The Republican-controlled Senate held a marathon voting session Monday on President Donald Trump’s massive tax cut and spending bill, stretching out for more than 14 hours without a clear path to an endgame.
The Senate was locked in the “vote-a-rama” process, in which senators can offer unlimited amendments. The goal of GOP leaders to wrap up Monday afternoon slipped as they struggled to to secure the simple majority needed to pass it, according to NBC News.
The 940-page legislation, which the Senate advanced on a 51-49 vote late Saturday, was still taking shape even as the amendments came to the floor, with GOP leaders hoping to use the session to satisfy concerns from wavering factions.
But that path remained elusive. Republicans need to hold 50 of their 53 senators to pass the bill. And several of them weren’t ready to vote for it as the clock neared midnight ET.
Major issues like Medicaid cuts and clean energy funding rollbacks remained unresolved. Existing agreements like prohibiting state regulations around artificial intelligence were falling apart. And numerous Republican senators told NBC News they didn’t know how a provision to tax wind and solar energy made it into the bill.
Republican leaders have lost the votes of Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who complained that it would add too much to the national debt, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who blasted the Medicaid cuts as damaging to his home state.
“So what do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off Medicaid?” Tillis said in a fiery floor speech Sunday evening.
Tillis said “amateurs” are advising Trump and conflating long-standing health care policy with “waste, fraud and abuse.” Hours earlier, he announced that he won’t run for re-election in 2026 after having clashed with Trump over his opposition.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, voted to advance the bill Saturday but told NBC News on Monday she was still leaning against it on final passage. She expressed concerns with the Medicaid cuts and said she prefers raising taxes on high earners, calling those “two of the most important things” she wants addressed.
“There are going to be a gazillion more amendments tonight,” Collins said midafternoon.
And Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who also voted to keep the process moving over the weekend after discussions with Republican leaders, voiced concerns Monday about the cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), health care and energy tax credits.
“I still have concerns about SNAP and Medicaid,” Murkowski told reporters. “There are still pieces in the bill that are continuing to be reviewed. And so it has not yet been fully firmed in terms of some of the provisions. And so I want to know where they’re going to end up.”
While Republicans voted down a number of Democratic-led amendments designed to take the bill off the floor and send it to committee, Collins and Murkowski notably voted for some of them, including one by Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., to revise provisions on rural hospitals.
In addition, a group of conservatives — Ron Johnson, R-Wis., Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Mike Lee, R-Utah — are insisting on revising the bill to reduce the deficit impact.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that the Senate bill would increase the national debt by $3.3 trillion over the next 10 years — it found that revenues would fall by about $4.5 trillion and spending would be cut by $1.2 trillion. The bill is also projected to lead to 11.8 million people’s losing their health insurance by 2034 if it becomes law, the CBO said.
The GOP is using a budget trick known as “current policy baseline” to hide the cost of extending the tax cuts Trump signed into law in 2017, effectively lowering the sticker price by $3.8 trillion. That tactic hasn’t been used in the budget process before, and it sets a precedent to weaken the Senate’s 60-vote rule.
The Senate voted 53-47 to greenlight the new baseline Monday, with all Republicans voting in favor.
“This is the nuclear option,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., warning that it will “cut both ways” when the majority flips.
The legislation would also slash taxes on tips and overtime pay. It includes a $150 billion boost to military spending this year, along with a surge in federal money to carry out Trump’s mass deportation and immigration enforcement agenda. It would partly pay for that with cuts to Medicaid, SNAP and clean energy funding.
And it includes a $5 trillion increase in the debt ceiling ahead of an August deadline to avert a default on the country’s obligations.
“The permanent tax relief included in our bill means Americans keeping more of their hard-earned money and American businesses growing and investing in our country and our workers,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D.
The Senate version of the bill includes steeper Medicaid cuts than the House version, along with changes to the clean energy funding rollbacks. It would shorten the timeline for an expanded $40,000 state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap to five years before cutting it back to $10,000. And it includes a series of provisions for priorities in Alaska, including a tax break for whaling captains, in an apparent attempt to win over Murkowski.
The Monday vote-a-rama comes after a rare weekend work session for the Senate.
On Saturday night, after hours of delays and uncertainty, the package for Trump’s agenda cleared its first major hurdle, with Tillis and Paul joining all Democrats in opposition.
The narrow but successful vote occurred after a small band of GOP holdouts — including Johnson, Scott and Lee — struck a deal with Thune over amendments. But those amendments still have to get majority votes to be adopted. Vice President JD Vance, a former senator, attended meetings in Thune’s office and helped sway their votes, while Trump golfed and held his own meetings with key senators.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., forced a full reading of the bill, which delayed the process by about 16 hours. Democrats don’t have the votes to sink the bill, as Republicans are using the filibuster-proof “budget reconciliation” process to get around the 60-vote threshold.
“The Republicans are still in disarray. They’re hiding from us all kinds of things,” Schumer told reporters Monday. “They’re doing all kinds of deals with other members — backroom deals, side deals — we have to see them. And they can’t keep them secret from us, or the American people.”
If the bill passes the Senate, it would head to the House, which passed its own version May 22 by a single vote.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and his leadership team have told rank-and-file members over the weekend to be prepared to return to Washington as early as Tuesday, with a possible final vote on the Senate bill Wednesday.
GOP leaders aim to send the bill to Trump’s desk for his signature by his self-imposed July Fourth deadline, which is Friday.
As in the Senate, Republican leaders in the House can afford only three GOP defections. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., has opposed the legislation from the start, arguing it would add to the debt. And a handful of moderate Republicans are sounding the alarm over Medicaid cuts to their district and the Senate’s changes to the SALT deduction.
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