The Latest: House GOP pushes budget resolution to passage

With a push from President Donald Trump, House Republicans sent a GOP budget blueprint to passage Tuesday, a step toward delivering his “big, beautiful bill” with $4.5 trillion in tax breaks and $2 trillion in spending cuts despite a wall of opposition from Democrats and discomfort among Republicans.

Here's the latest:

Passage of the budget package is just one step in a longer process

Trump wants the Republicans who control Congress to approve a massive bill that would extend tax breaks, which he secured during his first term but are expiring later this year, while also cutting spending across federal programs and services.

The next steps are long and cumbersome before anything can become law — weeks of committee hearings to draft the details and send the House version to the Senate, where Republicans passed their own scaled-back version. And more big votes are ahead, including an unrelated deal to prevent a government shutdown when federal funding expires March 14. Those talks are also underway.

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House GOP pushes ‘big’ budget resolution to passage, a crucial step toward delivering Trump’s agenda

With a push from Trump, House Republicans sent a GOP budget blueprint to passage Tuesday, a step toward delivering his “big, beautiful bill” with $4.5 trillion in tax breaks and $2 trillion in spending cuts despite a wall of opposition from Democrats and discomfort among Republicans.

House Speaker Mike Johnson had almost no votes to spare in his bare-bones GOP majority and was fighting on all fronts — against Democrats, uneasy rank-and-file Republicans and skeptical GOP senators — to advance the party’s signature legislative package. Trump was making calls to wayward GOP lawmakers and had invited Republicans to the White House.

The vote was 217-215, with all Democrats opposed, and the outcome was in jeopardy until the gavel.

“On a vote like this, you’re always going to have people you’re talking to all the way through the close of the vote,” Majority Leader Steve Scalise said before the roll call. “It’s that tight.”

Democrats highlight the impact of DOGE’s job cuts on veterans working in the federal government

Nearly 6,000 veterans have been fired across the federal government, according to data from House Democrats. The analysis found that the Department of Government Efficiency has fired about 38,000 federal employees since the start of Trump’s term.

Democratic lawmakers have spoken out in speeches and taken to social media raising alarm about fired veterans in the workplace. Republicans frequently retort that the job cuts are a necessary part of the Trump administration’s push for efficiency. Veterans comprise about 30% of the federal workforce.

Trump to suspend the security clearances of lawyers who aided in his investigation

Trump has directed federal agencies to suspend the security clearances that belong to employees of the law firm Covington & Burling who provided pro bono services to Jack Smith, the U.S. attorney who as special counsel oversaw his criminal investigations.

“Deranged Jack Smith,” Trump said before the document signing in the Oval Office.

Trump asked if this could be done to other law firms as well. Will Scharf, the White House staff secretary, responded: “We’re looking at sort of the whole panoply of options.”

As a result of Smith’s investigation, Trump was indicted for the mishandling of classified documents and his role in the events leading to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. Both cases were dismissed. The insurrection case was dismissed after Trump won the 2024 election.

Trump reinstates rule requiring cost transparency in health care

The order requires hospitals to post online the rates for some of their most common services, from MRI scans to caesarean section deliveries. Trump has long sought to address the secrecy that often surprises patients with treatment invoices.

The president calls the transparency requirement “one of the biggest things that can happen to reducing costs in health care.”

Trump issued a similar rule during the last year of his first term in office, but President Joe Biden did little to enforce it.

Hospitals and insurers had strongly opposed the rule, and many had not complied.

“It’s been unpopular in some circles because people make less money,” Trump said during a signing event in the Oval Office. “But it’s great for the patient. It’s great for the people in our country.”