‘Tax cuts to Golden Dome’: Sneak peek into Donald Trump's 940-pages ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ | 10 updates

Spanning approximately 940 pages, the legislation is a sweeping compilation of tax cuts, spending reductions, and various Republican priorities, including increased funding for national defence and immigration enforcement. It now falls to Congress to determine whether US President Donald Trump's flagship domestic policy package will be enacted into law.

2. Tax cuts are a priority: Republicans say the bill is crucial because there would be a massive tax increase after December when tax breaks from Trump's first term expire. The legislation contains roughly USD 3.8 trillion in tax cuts, AP reported.

3. Under the proposed bill, existing tax rates and brackets would be made permanent. It would also introduce several temporary tax breaks aligned with President Trump’s campaign promises, such as eliminating taxes on tips, overtime pay, and certain automotive loans. Additionally, the Senate draft includes a new $6,000 deduction for older adults earning $75,000 or less annually.

4. The child tax credit would also see an increase under the Senate version, rising from $2,000 to $2,200. A cap on state and local deductions, called SALT, would quadruple to USD 40,000 for five years. It's a provision important to New York and other high-tax states, though the House wanted it to last for 10 years, reported AP.

5. The bill would provide some USD 350 billion for Trump's border and national security agenda, including USD 46 billion for the US-Mexico border wall and USD 45 billion for 100,000 migrant detention facility beds, as he aims to fulfil his promise of the largest mass deportation operation in US history.

6. Money would go for hiring 10,000 new Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, with USD 10,000 signing bonuses and a surge of Border Patrol officers, as well. The goal is to deport some 1 million people per year. The homeland security secretary would have a new USD 10 billion fund for grants for states that help with federal immigration enforcement and deportation actions.

7. The attorney general would have USD 3.5 billion for a similar fund, known as Bridging Immigration-related Deficits Experienced Nationwide, or BIDEN, referring to former Democratic president Joe Biden. To help pay for it all, immigrants would face various new fees, including when seeking asylum protections.

8. For the Pentagon, the bill would provide billions for ship building, munitions systems, and quality of life measures for servicemen and women, as well as USD 25 billion for the development of the Golden Dome missile defence system. The Defence Department would have USD 1 billion for border security.

9. To help partly offset the lost tax revenue and new spending, Republicans aim to cut back some long-running government programmes: Medicaid, food stamps, green energy incentives and others. It's essentially unravelling the accomplishments of the past two Democratic presidents, Biden and Barack Obama.

10. Republicans argue 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 package includes new 80-hour-a-month work requirements for many adults receiving Medicaid and food stamps, including older people up to age 65.

According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), maintaining the current tax breaks while introducing the new ones is projected to cost approximately $3.8 trillion over the next decade under the House bill. While an analysis of the Senate version is still pending, the CBO estimates that the House-passed package would add around $2.4 trillion to the national deficit over the same period.