Iowa’s Republican congressional delegation voted Thursday to advance a massive tax and spending cut bill championed by President Donald Trump. The bill would equate to a $3.7 trillion increase in the national debt, including a $660 billion deficit for next year, and roughly $1.6 trillion in spending cuts. 

Trump’s “big beautiful bill” passed the U.S. House of Representatives 215-214, with all of the chambers Democrats and two Republicans voting against the measure. Iowa’s four Republican Congressional representatives voted for the measure after a 22 hour marathon of debate and votes on the bill which finished early Thursday morning. 

The bill includes $830 billion in cuts to Medicaid spending by creating work requirements for able-bodied recipients, ensuring addresses are verified for recipients, blocking coverage for migrants without proper documentation, and eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse” in Medicaid. 

The work requirements enacted by the bill mimic those Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds asked the federal government for permission to enact in Iowa. The bill requires able-bodied adult recipients to work 80 hours per month and makes a number of exceptions to the requirements. 

U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, said in an interview with The Daily Iowan on Thursday the work requirements are aimed at encouraging able-bodied adults to work, volunteer, or attend school. Miller-Meeks said there is dignity in work and it will help lift people out of poverty. 

“There’s still a significant number of the population of people without disabilities that are on Medicaid who could contribute and who are not,” Miller-Meeks said. “Individuals don’t lose coverage unless they choose not to work or not to volunteer, so it’s not a difficult thing to comply with.” 

The bill also includes provisions from two bills Miller-Meeks has championed during her time on the House Energy and Commerce Committee — the committee that worked on Medicaid cuts. Miller-Meeks said she was honored to have them included in the bill. 

One of which is part of the spending cuts found for Medicaid. The bill would require states to verify addresses for Medicaid enrollees to ensure they are not being insured by more than one state after they move. Another provision included would speed up the time it takes for children on Medicaid to see specialists out-of-state. 

U.S. Rep. Zach Nunn, R-Iowa, said the bill protects safety programs for the most vulnerable and expands tax cuts that will encourage growth. 

“The bill also safeguards key benefit programs for vulnerable Iowans while eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse,” Nunn said in a statement Thursday. “It bolsters border security, restores accountability, and invests in American energy dominance — where Iowa is already leading the charge.”

The bill also includes roughly $300 billion in cuts to food assistance benefits, or SNAP, by enhancing work requirements, requiring states to match SNAP funds, and reducing the federal share of administrative costs. 

The bill also increases military spending by $144 billion and $143 billion in border security spending.  

Democrats said the bill will hurt the vulnerable populations that rely on Medicaid and SNAP, while giving tax cuts to the wealthy. Iowa Democrats Chair Rita Hart said everyone will see the impact of cuts on Medicaid with longer wait times in emergency rooms and fewer providers for mental and maternal health. 

“Iowans are already paying too much for groceries and health care, but Iowa Republicans just voted to put more pressure on working families so they can fund tax breaks for the well-off and well-connected,” Hart said in a statement Thursday. “Iowans won’t forget that their Republican representatives just prioritized millionaires and billionaires over working families.”

Executive Director of Common Good Iowa, a progressive Iowa-based think tank, Anne Discher said in a statement Thursday with tax cuts skewed to the wealthy and cuts to assistance programs the bill is “mean-spirited.”

“Make no mistake: There’s simply no way to cut $1 trillion from these essential lifelines without harming a lot of Iowans,” Discher said in a statement Thursday. “Together the bill’s provisions represent a stunningly upside-down approach to budgeting that would shift resources away from low-and-moderate-income Americans and toward the wealthy — as it drives our deficits to alarming levels.” 

The more than $1 trillion in cuts is to fund an extension of Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and expand the tax cuts offered in the 2017 bill. The tax cuts are estimated to result in $4.5 trillion decrease in federal tax revenues.

According to an analysis by Economists at the University of Pennsylvania, low-to-moderate-income Americans could see their after-tax income decrease by two percent due to the bill while the top 0.1 percent of earners could see their income grow due to the bill.

U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa, who sits on the House Appropriations Committee, said she was proud to work with the president to enact enhanced tax cuts that include an expansion of the child tax credit and eliminating taxes on tips and overtime. 

“Throughout this process, I was proud to champion provisions to help working families keep more of their hard-earned dollars, including expanding the child tax credit, making small business tax cuts permanent, and eliminating taxes on tips,” Hinson said in a statement on X, formerly Twitter, on Thursday. “I look forward to working with the president to get the One Big, Beautiful Bill signed into law.” 

With only $1.6 trillion in cuts to spending the bill is expected to raise the federal debt by $3.7 trillion, which currently sits at $36 trillion. 

However, Republicans argue that the bill will encourage economic growth like that seen during the first Trump administration which will result in increasing tax revenues to eliminate the deficit and help reduce interest on the national debt. 

Miller-Meeks said that as long as the tax cuts drive revenue growth there won’t be a budget deficit. “We would anticipate that as long as going forward, we continue to prioritize our spending and not do deficit spending, not taking more than we bring in, that we will actually be bringing down the deficit,” Miller-Meeks said to the DI.