It's all over but the signing.
On Thursday, House Republicans passed President Trump's massive tax and policy bill with just enough time to get to his desk by Friday.
On the house floor, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., pledged that the bill would make America "stronger, safer and more prosperous than ever before."
"And every American is going to benefit from that," he said Thursday. "Today we are laying a key cornerstone of America's new golden age."
At the heart of the legislation is an extension of Trump's 2017 tax cuts. It also includes new spending on defense and immigration enforcement, and lifts the nation's debt limit by $5 trillion.
To pay for that, the bill cuts spending across a range of programs, most notably Medicaid — which provides health care for low-income, elderly and disabled Americans.
Republicans say they are targeting waste, fraud and abuse in the program. And Democrats, who all voted against the bill, had warned that the legislation contains major cuts to the social safety net, including food aid and insurance coverage for millions of Americans.
However, early estimates suggest around 12 million people could lose coverage and that's one of the main reasons why negotiations on this bill were so contentious in both chambers.
"There will be immediate impacts as a result of this big ugly betrayal," Democratic Party chair Ken Martin told NPR.
Even with its passage, the fight over this bill is far from over.
Before the vote, Martin told All Things Considered host Juana Summers that Democrats plan to make this legislation the centerpiece of their push to win back control of Congress in the 2026 midterm elections.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Interview highlights
Juana Summers: I just want to start by asking you to peel back the curtain for us. What's the strategy here?
Ken Martin: Well, look, let me just start with how devastating this bill has looked. You know, these cowardly Republicans, most of them who haven't met with their constituents, they refuse to meet with their constituents, and who try to pass this bill in the middle of the night. Thank God that Hakeem Jeffries gave his record-breaking speech today to make these Republicans actually vote in broad daylight.
At the end of the day, these Republicans betrayed their constituents. They put their fealty to Donald Trump and the Republican Party and his billionaire friends ahead of the constituents that they were elected by. And this betrayal is immense, right?
So for me, we're going to hang this vote around the neck of every single Republican who decided to sell their constituents out to help billionaires.
Summers: Explain to me how so, though, because I've covered politics for a long time and historically Republicans have been pretty good at selling a message. For example, this is a bill that is widely known as the Big Beautiful Bill, even though — I will note — this is not something that will be beautiful for all Americans. So, what can members of your party tell their constituents that is as concise and compelling as that that can explain to people the message that you have?
Martin: It's not beautiful. Isn't that beautiful about this bill? At the end of the day, this is the most unpopular piece of legislation in the last half century.
The majority of Americans — not majority Democrats — majority of Americans do not favor this bill. It is a gift for the Democratic Party because let me tell you, many people who left our party, they bought this snake oil salesman's message that he was going to actually improve their lives and strengthen communities, he hasn't delivered at all on any of that. And that gives us an opportunity, as a Democratic Party, if we're willing to take it — and I'll tell you what, we are willing to take that opportunity — to actually expand our coalition and bring many of those people back into the conversation and back into our party.
Summers: I've got to ask you about a bit of polling. According to the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, the approval rating for congressional Democrats is at just 27%. That is down from 39% last February. How do you and your fellow Democrats make the case to the American public that they can trust you and that they can support the party?
Martin: Well, I think it's a fair point. We have to earn the trust of voters back. And there's no doubt that there were a number of people who've left our party because they don't feel like we're fighting for them anymore.
And, you know, actually, last year there was some research that showed surprisingly — it should have been the canary in the coal mine — that for the first time in American history, the majority of Americans believe that the Republican Party best represents the interests of the middle class, the working class and the poor. And the Democratic Party is the party of the wealthy and the elites.
Well, boy, this vote today actually proves that it's just the opposite. And that is what I'm talking about. For us to earn the trust back of these voters, we have to stand up and fight for them again. And we have to give them a sense of what our economic agenda is and what it would mean if they put Democrats back in power versus this Republican administration who's made it clear that they could give a damn about working people in this country and they're certainly not going to fight for them.
So I do think, you know, look, we've got work to do. There's no doubt about it. But I've always said this: when you hit rock bottom, guess what? There's only one direction to go and it's up. And that's what we're doing.
And certainly this bill is going to supercharge that because people are going to be pissed off around this country.
Summers: We just saw Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic socialist, win the New York mayoral primary over the establishment candidate Andrew Cuomo. And I'll just note that Mamdani did not have the Democratic Party support. Does that win make you reconsider your strategy when it comes to backing establishment Democrats in the midterms?
Martin: No. Listen, my strategy has always been to support whoever our Democratic nominee is, right? And Mamdani is our democratic nominee and we will support him. You know, look, we're a big tent party. We have conservative Democrats. We have centrists, we have progressives and we have leftists.
And I believe you win elections through addition, not subtraction. You win elections by actually bringing people into your coalition, not pushing them out.
And so for me, there are a lot of lessons to learn from his campaign. One is how disciplined he was on the message. He stayed focused on what people care about, which was affordability. And then also his online and offline presence and how he actually met voters, where they were at with a message that was resonant. That's the key to winning, for sure.
And you know what? We are happy as a Democratic Party to support our nominees wherever they live. No matter what part of the ideological spectrum they're on, we're going to support them. Because guess what? At the end of the day, in my opinion, you know, any Democrat, regardless of their flavor, is better than a Republican any day of the week.
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