Senate Republicans narrowly advanced President Donald Trump’s mammoth tax and immigration agenda Saturday evening, in a key procedural vote that tested the GOP’s fragile congressional majority.
By a 51-49 margin, Republicans agreed to open debate on Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, legislation to extend trillions of dollars in tax cuts, enact campaign promises such as no taxes on tips, fund the White House’s mass deportation drive, and begin building Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defense system.
To offset the bill’s cost, Republicans proposed steep cuts to Medicaid, the state and federal health insurance program for low-income individuals and disabled people; and SNAP, the anti-hunger Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program formerly known as food stamps.
The legislation would add roughly $3.3 trillion to the national debt over 10 years, according to new projections from the Congressional Budget Office, lawmakers’ nonpartisan bookkeeper. That estimate does not include increased borrowing costs, which would be substantial because the measure, even with spending cuts, is largely deficit-financed.
The vote started the Senate’s marathon process to push the bill through the Senate, to the House for final approval and then to Trump’s desk to beat a self-imposed July 4 deadline. Democrats forced Republicans to read all 940 pages of the measure aloud on the Senate floor — a process that began at 11:08 p.m. and continued into Sunday morning. Then the Senate will have up to 20 hours of debate on the legislation before beginning a “vote-a-rama,” when lawmakers can demand votes on unlimited amendments to the measure. That process alone could stretch for nearly a day.
Only then can the Senate vote on the package and send it back to the House, where significant disagreements remain. The lower chamber narrowly passed its version of the bill in May.
Sens. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) and Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) voted with Democrats on Saturday to block the measure.
But the bill’s final passage is far from assured. The Medicaid policies and plans to scrap Biden-era clean energy tax credits have prompted GOP infighting. GOP leaders held the vote open for hours waiting for Republican holdouts to vote.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), one of the holdouts, had an intense conversation on the Senate floor with Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota); Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyoming), the No. 2 Senate Republican; Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho); and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina). She then voted in favor of advancing the bill.
The last three holdouts — Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyoming) and Rick Scott (R-Florida) — emerged from Thune’s office with Vice President JD Vance and other Republicans shortly after 11 p.m. and headed to the Senate floor, where they voted to start debate on the bill. They were joined by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin), who hours earlier had voted no but switched his vote to yes.
The holdouts secured a commitment from Senate Republican leadership to back a proposal from Scott to reduce the rate at which the federal government reimburses states that have expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act for new enrollees, according to Johnson. “We just have their commitment that they’re going to do everything in their power to make sure this passes,” Johnson told reporters.
But including such a provision in the bill could threaten the support of Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Murkowski, who have expressed concern about the Medicaid funding cuts already in the bill.
Tillis said in a statement that he could not support the bill in its current form because it “would result in tens of billions of dollars in lost funding for North Carolina, including our hospitals and rural communities.” He voted against beginning debate on the bill, then left the chamber.
Later Saturday night, Trump attacked Tillis on Truth Social, warning that he would face consequences in next year’s election. “Numerous people have come forward wanting to run in the Primary against ‘Senator Thom’ Tillis. I will be meeting with them over the coming weeks, looking for someone who will properly represent the Great People of North Carolina and, so importantly, the United States of America,” Trump wrote.
Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Montana) said Saturday that he opposed a provision requiring the federal government to sell off some public lands. But he changed his position less than an hour later, saying that he had spoken with party leaders and would vote to take up the bill and introduce an amendment to strip the public lands provision. Lee, who had championed the provision, said Saturday night that Republicans would remove it.
The legislation would extend a host of tax cuts from Trump’s first term, implement campaign promises such as no taxes on tips and overtime wages, and authorize hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending on immigration enforcement and national defense.
The House will need to pass the bill again if it clears the Senate — and some House Republicans expressed concern about the latest version of the bill. Rep. David G. Valadao (R-California), whose district depends heavily on Medicaid, said he would not support a bill “that eliminates vital funding streams our hospitals rely on.” He urged Senate Republicans to reverse changes they made to the Medicaid provisions in the House bill — “otherwise, I will vote no,” Valadao said in a statement.
“Mike is nervous as a pregnant nun right now,” Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-Louisiana) said Friday, referring to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana). “He doesn’t know if he can get what we’re doing past his House.”
Democrats have highlighted the bill’s unpopularity in polls, including concerns about the Medicaid provisions and the bill’s effect on the national debt, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll conducted this month. Overall, 42 percent of Americans oppose the budget bill “changing tax, spending and Medicaid policies,” compared with 23 percent who support the bill and 34 percent who say they have no opinion.
Trump has kept intense pressure on Congress to pass the legislation. The White House urged Congress in a statement Saturday to send it to Trump’s desk by July 4 and warned that “failure to pass this bill would be the ultimate betrayal.”
Republicans know very little about the measure’s fiscal impacts. Congressional bookkeepers have not released estimates on the bill’s wider economic effects, how much it would add to the national debt, if it would hasten Social Security insolvency, or how many people it would force off health insurance.
The Congressional Budget Office said Saturday that the Senate version would result in $930 billion in cuts to Medicaid, more than the roughly $800 billion that the House version proposes.
Trump and the GOP have pledged repeatedly not to touch Medicare benefits, but the House version of the legislation is so costly that it would force mandatory benefits cuts. The Senate’s bill is probably more expensive.
Republicans are using the budget reconciliation process to bypass a potential Democratic filibuster in the Senate.
Senate tax-writers would impose strict limits on Medicaid provider taxes, duties that states charge medical providers as a roundabout way of collecting more federal Medicaid dollars. Some in the GOP wish to use that policy to force states to jettison immigrants from benefits rolls, leaving other lawmakers concerned about the finances of rural hospitals, which rely heavily on Medicaid patients.
Although Murkowski voted to begin debate, she has not said how she plans to ultimately vote on the bill. She is under pressure from lawmakers in her state to reject the bill. Bryce Edgmon, an independent who is speaker of Alaska’s House of Representatives, and Cathy Giessel, a Republican who is majority leader of Alaska’s Senate, warned Friday that the bill could cause nearly 40,000 Alaskans to lose health care coverage.
Another Republican who has expressed alarm about potential Medicaid cuts, Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, said Saturday that he supports the Senate version of the legislation.
The state and local tax deduction, or SALT, is a crucial issue for a band of House Republicans from California, New York and New Jersey. That deduction allows itemizing filers to write off what they paid in local taxes from their federal tax return.
The House would raise the cap to $40,000 for taxpayers earning no more than $500,000. The Senate countered after weeks of negotiations by sunsetting the provision after five years rather than making it permanent — a compromise that was praised by one of the House Republicans who has fought to raise the limit.
“This is meaningful relief for middle-class families in the Hudson Valley who have been hit hard by the current $10,000 cap,” Lawler wrote Saturday on X.
Maegan Vazquez and Paul Kane contributed to this report.
Jacob Bogage covers economic policy in Congress for The Washington Post, where he's worked since 2015. Contact him securely on Signal: jacobbogage.87.
Theodoric Meyer covers the Senate for The Washington Post.
