tax revenue and new spending, Republicans aim to cut back some long-running government programs: Medicaid, food stamps, green energy incentives and others. It’s essentially unraveling the accomplishm