The US Congress yesterday passed the controversial spending and tax bill that includes signature policies of President Donald Trump’s second-term agenda, sending the so-called ‘big, beautiful bill’ to the President’s desk ahead of a July 4 deadline.

The House approved the bill in a 218 to 214 vote, after the Senate narrowly approved the bill Tuesday in a 51-50 vote that required Vice President JD Vance to break a tie.

At the centre the bill is an extension of Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which was slated to sunset at the end of the year. The legislation would make most of the tax cuts permanent, while increasing spending for border security, defence and energy production.

The bill is partially paid for by significant cuts to health care and nutrition programmes, like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programme (SNAP). The Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill would add $3.4 trillion to federal deficits over the next 10 years and leave millions without health insurance. Republicans and the White House dispute those forecasts, CBS News reported.

Senate Republicans used a process known as budget reconciliation to pass the bill, which limits the types of policies that can be included in a simple majority vote. A handful of provisions that initially appeared in the bill were ultimately removed, including one that would have ordered the sale of public lands and another that would have paused state regulations on artificial intelligence.

The House passed its own initial version of the legislation last month, with some key differences to the final Senate-crafted version. The lower chamber approved the Senate’s changes Thursday, sending the measure to the president’s desk.

The 887-page legislation includes restrictions on Medicaid, which provides government-sponsored health care for low-income and disabled Americans. The bill imposes work requirements for some able-bodied adults and more frequent eligibility checks. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the bill would result in 11.8 million Americans losing health coverage under Medicaid over the next decade.

Senate Republicans proposed steeper cuts to Medicaid funding, in part by incrementally lowering provider taxes from 6 per cent to 3.5 per cent by 2032. The timeline is delayed by one year from the Senate GOP’s initial proposal, after the issue became one of the bill’s sticking points in recent weeks.

It’s a departure from the initial House-passed bill, which sought to lower federal costs by freezing states’ provider taxes at current rates and prohibiting them from establishing new provider taxes.

The bill also includes a rural hospital stabilization fund after some GOP senators expressed concern over how rural hospitals could be impacted by the Medicaid restrictions, allocating $50 billion for rural hospitals over the same period that the provider taxes would be lowered.

Also, the legislation includes more than $46.5 billion for border wall construction and related expenses, $45 billion to expand detention capacity for immigrants in custody and about $30 billion in funding for hiring, training and other resources for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

It also includes a minimum $100 fee for those seeking asylum, down from the $1,000 fee outlined in the initial House bill. The Senate parliamentarian ruled out the $1,000 fee for anyone applying for asylum.

The package also includes an increase to the cap on the state and local tax deduction, raising it from $10,000 to $40,000. After five years, it would return to $10,000, a departure from the initial House-passed bill.

The final bill passed by the Senate would largely terminate numerous tax incentives from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act for clean energy, electric vehicles and energy efficiency programs that benefited consumers.

It would end tax credits for new and used electric vehicles, installation of home EV charging equipment and insulation or energy efficient heating and cooling systems.

The bill also ends the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which gives funding to nonprofit organizations providing financing for projects that reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emissions in communities. Existing contracts and grants under the programme are not affected.

The bill still shifts the costs of SNAP, or food stamps, to some states. The programme is currently fully funded by the federal government.

The legislation would raise the debt ceiling by $5 trillion, going beyond the $4 trillion outlined in the initial House-passed bill.