Republican senators haul the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ to passage

United States Senate Republicans hauled Donald Trump’s big tax breaks and spending cuts bill to passage on Tuesday on the narrowest of votes, pushing past opposition from Democrats and their own GOP ranks after a turbulent overnight session.

Vice-President JD Vance broke a 50-50 tie to push it over the top.

The outcome capped an unusually tense weekend of work at the Capitol, the president’s signature legislative priority teetering on the edge of approval, or collapse.

The difficulty it took for Republicans, who have the majority hold in Congress, to wrestle the bill to this point is not expected to let up. The package now goes back to the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson had warned senators not to deviate too far from what his chamber had already approved. But the Senate did make changes, particularly to Medicaid, risking more problems as they race to finish by President Trump’s Fourth of July deadline.

The outcome is a pivotal moment for the president and his party, which have been consumed by the 940-page One Big Beautiful Bill Act, as it’s formally titled, and invested their political capital in delivering on the GOP’s sweep of power in Washington.

Trump acknowledged it’s “very complicated stuff”, as he departed the White House for Florida.

“I don’t want to go too crazy with cuts,” he said. “I don’t like cuts.”

What started as a routine but laborious day of amendment voting, in a process called vote-a-rama, spiralled into a round-the-clock slog as Republican leaders were buying time to shore up support.

The droning roll calls in the chamber belied the frenzied action to steady the bill. Grim-faced scenes played out on and off the Senate floor, amid exhaustion.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota was desperately reaching for last-minute agreements between those in his party worried that the bill’s reductions to Medicaid will leave millions without care, and his most conservative flank, which wants even steeper cuts to hold down deficits ballooning with the tax cuts.

Coralling votes

The GOP leaders have no room to spare, with narrow majorities. Thune couldn lose no more than three Republican senators, and already two — Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who warned that millions of people will lose access to Medicaid healthcare, and Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who opposes raising the debt limit by US$5 trillion — had indicated opposition.

Attention quickly turned to two key senators, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, who also raised concerns about healthcare cuts, as well as a loose coalition of four conservative GOP senators pushing for even steeper reductions.

Murkowski in particular became the subject of the GOP leadership’s attention, as they sat beside her for talks. She was huddled intensely for more than an hour in the back of the chamber with others, scribbling notes on papers.

Then all eyes were on Paul after he returned from a visit to Thune’s office with a stunning offer that could win his vote. He had suggested substantially lowering the bill’s increase in the debt ceiling, according to two people familiar with the private meeting and granted anonymity to discuss it.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said “Republicans are in shambles because they know the bill is so unpopular”.

An analysis from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office found 11.8 million more Americans would become uninsured by 2034 if the bill became law. The CBO said the package would increase the deficit by nearly US$3.3 trillion over the decade.

On social media, billionaire Elon Musk was again lashing out at Republicans as “the PORKY PIG PARTY!!” for including the US$5-trillion debt ceiling in the package, which is needed to allow continued borrowing to pay the bills.

Few Republicans appeared fully satisfied as the final package emerges, in either the House or Senate.

Collins had proposed bolstering the US$25-billion proposed rural hospital fund to US$50 billion, offset with a higher tax rate on those earning more than US$25 million a year, but her amendment failed.

And Murkowski was trying to secure provisions to spare people in her state from some food stamp cuts, which appeared to be accepted, while she was also working to beef up federal reimbursements to hospitals in Alaska and others states, that did not comply with parliamentary rules.

“Radio silence,” Murkowski said, when asked how she would vote.

The conservative senators demanding a vote on their steeper healthcare cuts, including Rick Scott of Florida, Mike Lee of Utah, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, filed into Thune’s office near midnight.

What’s in the bill

All told, the Senate bill includes US$4.5 trillion in tax cuts, according to the latest CBO analysis, making permanent Trump’s 2017 rates, which would expire at the end of the year if Congress fails to act, while adding the new ones he campaigned on, including no taxes on tips.

The Senate package would roll back billions of dollars in green energy tax credits, which Democrats warn will wipe out wind and solar investments nationwide. It would impose US$1.2 trillion in cuts, largely to Medicaid and food stamps, by imposing work requirements on able-bodied people, including some parents and older Americans, making sign-up eligibility more stringent and changing federal reimbursements to states.

Additionally, the bill would provide a US$350-billion infusion for border and national security, including for deportations, some of it paid for with new fees charged to immigrants.

Unable to stop the march towards passage, the Democrats tried to drag out the process, including with a weekend reading of the full bill.

A few of the Democratic amendments won support from a few Republicans, though almost none were passing. More were considered in one of the longer such sessions in modern times.

Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, raised particular concern about the accounting method being used by the Republicans, which says the tax breaks from Trump’s first term are now “current policy” and the cost of extending them should not be counted towards deficits.

She said that kind of “magic math” won’t fly with Americans trying to balance their own household books.

AP