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Senate passes Trump's 'big, beautiful bill', sending legislation back to the House


Senate Republicans overcame significant divisions to pass President Donald Trump’s signature domestic policy bill on Tuesday, sending the legislation back to the House for approval before it arrives on the Resolute Desk ahead of GOP leadership’s self-imposed July 4 deadline.

The GOP-controlled chamber voted 51-50 to pass Trump’s “big, beautiful” bill through the budget reconciliation process, capping off weeks of intensive negotiations on hot-button issues ranging from modest Medicaid and food-assistance program reforms to Artificial Intelligence regulations and green-energy tax breaks phaseouts.

Republican Senators Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Susan Collins of Maine joined a united Democratic caucus in opposing the bill, prompting JD Vance to cast a tie-breaking vote to advance the bill to the lower chamber.

“Massive tax cuts, especially no tax on tips and overtime. And most importantly, big money for border security. This is a big win for the American people,” Vance said in a statement posted on X.

Tuesday’s Senate vote represents a major victory for Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) as the bill is expected to become the most significant domestic policy achievement of Trump’s second term. Had Senate GOP leaders failed to corral their fractious caucus, it would have been a major political defeat for a party that just months ago captured unified control of the federal government.

Thune had to balance the countervailing demands of fiscal hawks urging more extensive spending cuts against those of moderates concerned about the electoral consequences of making steep cuts to highly prized programs like Medicaid. Success was not guaranteed. In a sign of how long it took Senate GOP leaders to convince key swing vote Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska to support the legislation, the final vote on the bill followed a record-breaking vote-a-thon on amendments and procedural motions that stretched longer than 24 hours. Senate Republican leaders spent the wee hours of Tuesday morning negotiating with the Alaskan centrist on the Senate floor. At times, Murkowski was seen shaking her head in disagreement as Senate GOP leaders tried to get her to a yes.

Negotiations continued in the minutes leading up to the final vote. Late Tuesday morning, Senate Republicans added legislative sweeteners to secure support from Murkowski and other GOP skeptics who were concerned about the Senate-drafted bill’s modest entitlement program reforms, as well as the phaseout timeline for clean-energy tax breaks passed in the Democrats’ 2022 mammoth climate bill. After voting for the bill, Murkowski told reporters she hopes the House sends it back to the Senate to continue working on it.

Soon, Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) will need to confront similar challenges in his own chamber as centrists and deficit hardliners continue to express their disagreements with the Senate-drafted legislative language. Republicans currently hold a 220-212 majority, meaning he can afford few defections.

The original House-passed version of the bill included some $600 billion in cuts to Medicaid, achieved mostly through increased work requirements for non-disabled adults without children. Senate Republicans added another $200 billion in cuts to the bill, balanced out with a $50 billion rural hospital stabilization fund meant to address the concerns of Republican Senators Josh Hawley of Missouri and Susan Collins of Maine, who expressed concern that the bill would lead to widespread hospital closures.

“I strongly support extending the tax relief for families and small businesses. My vote against this bill stems primarily from the harmful impact it will have on Medicaid, affecting low-income families and rural health care providers like our hospitals and nursing homes,” Collins said in a statement explaining her vote against the GOP bill.

An effort led by Senator Rick Scott to scale back the federal share of Medicaid costs for Obamacare recipients was dropped at the last minute due to opposition from moderates like Murkowski and Senator Susan Collins of Alaska. Tillis came out against the bill over the weekend due to the Medicaid cuts and immediately announced his decision not to run for another term after Trump threatened to back a primary challenger to him.

For a divided GOP caucus, the bill’s most unifying feature is that it would make permanent President Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, would otherwise have expired in December, leading to significant tax hikes for businesses and individuals. Maintaining those tax cuts, worth $4.5 trillion over ten years, constituted a central promise of Trump’s presidential campaign. The bill will also increase the child tax credit and tie it to inflation, and it will make permanent business tax breaks allowing corporations to expense capital investment.

The GOP’s tax and spending package includes conservative priorities on a range of issues, most importantly border security and energy. Trump and his officials have argued the bill’s passage is vital to ensuring the administration can follow through on its promise to carry out the most ambitious deportation campaign in American history.

The nonpartisan congressional budget office determined Sunday that the Senate version of the bill would add $3.3 trillion to the deficit over the next decade. Critics have disputed the CBO’s assessment because it assumes the expiring tax cuts will lapse and prefer to analyze it with the “current policy baseline,” a different methodology that doesn’t include the revenue lost from tax cuts in the calculation, on the assumption that it will be made up in increased economic activity. Democrats have called the methodology a sham and Republicans did not consult with the Senate parliamentarian about it. Under the current policy baseline, the bill would save $508 billion over the next decade, rather than increasing the deficit as the CBO predicts.

The bill’s impact on the deficit emerged as a crucial sticking point for Trump’s erstwhile ally Elon Musk. After going quiet for several weeks, the billionaire resumed his social media attacks on the bill over the weekend, arguing it will lead to “debt slavery” and vowing to back primary challengers to any Republican who voted in favor of it.

Rand Paul and Representative Thomas Massie, both Republicans from Kentucky, have carried the torch for those fiscal concerns in their respective chambers.

Tillis and Paul joined Democrats in voting against the initial procedural vote Saturday to advance the “big, beautiful” bill, with Paul voicing concerns about the debt ceiling. Trump harshly criticized both Senators for opposing his marquee domestic policy bill and likened Paul to his arch nemesis, former National Institutes of Allergy and Infection Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Democrats, meanwhile, have focused their attacks on the Medicaid provisions, accusing Republicans of trying to cut health care for the poor to finance tax cuts for the rich. Republicans have countered by saying they are trying to strengthen Medicaid and rein in spending with reforms including work requirements for able bodied adults and funding cuts for states that give Medicaid to illegal immigrants.

Democrats believe they can capitalize on negative polling about the Republican megabill, especially its Medicaid provisions. Hammering Republicans on Medicaid could be a key part of Democrats’s 2026 midterm strategy for exiting the political wilderness.

Another contentious aspect of the legislation was a proposal from Senator Mike Lee (R., Utah) to sell off a portion of federal land in the western part of the U.S. for economic development and revenue raising purposes. The parliamentarian said Lee’s initial plan to sell less than 1 percent of federal land, a few million of the federal government’s 640 million acres of federal land, could not be included in the budget bill.

Lee said he was planning on proposing a scaled back, revised version of his plan to address criticism and the parliamentarian’s ruling. Several of Lee’s Republican colleagues in states such as Montana, Idaho, and North Dakota voiced opposition to it, causing Lee to withdraw his land sales initiative from the bill ahead of Saturday’s procedural vote.

Artificial intelligence regulation also became an issue because of a provision in the tax and spending package creating a regulatory moratorium in exchange for AI infrastructure funding in the bill. Senators Ted Cruz (R., Texas), chairman of the Commerce Committee, and Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.) reached a deal Sunday to cut the moratorium from ten years to five, and create exemptions for certain laws addressing deceptive practices, child sexual abuse material, online safety, and publicity rights. But Blackburn backed out of the deal with Cruz Monday night and said the language was “not acceptable” because it would not prevent tech companies from exploiting kids. The Senate ended up voting 99-1 for an amendment to strip the AI regulatory moratorium from the bill through an amendment brought by Blackburn and Democratic Senators Maria Cantwell (Wash.) and Ed Markey (Mass.).

Trump has urged Republicans to follow through on his promises to remove taxes on tips, overtime pay, and car interest. He has also come out against Medicaid cuts and called for an increase in the standard deduction for seniors. But the president has largely left the nuts-and-bolts of the legislative process to House and Senate Republicans to sort out among themselves. Still, the populist tax provisions Trump campaigned on are poised to be temporary in the “big, beautiful” bill.

The fate of “big, beautiful,” bill’s in the House remains to be seen, as Speaker Johnson will have to work his party’s tight majority to get it passed. The state and local tax deduction (SALT) will again be an issue House Republicans have to contend with because of disagreements on its scope and deficit concerns.

Pro-SALT Republicans are a small-but-vocal caucus of lawmakers with competitive seats in high-tax blue states such as New York and California. Their importance to the GOP’s ability to hold the majority and pass the megabill gives them considerable leverage, even though a blue state tax break is unpopular with most Republicans.

New York congressman Mike Lawler (R) praised the Senate version of the budget reconciliation package for maintaining the House version’s $40,000 SALT deduction cap with a $500,000 income limit. But the SALT cap in its current form could increase concerns about the bill’s fiscal impacts because it could add up to $4 trillion to the nation debt over ten years.

Johnson will also have to navigate moderate Republican concerns about the Senate version’s Medicaid provisions and the fiscally conservative House Freedom Caucus’s objection to the price tag of the Senate bill.