Northwest Indiana congressmen fell along party lines in supporting or opposing President Donald Trump’s bill that funds trillion-dollar tax breaks with spending cuts, largely to Medicaid, as the bill received final Congressional approval Thursday.

With the final passage, the bill overcame multiple setbacks to approve Trump’s signature second-term policy package before a Fourth of July deadline.

The tight House roll call, 218-214, came Thursday at a potentially high political cost, with two Republicans joining all Democrats opposed. GOP leaders worked overnight and the president himself leaned on a handful of skeptics to drop their opposition and send the bill to him to sign into law. Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York delayed voting for more than eight hours by seizing control of the floor with a record-breaking speech against the bill.

“You get tired of winning yet?” said House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., invoking Trump as he called the vote.

“With one big beautiful bill we are going to make this country stronger, safer and more prosperous than ever before,” he said. Republicans celebrated with a rendition of the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.,” a song the president often plays at his rallies, during a ceremony afterward.

U.S. Rep. Frank Mrvan, D-Highland, issued a statement after Thursday’s House vote explaining his opposition vote. While the bill may seem “beautiful” to corporations and the wealthy, for a teacher in East Chicago, a nurse in Gary, the steelworker in Portage or a farmer in LaPorte County, the bill creates “uncertainty and actually increases the cost of living.”

“I opposed this measure because I cannot in good conscience leave people behind. The Republican Majority made a decision to prioritize their elite donors and corporations, and now seniors, veterans, hard-working Americans, women, children and those yet to be born will pay with increased costs and possibly their lives,” Mrvan said.

Mrvan said he will continue to push for “protecting access to healthcare, feeding the hungry, and creating more opportunities for work and wealth for everyone.”

“It is wrong that the Republican Majority failed to address the legitimate concerns raised by some within their own ranks, and resorted to coercion, bribery with personal gifts and empty promises to meet an artificial deadline,” Mrvan said.

The outcome delivers a milestone for the president, by his Friday goal, and for his party. It was a long-shot effort to compile a lengthy list of GOP priorities into what they called his “one big beautiful bill,” an 800-plus page measure. With Democrats unified in opposition, the bill will become a defining measure of Trump’s return to the White House, aided by Republican control of Congress.

At its core, the package’s priority is $4.5 trillion in tax breaks enacted in 2017 during Trump’s first term that would expire if Congress failed to act, along with new ones. This includes allowing workers to deduct tips and overtime pay, and a $6,000 deduction for most older adults earning less than $75,000 a year.

There’s also a hefty investment, some $350 billion, in national security and Trump’s deportation agenda, and to help develop the “Golden Dome” defensive system over the U.S.

To help offset the lost tax revenue, the package includes $1.2 trillion in cutbacks to Medicaid health care and food stamps, largely by imposing new work requirements, including for some parents and older people, and a major rollback of green energy tax credits.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the package will add $3.3 trillion to the deficit over the decade and 11.8 million more people will go without health coverage.

“This was a generational opportunity to deliver the most comprehensive and consequential set of conservative reforms in modern history, and that’s exactly what we’re doing,” said Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, the House Budget Committee chairman.

The bill previously passed the Senate on Tuesday. A 50-50 tie was broken by Vice President JD Vance.

U.S. Sen. Todd Young said the package includes his legislation that incentivizes R&D activity as well as leveraging private sector investment to increase affordable housing options.

“While I wish this legislation included additional fiscal reforms, this is a strong bill that will benefit Hoosier families and increase the security and prosperity of all Americans,” Young said in a statement.

U.S. Sen. Jim Banks, who voted for its passage in the Senate on Tuesday, lauded its increased funding for the Departments of Homeland Security and Defense.

“I’m proud to support the biggest tax cut for working families in American history. This bill delivers on President Trump’s promises to secure the border and strengthen our military, while also making the largest spending cut ever.”

In many ways, the package is a repudiation of the agendas of the last two Democratic presidents, a chiseling away at the Medicaid expansion from Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, and a pullback of Joe Biden’s climate change strategies in the Inflation Reduction Act.

Democrats have described the bill in dire terms, warning that cuts to Medicaid, which some 80 million Americans rely on, would result in lives lost. Food stamps that help feed more than 40 million people would “rip food from the mouths of hungry children, hungry veterans and hungry seniors,” Jeffries said.

Republicans say the tax breaks will prevent a tax hike on households and grow the economy. They maintain they are trying to rightsize the safety net programs for the population they were initially designed to serve, mainly pregnant women, the disabled and children, and root out what they describe as waste, fraud and abuse.

The Tax Policy Center, which provides nonpartisan analysis of tax and budget policy, projected the bill would result next year in a $150 tax break for the lowest quintile of Americans, a $1,750 tax cut for the middle quintile and a $10,950 tax cut for the top quintile. That’s compared with what they would face if the 2017 tax cuts expired.

The Associated Press contributed.

akukulka@post-trib.com