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House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., touted the close coordination between Congress and President Donald Trump to successfully pass the "one big, beautiful bill," saying the collaboration is part of the "beauty of unified government."
Congress officially passed Trump’s multitrillion-dollar bill Thursday afternoon after back-to-back sleepless sessions for both the House and Senate.
The massive agenda package now goes to Trump’s desk to be signed into law just in time for Republicans’ self-imposed Fourth of July deadline.
The "big, beautiful bill’s" passage marks the first major piece of legislation passed under the Trump administration and the first to pass while Republicans have control of the executive branch and both chambers of Congress.
Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., and President Donald Trump (Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images and AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Speaking with reporters after the mega-spending bill’s passage Thursday, Johnson said, "The beauty of unified government is this is exactly how it can work.
"How it's supposed to work is that you have an interaction between the executive and the legislative branches, because that's what's best for the people, and that coordination is going to yield great results for the folks."
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The speaker said people inside the Trump administration, including Cabinet secretaries, the vice president and the president, were all willing to take questions from members of Congress.
"President Trump was so generous with his time answering questions himself. Vice President JD Vance was directly engaged. We had Cabinet secretaries at a number of different federal agencies answering questions from members. Some of them even brought their agency attorneys in to get really deep in the weeds on the details," said Johnson.
House Speaker nominee Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., speaks beside fellow members after being nominated for speaker inside the Longworth House Office Building at the U.S. Capitol Oct. 24, 2023. (Tom Brenner for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
"We had a tough four years before this last election cycle," the speaker added. "We knew that if we got unified government, we'd have to quite literally fix every area of public policy. Everything was an absolute disaster under the Biden-Harris radical woke Progressive Democrat regime."
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The bill, which advances Trump’s policies on taxes, the border, defense, energy and the national debt, narrowly passed the House of Representatives in a mostly party-line vote. All but two Republicans, Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., voted for the bill, which passed 218-214.
It’s a commanding victory for Johnson and for the president, both of whom spent hours overnight trying to persuade GOP critics of the bill.
President Donald Trump walks from the Oval Office to board Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House en route to Florida March 28, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Speaking after the bill’s passage, Johnson explained his role in getting GOP holdouts to switch their vote to "yes," saying, "My leadership style is I try to be a servant leader."
He said that because many members wanted to take time to "go really deep in the weeds" on changes the Senate made to the bill, he felt it was his job as speaker to give each member the time to have their concerns addressed.
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"I knew as the leader that we would have to take the time to do that," he explained. "And, so, some of that went late into the night, and I was not going to make anybody — I was not going to demand anybody's vote or their position on the bill until they felt that they had exhausted that opportunity. So, we did it. And that's how we got everybody to ‘yes.’"
Fox News Digital's Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report.
Peter Pinedo is a politics writer for Fox News Digital.
