Senate Republicans finally passed their version of President Donald Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” Tuesday afternoon despite sharp criticism of the legislation from some within the president’s party who held out for changes that dragged negotiations to a marathon two-day session.
The legislation passed after Vice President JD Vance cast the deciding vote on a 50-50 tie. It now gets sent back to the House of Representatives for reconsideration with the new amendments.
Trump and Republicans had prioritized the bill’s passage, given that it includes an extension of the 2017 tax cuts Trump signed in his first term as president as well as increased spending for immigration enforcement, oil exploration and the U.S. military. The legislation funds a massive expansion of ICE, including the hiring of 10,000 new agents, as Trump pursues a campaign of mass deportation across America.
The final vote came after a marathon series of amendments known as a “vote-a-rama.” But it did not come easy, with Republican Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Susan Collins of Maine and Thom Tillis of North Carolina voting against the bill.
Paul, a libertarian, criticized the way that the bill increases both the deficit and the debt limit, while Tillis criticized its Medicaid cuts. Shortly after Tillis voted against the motion to proceed, and drew a strong threat of political retribution from Trump, he announced on Sunday he would not seek re-election in one of the most contentious senate races in the country.
Senate Republicans engaged in an aggressive campaign overnight to win over Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the moderate Republican from Alaska, who emerged as a final, but winnable, holdout.
Murkowski, who voted to convict Trump in 2021 for his actions on January 6, received a series of exemptions for her home state of Alaska in exchange for her vote. During one point, Thune, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo and her fellow Alaskan Sen. Dan Sullivan cornered her in the back of the Senate chamber for an aggressive lobbying session.
The senator spoke to reporters on Tuesday after voting for the bill, and said that she wanted to see further changes made before it became law. Explaining that she hoped the House would send it back to the Senate again, Murkowski knocked the “artificial” deadline under which she said both chambers were working.
“Reconciliation is never a very dignified process, but we were operating under a timeline that was, basically an artificial timeline,” said the senator. “And I think rather than taking the the deliberative approach to good legislating, we rushed to get a product out.”
“My hope is that the House is going to look at this and recognize that we're not there yet,” she added.
But the senator also made clear what factors had drawn her to vote for the current version. She and others, like Sen. Lindsey Graham, spoke about wanting to avoid a self-imposed tax hike cliff later this year when the tax cuts passed in 2017 are set to expire, something Murkowski depicted as a negative outcome on par or similar to the risks that the legislation is projected to pose to Medicaid coverage rates.
“I had to look at it on balance,” said Murkowski. “But I have urged our leadership. I have urged the White House that I think that more process is needed to this bill, because I would like to see a better outcome for people in this country.”
A carve-out in the bill creating a $50bn fund for rural hospitals, warned to be at risk of closure due to Medicaid eligibility cuts, also sweetened the deal.
Markwayne Mullin, a senator from Oklahoma, spoke to reporters Tuesday following the vote and pointed to the fund as crucial for getting members on board.
“This wasn't just specifically for Lisa [Murkowski]. This is for all of us who represent rural areas,” Mullin said. He confirmed that Sen. Susan Collins wanted the fund doubled to $100bn, which failed.
Republicans avoided a Democratic filibuster by passing the bill via a process known as budget reconciliation. The process allows the Senate to pass legislation by a simple majority rather than the normal 60 votes as long as it relates to federal spending and it follows reconciliation’s strict rules policed by the Senate parliamentarian.
Democrats pounded their Republican opponents on Tuesday after the bill’s passage.
Senator Raphael Warnock lamented having to vote against “various versions of a bad bill” as he exited the chamber.
No part of the bill was as contentious as its changes to Medicaid. Specifically, the bill caps the amount of money that states can tax medical providers like hospitals and nursing homes. It also implements work requirements on the program’s benefits: able-bodied adults with dependent children will either work, participate in an education program or community service for 80 hours to receive Medicaid benefits. The Senate version of the bill ends the exemption for work requirements once the household’s youngest child turns 14.
The Senate parliamentarian later said the provider tax cap did not comply with the rules of reconciliation, which led to Republicans to revise the language and delay the implementation of the provider tax, which the parliamentarian later allowed.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that if the bill passed, as many as 11.8 million people could lose their Medicaid benefits, making it the steepest cut to Medicaid in history.
The bill’s passage signals a major political victory for Trump, who has signed few pieces of legislation since his return. Polling shows the legislation is incredibly unpopular among those who are politically engaged, but also shows that many more voters have not formed an opinion at all. Republicans seem unconcerned.
“You pass it and let them live with the blessings of the good policy,” Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota told The Independent.
Sen. Bill Cassidy faces re-election next year in Louisiana and said he thought the legislation would be a selling point for Republicans in a tough midterm season.
“Helps them with child tax credits, helps them with school choice, it helps them with lots of things,” Cassidy, the chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, told The Independent. “Prevents the largest tax increase. It should be a pretty easy sell.”
Mullin, meanwhile, credited Vance with being “the closer” who brought Murkowski on board. Lindsey Graham, answering a question from The Independent, denied that the president’s weekend blow-up at no-vote Tillis hardened the senator’s stance. He also credited a weekend golf game with bringing the rest of the caucus on board.
“It helped a lot, quite frankly. We’ll talk about that later,” he said. “Rand Paul playing was helpful.”
“I think Thom had sort of made a decision that he couldn't get there before they met, and sort of the rest of his history,” said Graham. “I like Thom....I respect his decision. He's a smart guy.”
The House, which passed its initial version of the bill 215-214 on May 22, will now consider the Senate-approved version. The lower chamber is facing another arbitrary deadline: President Trump wants it on his desk for a signature by July 4, when America celebrates Independence Day.
But the GOP package is not out of the woods yet. Numerous Republicans in both chambers harbor lingering reservations, and there’s no guarantee the changes made by the Senate will sit well in the lower chamber. Conservatives continue to insist that the bill’s deficit spending is untenable.
Murkowski, speaking to reporters on Tuesday, said that she hoped that Republican holdouts in the lower chamber would recognize the risks posed by letting the bill die on the floor, and work to get the bill to the president’s desk even it it meant blowing past the July 4 deadline.
“This is probably the most difficult and agonizing legislative 24-hour period that I have encountered, and I've been here quite a while,” Murkowski told reporters. As she stepped into an elevator, the senator added: “I’m going to go take a nap.”
