US Senate Republicans were on Tuesday morning continuing to make a final push for passage of Donald Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill”, a massive tax-and-spending bill that the president has demanded be ready for his signature by Friday.
The bill – Trump’s top legislative priority – would extend huge tax cuts, remove tax on tips and pour billions of dollars into immigration enforcement, paying for all this with similarly huge cuts to Medicaid (the healthcare program for poorer Americans), food stamps and green energy.
Senators had convened at the Capitol early on Monday to start a process known as “vote-a-rama”, in which lawmakers proposed amendments to the legislation over what had by Tuesday morning lasted nearly a full day. Democrats, who universally oppose the bill, aim to use the process to force the GOP into politically tricky votes that they will seek to wield against them in elections to come.
But all eyes are on Republicans, who are using the process to make last-minute changes to the text ahead of a vote for passage that could come later on Tuesday, after which it will return to the House of Representatives for their final say-so.
Early on Tuesday morning lawmakers voted 99-1 to strike the AI regulation ban from the bill by adopting an amendment offered by the Republican senator Marsha Blackburn. The previous version would have instituted a 10-year federal ban on state regulation of AI.
Over the weekend Senate Republicans agreed to begin debate on the act, but not without substantial drama when the North Carolina moderate Thom Tillis declined to vote for the bill. After Trump attacked him, the senator announced he would not stand for re-election next year, potentially improving Democrats’ chances of picking up the purple state’s seat.
Democrats also managed to slow down the bill’s progress temporarily over the weekend, by demanding the clerk read its entire 940-page text before amendments could be considered – a process that took until Sunday afternoon.
On Monday morning on the Senate floor, Chuck Schumer said the bill “steals people’s healthcare, jacks up their electricity bill, take away their jobs – all to pay for tax breaks for billionaires”.
Democrats, the Senate minority leader said, would offer amendments to “see once and for all if Republicans really meant all those nice things they’ve been saying about ‘strengthening Medicaid’ and ‘protecting middle-class families’, or if they were just lying”.
It remains unclear if enough Republican votes exist for passage of the bill through the Senate. The GOP can only afford three defections, and Tillis and Kentucky’s Rand Paul have both said they will vote against it.
The bill is Trump’s top legislative priority, and focused exclusively on tax and spending matters so it can be passed through the Senate without being subject to the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold. The measure would extend tax cuts created during Trump’s first term in 2017, and create new exemptions for tips, overtime and car loan interest that were part of the president’s re-election pitch.
It would also provide tens of billions of dollars to hire new immigration agents, build fortifications along US frontiers, including a wall along the southern border with Mexico, and expand the government’s capacity to deport people.
To offset its costs, Republicans have proposed cuts to Medicaid, which provides healthcare to low-income and disabled Americans, and the supplementary nutritional assistance program, also known as food stamps. They have also proposed sunsetting some of the green energy tax credits created under Joe Biden.
Moderate Republican lawmakers fear the benefit cuts will harm programs their constituents rely on and put rural hospitals out of business, and are expected to propose amendments designed to cushion the blow. Others object to rapidly sunsetting the green energy incentives because it will set back projects under way in their states or create uncertainty for investors.
Republican leaders are also seeking to appease fiscal conservatives in the House and Senate who are demanding the bill reduce the United States’s large federal budget deficit. As written, the bill does not appear to do that – on Sunday, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimated it would add $3.3tn to the deficit through 2034.
