The Senate approved President Donald Trump’s landmark bill largely along party lines Tuesday morning after senators took dozens of votes on amendments and procedural motions in a marathon session that lasted more than 24 hours.
Senators voted 51 to 50 with Republican Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Susan Collins of Maine opposing the president’s sweeping domestic policy legislation. The bill’s passage is a massive victory for Senate GOP leadership who were able to keep defections to a minimum and convince one holdout, Republican Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, to supply a critical vote to pass the president’s tax and immigration bill.
Vice President JD Vance, who arrived in the Capitol shortly after 6 a.m. Tuesday, cast the tie-breaking vote. The Senate-amended bill now heads to the House for consideration where lawmakers are racing to meet Trump’s July 4 deadline.
Given Senate Republicans’ 53-47 majority, Thune could afford to spare just three votes. Every Senate Democrat, led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, voted no on the Senate version of the president’s domestic policy bill.
The “vote-a-rama” that preceded the vote on final passage was the longest in American history. Senators cast more than 45 votes in a session that started at 9 a.m. Monday as Senate GOP leadership lobbied holdouts to support the bill.
The Senate agreed to pass just five amendment to the bill during the course of voting. Senators overwhelmingly backed a measure offered by Republican Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn to eliminate a provision freezing state and local AI regulation.
The Senate also approved a “wrap-around amendment” immediately preceding to a vote on final passage that incorporate last-minute changes to the bill. Vance cast the tie-breaking vote.
Tillis and Collins justified their opposition to the president’s domestic policy bill, citing the proposal’s aggressive reforms to Medicaid.
Paul, a fiscal hawk who almost never supports bills that increase budget deficits, also voted against the president’s budget bill. He said he could not support the legislation given a provision that would raise the debt limit by $5 trillion.
The president notably criticized Tillis and Paul for voting against starting debate on Trump’s megabill Saturday.
“Thom Tillis has hurt the great people of North Carolina,” Trump wrote on the social media platform Truth Social Tuesday. “Even on the catastrophic flooding, nothing was done to help until I took office. Then a MIRACLE took place! Tillis is a talker and complainer, NOT A DOER! He’s even worse than Rand ‘Fauci’ Paul!”
Congressional Republicans are using the so-called budget reconciliation process to circumvent Democrat’s opposition and pass tax and spending legislation by a simple majority vote.
The upper chamber’s 940-page bill combines a staggering number of Trump’s policy priorities into one budget package. It would permanently extend the president’s 2017 tax cuts, temporary eliminate taxation on tipped wages and overtime pay for certain Americans and restore several business tax breaks sought by the private sector
The budget package would also boost immigration enforcement and defense spending by hundreds of billions of dollars while achieving the largest cut to mandatory spending in American history, including slowing the rate of federal Medicaid spending by roughly $1 trillion over a decade.
The final bill is the product of Republicans’ legislative ambition that was years in the making. The last time Republicans had a trifecta in Washington to pass a budget reconciliation bill was nearly a decade ago during the start of Trump’s first term in office.
“This is Republicans fulfilling our promise of growth and prosperity for the American people,” Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, the second-ranking Senate Republican, said Monday on Fox News. “It’s more money in people’s pockets for gas, groceries, for rent. All of those things, and as the president said, we need to stop this $4 trillion tax increase, which would be the biggest increase in taxes in the history of our country.”
The combined effects of these tax provisions are projected to result in $7,800 to $13,000 higher take-home pay for the average family with two children, according to a White House report analyzing the initial House-passed bill that was published in May.
The Senate bill now heads to the House where it faces uncertain prospects. A flank of House conservatives have pledged to tank the upper chamber’s proposal for violating a framework in the House to pair tax cuts with dollar-for-dollar spending reduction. A cohort of moderate GOP lawmakers have signaled they will vote “no” on the Senate bill, citing opposition to aggressive reforms to Medicaid.
Any changes the House makes to the Senate’s bill would have to pass the upper chamber for a second time before Trump can sign the measure into law.
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