US Congress clears way for funding Trump's program

The US House of Representatives adopted a resolution on Tuesday, February 25, that establishes a budget roadmap to implement Donald Trump's flagship measures, despite disagreements within the Republican camp. This resolution paves the way for the subsequent adoption of a budget law for the year 2025, which would include up to $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and $2 trillion in reductions in federal public spending, over the next ten years.

Before that, conservative proponents of fiscal orthodoxy - for whom any new government spending must be offset by equivalent cuts - had expressed their discontent, believing that the cuts currently planned did not go far enough. "Today, House Republicans moved Congress one step closer to delivering on the entirety of President Trump's America First agenda - not just parts of it," said Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Mike Johnson knew that his room for maneuver was very slim: because of the current composition of the lower house, he could only afford one "no" vote from the Republican side. During an exchange with the press at the White House before the vote, Donald Trump confirmed that he had spoken on the phone with several Republican elected officials who had announced themselves to be resistant. And the president seems to have managed to convince most of them. The resolution was finally adopted by 217 votes for and 215 against, including only one Republican, the conservative elected official Thomas Massie. Massie had warned that he would vote against the resolution and that he would not budge from his position. "If the Republican budget passes, the deficit gets worse, it doesn't get better," he justified on X Monday. A fervent supporter of restraint in public spending, he is one of those who want more significant budget cuts to compensate for certain costly measures.

Chief among these measures: the tax credits adopted during Donald Trump's first term, which expire at the end of the year, and which Republicans want to extend or even make permanent. According to 2024 estimates from the Center for American Progress think tank, close to Democrats, making these "Trump tax credits" permanent would cost the federal government $400 billion per year over the next ten years. To offset these costs, conservative Republicans have therefore set their sights on reducing certain public assistance programs such as Medicaid, health insurance for millions of Americans with modest incomes. For the leader of the Democratic minority in the House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries, the Republicans' plan would represent "the largest cut to Medicaid in American history." The New York representative highlighted the risks for children, families, people with disabilities, but also seniors, hospitals and retirement homes, who could all find themselves "wiped out" .

Donald Trump had assured last week that the Republicans would not "touch" these public aid programs. "Unless there is fraud or something like that," he had added, alongside billionaire Elon Musk, whom he has tasked with cutting public spending with his government efficiency commission, Doge.

The Senate passed its own version of a budget resolution Friday that included hundreds of billions of dollars more for border security but did not include an extension of the “Trump tax credits,” opting instead to pass that in a separate bill. The president had expressed support last week for his signature measures to be consolidated into “one beautiful bill,” rather than delaying some of them, despite the risk that the single bill would fail. “Unlike the (Senate) version , the House bill puts my FULL America First agenda in place,” he said.

So on Tuesday, he got what he wanted, for now. Parliamentary work will continue in the coming weeks to work out all the details of the budget text, before a final vote in a few months.