Utah Republican leaders celebrated the final passage of the “big, beautiful bill” on Thursday, one day before the self-imposed Fourth of July deadline to bring it to President Donald Trump’s desk for his signature.

All members of the Utah congressional delegation voted in favor of the massive tax and spending bill that supports the Trump administration’s priorities. The bill was ultimately only opposed by two Republicans in the House and three in the Senate.

Shortly after the House vote, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox thanked the delegation for helping the bill get across the finish line in a social media post.

“Today’s passage of the budget bill is a win for Utah families: it delivers meaningful tax relief, invests in energy abundance,” Cox wrote. “And, thanks to bipartisan teamwork, preserves every state’s freedom to craft commonsense AI safeguards.”

The package passed in a tight 218-214 House vote after undergoing changes in the Senate earlier this week.

The lengthy bill includes spending plans for border security, defense, energy production, health care and higher education.

It has, however, been heavily criticized for slashing Medicaid spending, effectively leaving millions of Americans without health care coverage.

Utah Democrats were dismayed at what they describe as “devastating” consequences for Utahns who rely on Medicaid, while funding “fiscally irresponsible tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans.”

“(Utah’s) Medicaid budget totals $5.5 billion through a combination of federal and state funding. Under this bill, nearly $1 billion, or approximately 20% of that funding, will be slashed,” Utah House Democrats said in a statement. “The consequences are undeniable: sick, low-income, and at-risk Utahns will lose access to critical healthcare. Programs will be gutted. The quality and availability of services will decline. And rural hospitals, who cover more than just Medicaid patients, will close.”

Utah Democratic Party Chair Brian King called the package “a betrayal of working people” because of its health care and food assistance cuts, among other concerns.

“Utah’s entire Congressional delegation voted yes. Every single one of them chose political survival over public service, cowering to pressure from party leaders, special interests, and the president’s threats,” King said in a statement.

However, Utah Republican Rep. Mike Kennedy, who is also a family doctor, defended the Medicaid provisions included in the bill. He said that as a health care provider, he recognizes how essential the program is, but he argued the government needs to “right-size” it.

“If we don’t take a different trajectory, these programs will collapse under the economic failures of prior administrations,” Kennedy said on the House floor.

Rooting out fraud, waste and abuse would help preserve Medicaid, Kennedy said in a social media post.

“The One Big Beautiful Bill proves we don’t have to choose. We can protect those in need and stop the waste,” he said.

RECA expansion

Buried at the end of the bill’s many provisions is an expansion to the Radiation Compensation Exposure Act, or RECA, which compensates people sickened by nuclear weapons development and testing.

That was one of the wins Utah Republican Rep. Celeste Maloy celebrated Thursday.

“While no bill is perfect, the One Big, Beautiful Bill reflects the promises made and kept by President Trump and House Republicans,” Maloy said in a statement.

Called downwinders, people who got cancer or other diseases from above-ground nuclear tests were eligible for federal payments — but not everyone in Utah was covered, despite evidence showing nuclear fallout blanketed the state in the 1950s and 1960s.

Now, under provisions included in the “big, beautiful bill,” anyone who lived in Utah and got sick from the tests will be eligible for compensation. The news was met with mixed reactions from advocates who generally opposed the “big beautiful bill,” but were happy to see RECA expanded.

“A bright spot in this otherwise terrible reconciliation bill is that it finally allows some of the people harmed by nuclear weapons testing and production to access a federal program from which they were unfairly excluded,” said Dr. Gretchen Goldman, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists. “That truly is a win for thousands of people across the country, including the people harmed by the first atomic bomb test in New Mexico.”

Mary Dickson, a Utah downwinder, said it was “bittersweet.” She’ll now be eligible for coverage, but told Utah News Dispatch she was disappointed that downwinders in Guam, Montana and parts of Nevada and Arizona were left out.

“Obviously I’m happy to see more downwinders covered. I’m very happy to see that. But I’m also heartsick to see that so many others that we’ve been fighting with in this battle for so long are left out,” she said. “It feels a bit like a hollow victory to me.”

Environmental concerns

Environmental groups were quick to decry the bill’s passage on Thursday, criticizing the many provisions that phase out tax credits for renewable energy, require increased oil and gas lease sales, and cut royalties that oil producers were required to pay.

“If Republicans cared about clean air and water, wildlife, or a livable planet for current and future generations, this bill would be dead in the water. But their priorities are clear,” said Travis Hammill, Washington D.C. director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

He noted that Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee’s proposal to require the sale of millions of acres of public lands was stripped out of the bill earlier this month after it received “widespread, bipartisan backlash.”

“While we’re glad to see schemes to sell off public lands stripped from the Budget Bill, we are clear-eyed about the impacts of the rest of the bill: gutting tax credits for clean energy, attacking the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and creating new handouts to extractive industries – all of which will devastate wild public lands for decades to come,”  Hammill said.

Jennifer Rokala, executive director for the public land advocacy group the Center for Western Priorities, called the bill a “handout to billionaires at the expense of working people.”

“It gives a multi-billion dollar tax cut to the oil and gas industry, which is already raking in sky-high profits, and adds billions to the federal debt,” Rokala said. “”This bill cuts the public out of public land management, making oil and gas drilling the dominant use of public land and removing avenues for public participation from the leasing process. The vast majority of Westerners want to see public lands managed for clean air and water, as well as wildlife habitat conservation and increased recreation access. This bill does the opposite.”

Utah News Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.