Trump is expected to sign his huge bill of tax and spending cuts at the White House July 4 picnic

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump is ex­pect­ed to sign his pack­age of tax breaks and spend­ing cuts in­to law Fri­day af­ter his ca­jol­ing pro­duced al­most unan­i­mous Re­pub­li­can sup­port in Con­gress for the do­mes­tic pri­or­i­ty that could ce­ment his sec­ond-term lega­cy.

Against odds that at times seemed im­prob­a­ble, Trump achieved his goal of cel­e­brat­ing a his­toric — and di­vi­sive — leg­isla­tive vic­to­ry in time for the na­tion’s birth­day. Fight­er jets and stealth bombers are to streak the sky over the an­nu­al White House Fourth of Ju­ly pic­nic where Trump plans to sign the bill.

The leg­is­la­tion, the pres­i­dent said, is “go­ing to make this coun­try in­to a rock­et ship. It’s go­ing to be re­al­ly great.” De­moc­rats as­sailed the pack­age as a give­away to the rich that will rob mil­lions more low­er-in­come peo­ple of their health in­sur­ance, food as­sis­tance and fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty.

“I nev­er thought that I’d be on the House floor say­ing that this is a crime scene,” De­mo­c­ra­t­ic leader Ha­keem Jef­fries of New York said dur­ing a record-break­ing speech that de­layed the bill’s pas­sage by eight-plus hours. “It’s a crime scene, go­ing af­ter the health, and the safe­ty, and the well-be­ing of the Amer­i­can peo­ple.”

The leg­is­la­tion ex­tends Trump’s 2017 mul­ti-tril­lion dol­lar tax cuts and cuts Med­ic­aid and food stamps by $1.2 tril­lion. It pro­vides for a mas­sive in­crease in im­mi­gra­tion en­force­ment. Con­gress’ non­par­ti­san score­keep­er projects that near­ly 12 mil­lion more peo­ple will lose health in­sur­ance un­der the law.

The leg­is­la­tion passed the House on a large­ly par­ty-line vote Thurs­day, cul­mi­nat­ing a months-long push by the GOP to cram most of its leg­isla­tive pri­or­i­ties in­to a sin­gle bud­get bill that could be en­act­ed with­out Sen­ate De­moc­rats be­ing able to block it in­def­i­nite­ly by fil­i­bus­ter­ing.

It passed by a sin­gle vote in the Sen­ate, where North Car­oli­na Re­pub­li­can Thom Tillis an­nounced he would not run for re-elec­tion af­ter in­cur­ring Trump’s wrath in op­pos­ing it. Vice Pres­i­dent JD Vance had to cast the tie-break­ing vote.

In the House, where two Re­pub­li­cans vot­ed against it, one, con­ser­v­a­tive mav­er­ick Tom Massie of Ken­tucky, has al­so be­come a tar­get of Trump’s well-fund­ed po­lit­i­cal op­er­a­tion.

The leg­is­la­tion amounts to a re­pu­di­a­tion of the agen­das of the past two De­mo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­dents, Barack Oba­ma and Joe Biden, in rolling back Oba­ma’s Med­ic­aid ex­pan­sion un­der his sig­na­ture health law and Biden’s tax cred­its for re­new­able en­er­gy.

The 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.

Trump ex­ult­ed in his po­lit­i­cal vic­to­ry Thurs­day night in Iowa, where he at­tend­ed a kick­off of events cel­e­brat­ing the coun­try’s 250th birth­day next year.

“I want to thank Re­pub­li­can con­gress­men and women, be­cause what they did is in­cred­i­ble,” he said. The pres­i­dent com­plained that De­moc­rats vot­ed against the bill be­cause “they hate Trump — but I hate them, too.”

The pack­age is cer­tain to be a flash­point in next year’s midterm elec­tions, and De­moc­rats are mak­ing am­bi­tious plans for ral­lies, vot­er reg­is­tra­tion dri­ves, at­tack ads, bus tours and even a mul­ti­day vig­il, all in­tend­ed to high­light the most con­tro­ver­sial el­e­ments.

Up­on his re­turn to Wash­ing­ton ear­ly Fri­day, Trump de­scribed the pack­age as “very pop­u­lar,” though polling sug­gests that pub­lic opin­ion is mixed at best.

For ex­am­ple, a Wash­ing­ton Post/Ip­sos poll found that ma­jori­ties of U.S. adults sup­port in­creas­ing the an­nu­al child tax cred­it and elim­i­nat­ing tax­es on earn­ings from tips, and about half sup­port work re­quire­ments for some adults who re­ceive Med­ic­aid.

But the poll found ma­jori­ties op­pose re­duc­ing fed­er­al fund­ing for food as­sis­tance to low-in­come fam­i­lies and spend­ing about $45 bil­lion to build and main­tain mi­grant de­ten­tion cen­ters. About 60% said it was “un­ac­cept­able” that the bill is ex­pect­ed to in­crease the $36 tril­lion U.S. debt by more than $3 tril­lion over the next decade. —WASH­ING­TON (AP)

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Sto­ry by MICHELLE L. PRICE and NICHOLAS RIC­CAR­DI | As­so­ci­at­ed Press