WASHINGTON ― Senate Republicans are struggling to unite around President Donald Trump’s $4 trillion tax and spending bill after nearly 24 hours of debate and drama on the Senate floor.
GOP leaders are trying to cobble together the votes needed to pass the bill via a special fast-track process known as budget reconciliation. They appear to be one vote shy, subjecting moderate Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), a key holdout, to an intense whipping campaign in the middle of the night.
Three other GOP senators either oppose the measure outright or are leaning against it: Thom Tillis (N.C.), Rand Paul (Ky.) and Susan Collins (Maine). That has left GOP leaders scrambling to convince Murkowski to back the bill with Vice President JD Vance on hand at the U.S. Capitol to cast a tie-breaking vote in its favor.
At risk is the entirety of Trump’s legislative agenda and his wrath if Congress is ultimately unable to send it to his desk.
The bill includes tax cuts for mostly wealthy people that are financed by historic cuts to safety net programs like Medicaid and federal food assistance. It would give the top 20% of taxpayers a boost of $6,055 while costing the bottom 20% an average of $560 a year, according to an analysis by economists at the Budget Lab at Yale University.
The legislation would take away health insurance for nearly 12 million people and add at least $3.3 trillion to the national debt over a decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. That number would rise to nearly $4 trillion when including interest. It would cut Medicaid by about 18% and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by roughly 20%, per the CBO.
Also included in the bill is a major repeal of renewable energy tax credits for wind and solar industries that Congress passed in President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. Democrats and climate groups said the new changes would make the cost of energy more expensive for millions of Americans and cost thousands of jobs.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, a one-time ally of Trump and congressional Republicans who has since soured on their massive bill, agreed. Musk, the richest man in the world, threatened to back primaries against Republican lawmakers who supported the bill.
“The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country! Utterly insane and destructive,” Musk wrote in one post.
Republicans brushed aside Musk’s criticism, arguing that the legislation would add far less to the deficit over the next 10 years because it would stimulate the economy ― a questionable claim, to say the least.
They also ignored criticism of the bill from within their own ranks. Tillis, who hails from a battleground state, warned that the bill would betray Trump’s promise not to cut Medicaid and that it would hurt their party at the ballot box.
“Republicans are about to make a mistake on health care and betraying a promise,” Tillis said. “It is inescapable that this bill, in its current form, will betray the very promise that Donald J. Trump made in the Oval Office or in the Cabinet Room when I was there with [members of the Senate Finance Committee], where he said, we can go after waste, fraud and abuse on any programs.”
Trump attacked Tillis after he came out against the bill on Saturday and threatened to support a primary challenger against him in next year’s elections. The North Carolina Republican responded by announcing his retirement the next day. He was jovial and joking with colleagues on the Senate floor during votes on the bill Tuesday, as if unburdened by the weight of office.
GOP leaders sought to win over Murkowski by adding carve-outs in the bill specifically for her state of Alaska that would avoid harsh cuts to Medicaid and food assistance. But those efforts were stymied by the Senate parliamentarian, who ruled on Tuesday morning that provisions targeting specific states violated Senate rules.
Republicans would rather sway Murkowski than try to flip Paul, who is viewed as the next-likely gettable Republican vote. The Kentucky Republican is demanding a much smaller debt ceiling increase than the $5 trillion hike contained in the bill. If the GOP agreed to his demand, they’d have to raise the debt ceiling again, and soon. That would likely require agreement from Democrats, who make their own demands.
Even if the Senate ultimately passes the bill, it could run into trouble in the House, where a razor-thin Republican majority is being put to the test. Demands by some GOP lawmakers for significant changes could scuttle the legislation or, at the very least, delay its passage beyond Trump’s arbitrary July 4 deadline.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.