Senate narrowly passes Trump agenda bill after all-night negotiating and votes

Senate Republicans on Tuesday narrowly passed President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” as Vice President J.D. Vance cast the tie-breaking vote after GOP leaders labored for more than 24 hours to sway holdouts during a marathon voting session.

The bill features a bevy of GOP priorities, including sweeping tax and spending cuts, an overhaul of energy regulations and funding for border security, immigration enforcement and the national defense.

But that didn’t stop a handful of Republicans from hesitating to support the bill, some who wanted more spending cuts and some who wanted less.

Negotiations stretched overnight Monday and through Tuesday morning before just enough Republicans backed it for a 51-50 vote.

Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Thom Tillis of North Caroline joined all the chamber’s Democrats in voting against Mr. Trump’s massive agenda bill.

The outcome could have easily gone the other way if the bill did not contain a permanent extension of the 2017 Trump tax cuts set to expire at the end of the year. Failing to renew those breaks would result in a $4 trillion tax increase, the largest in U.S. history.

“If these tax cuts were allowed to expire, taxpayers in all income groups would face massive tax hikes, and a point that my colleagues on the other side seem to consistently forget, or ignore, is that the vast majority of the burden — $2.6 trillion — would fall on taxpayers making less than $400,000 per year,” said Senate Finance Chairman Mike Crapo.

“Extending good tax policy, delivering targeted relief and reining in wasteful spending, as achieved in this bill, is the best way to restore economic prosperity and opportunity for all Americans,” the Idaho Republican said.

The Senate vote came after dozens of roll call votes on amendments and dilatory motions in a unique feature of the budget reconciliation process called vote-a-rama.

Passage of the bill came more than 24 hours after the vote-a-rama began.

The legislation now heads back to the House, which passed the first version of the bill last month but needs to approve the Senate changes before it can be sent to Mr. Trump to sign into law.

The president has given Congress a July 4 deadline because he wants to deliver the bill as a “gift to the nation” on Independence Day.

But several House Republicans are threatening to vote against the Senate changes, putting that timeline in jeopardy.

Republican infighting over the measure has focused mostly on spending cuts to Medicaid and how aggressive to be in repealing solar and wind subsidies and other clean energy tax credits from President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.

Those issues have pitted fiscal hawks against more centrist Republicans, many from swing states or districts who are worried about their reelection prospects if they go too far in cutting popular programs.

The tension nearly jeopardized the measure in the Senate and threatened to do the same in the House.

But House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, one of the key architects of the bill, predicted his colleagues would unite, as they have on other votes this year.

“We’re getting closer to a big bill signing on July 4,” the Missouri Republican said. “The house is going to pass it

Senate GOP leaders spent the overnight vote-a-rama negotiating with holdouts, including Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Rick Scott of Florida and Mike Lee of Utah.

Ms. Murkowski, who wanted protections for her state from the bill’s cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as food stamps, and Medicaid, was the hardest to sway. But GOP leaders worked arduously to secure enough Alaska carve-outs in the bill to win her vote.

One of Ms. Murkowski’s concerns with the bill was that a proposal to make states with high SNAP payment error rates contribute up to 15% of food benefit costs, which are currently fully funded by the government, would penalize Alaska, which has the highest error rate of any state by far.

Republicans initially tried to provide a two-year waiver for any noncontiguous state, meaning Alaska or Hawaii, but it was rejected under the Senate rules, so they had to broaden it to the 10 states with the highest error rates.

Democrats unsuccessfully tried to remove the broadened giveaway, even though they had the most states that stood to benefit.

Mr. Trump, speaking with reporters Tuesday while the final deal was being negotiated, said “nothing’s easy” but the holdouts need to get on board.

“We added everything in there for everybody, and it’s also a beautiful economic development bill. Great for the border, great for low taxes,” he said.

While he said he wants to keep the July 4 deadline, he acknowledged that “it’s very hard to do.”

In the end, three Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Rand Paul of Kentucky — joined all Democrats in voting against the bill.

Ms. Collins and Mr. Tillis opposed the steep cuts to Medicaid. Mr. Paul took issue with the deficit impact and a $5 trillion debt limit hike.

All three supported the measure’s marquee policy: a permanent extension of Mr. Trump’s first-term tax cuts, which include lower rates and a higher standard deduction for individuals and investment write-offs for businesses.

But Democrats opposed a blanket extension of the tax cuts, arguing Republicans were providing tax breaks to the wealthy and paying for it with cuts to health care and food benefits for the lowest-income Americans.

“It is so destructive for Republicans to pass a bill like this, at a time when people pay more for groceries, when people pay more for rent, pay more for child care, pay more for medication,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, said. “It makes no sense to reward the billionaire class and special interests at the expense of everyone else.”

Bill highlights

In addition to extending Mr. Trump’s first-term tax cuts, the bill creates new deductions to fulfill Mr. Trump’s campaign promises of no taxes on tips, overtime pay and car loan interest. Those provisions sunset after 2028, when his term will be coming to a close.

The Senate version of the bill provides a $6,000 deduction for seniors, up from $4,000 in the House bill. Both would phase out for seniors whose income exceeds $75,000, or $150,000 for joint filers, and expire after 2028.

The proposal is a bid to fulfill Mr. Trump’s promise not to tax Social Security benefits. Senate rules prohibit changes to the entitlement program in budget reconciliation.

In a hard-fought priority for blue-state House Republicans, the measure would temporarily raise the cap on the federal tax deduction for state and local taxes, known as SALT, from $10,000 to $40,000. But to appease GOP senators, none of whom represent high-tax states, the cap would drop back to $10,000 in five years.

The measures includes Trump administration funding priorities, including $46.5 billion to finish building the border wall and even more money for immigration enforcement.

It also provides $150 billion for national defense priorities, including the Golden Dome.

The bill would also cut spending by more than $1 trillion, mostly from overhauling Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, more commonly known as food stamps.

Democrats have accused Republicans of slashing health care and food benefits, but Republicans say their cuts to Medicaid and SNAP only target waste, fraud and abuse.

The bill would implement Medicaid work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents under age 14. It also tightens existing work requirements for SNAP to align with the new Medicaid requirements.

The bill would also raise the debt limit by $5 trillion to ensure the government can continue paying its obligations beyond August.

Mr. Trump has prioritized including the debt limit hike in the reconciliation bill so Democrats can’t use it as leverage to extract concessions from Republicans in exchange for their votes.

Unlimited amendments

The GOP used the budget reconciliation process to pass the bill, so Democrats could not use the filibuster to block it.

But that process allows for something unusual in the Senate — an unlimited amendment process that mostly serves up political messaging votes. This vote-a-rama was longer than most because GOP leaders needed time to arm-twist their holdouts.

Democrats offered several motions to kill the bill and amendments to strike various provisions they opposed. They were unsuccessful, but in a few cases drew some GOP support.

For example, Ms. Collins and Ms. Murkowski supported a Democratic amendment to remove a provision that would prohibit Medicaid dollars from going to Planned Parenthood.

Republicans offered a couple of messaging amendments, but most of the GOP proposals were aimed at actually changing the bill. Only a handful passed, including a final catch-all amendment with the last-minute deals.

One was an amendment from Sen. Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee Republican, to remove a provision that sought to place a 10-year moratorium on state regulation of artificial intelligence.

The AI regulation ban changed several times between House and Senate passage.

The most recent version, and the one ultimately stripped from the bill, was a watered-down proposal. Instead of forcing states to adopt the ban, it would have incentivized them to do so by tying it to $500 million in new funding for the deployment of AI models or systems.

Ms. Blackburn attempted to work with Senate Commerce Chairman Ted Cruz, Texas Republican, on a compromise that would have reduced the regulatory moratorium to five years and added some exceptions. But she said they couldn’t agree to “acceptable language that allows states to protect their citizens from the abuses of AI.”

After that, Ms. Blackburn teamed up with the Commerce panel’s top Democrat, Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell, to strip the AI language from the bill and preserve states’ ability to issue regulations while the federal government struggles to adopt universal standards.

“This body has proven that they cannot legislate on emerging technology. It is frustrating,” she said, noting states are the ones that are protecting children, content creators and others in the virtual space.

Ms. Blackburn’s amendment passed 99-1, with even Mr. Cruz voting to strike his own proposal. Mr. Tillis was the only senator to vote “no.”

Two other Republican amendments passed by voice vote: one from Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa to ensure millionaires can’t claim unemployment benefits and one from Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana to move up implementation of a requirement for Medicaid administrators to check “the federal government’s dead people list” before issuing benefits.

Other GOP attempts to tweak the bill were unsuccessful.

Mr. Lee’s amendment to more quickly terminate tax credits for wind and solar energy failed, 21-79. More than half of Republicans joined Democrats in opposition.

Mr. Trump had called for full repeal of the subsidies, which he refers to as the “green new scam.”

Ms. Collins, who is up for reelection in 2026 and a top Democratic target, offered an amendment to address the potential impact of Medicaid cuts on rural health providers. It failed, but she said that did not impact her decision.

“I’ve said all along that I have concerns with the bill,” Ms. Collins said.

She is one of several Republicans who worried the bill’s crackdown on state provider taxes — revenue states take from providers to give back to them in the form of higher Medicaid payments that raise the amount of federal funding states receive — would harm rural hospitals.

Republicans added a $25 billion “rural health transformation program” to distribute funding to states to mitigate that harm.

Ms. Collins’ amendment would have doubled the funding to $50 billion, and expanded the potential beneficiaries of the funding beyond hospitals to include community health centers, nursing homes and other providers.

As an offset, she included a “modest” tax rate increase for individuals with more than $25 million in income, or $50 million for joint filers. The increase would have created an eighth tax bracket for those top earners with a rate of 39.6%, which was the top rate before the 2017 tax cut bill dropped it to 37%.

The amendment failed 22-78. While Democrats mostly dismissed the rural health fund as a “band-aid on an amputation,” four voted with 16 Republicans in support.