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Senate Republicans hauled US President Donald Trump’s tax breaks and spending cuts bill to passage on Tuesday by the narrowest of margins, pushing past opposition from Democrats and their own ranks after a turbulent overnight session.
The sudden outcome capped an unusually tense weekend of work at the Capitol, the president’s signature legislative priority teetering on the edge of approval or collapse.
In the end that tally was 50-50, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote.
Three Republican senators – Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky – joined all Democrats in voting against it.
The difficulty it took for Republicans, who have the majority hold in Congress, to wrestle the bill to this point is not expected to let up.
The package now goes back to the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson had warned senators not to overhaul what his chamber had already approved.
But the Senate did make changes, particularly to Medicaid, risking more problems ahead. House GOP leaders said they would put it on Trump’s desk by his 4 July deadline.
It’s a pivotal moment for the president and his party, as they have been consumed by the 940-page One Big Beautiful Bill Act, as it’s formally called, and invested their political capital in delivering on the GOP’s sweep of power in Washington.
Trump acknowledged it’s “very complicated stuff,” as he left the White House for Florida.
“I don’t want to go too crazy with cuts,” he said. “I don’t like cuts.”
What started as a routine but laborious day of amendment voting, in a process called vote-a-rama, spiralled into a round-the-clock slog as Republican leaders were buying time to shore up support.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota worked around the clock desperately reaching for last-minute agreements between those in his party worried the bill’s reductions to Medicaid would leave millions more people without healthcare and his most conservative flank, which wants even steeper cuts to hold down deficits ballooning with the tax cuts.
“In the end we got the job done,” Thune said afterward.
An analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found 11.8 million more Americans would become uninsured by 2034 if the bill became law.
The CBO said the package would increase the deficit by nearly $3.3 trillion (€2.8 trillion) over the decade.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said “Republicans are in shambles because they know the bill is so unpopular.”
What’s in the bill?
The bill includes $4.5 trillion (€3.8 trillion) in tax cuts, according to the latest CBO analysis, making permanent Trump’s 2017 rates, which would expire at the end of the year if Congress failed to act, while adding the new ones he campaigned on, including no taxes on tips.
The Senate package would roll back billions of dollars in green energy tax credits, which Democrats warn will wipe out wind and solar investments nationwide.
It would impose $1.2 trillion (€1 trillion) in cuts, largely to Medicaid and food stamps, by imposing work requirements on able-bodied people, including some parents and older Americans, making sign-up eligibility more stringent and changing federal reimbursements to states.
Additionally, the bill would provide a $350 billion (€297 billion) boost for border and national security, including for deportations, some of it paid for with new fees charged to immigrants.
