By Olivia Beavers and Richard Rubin

WASHINGTON -- Senate Republicans charged forward Monday with a marathon session to pass President Trump's "big, beautiful bill," as the party races to get the legislation to the president's desk by their self-imposed July 4 deadline.

The voting on amendments and procedural motions is expected to last many hours as the various GOP factions seek to push the bill in their favored direction on charged political issues like Medicaid, food-assistance programs and tax cuts. Centrists are fighting to limit cuts to benefit programs and potentially reel back changes to clean-energy tax credits. Fiscal conservatives argue that this bill is a prime opportunity to address the nation's rising debt, and they are pushing for deeper spending cuts.

Broadly, the bill is an attempt to squeeze as many of Trump's priorities into one piece of legislation. It extends expiring tax cuts permanently and adds new tax cuts for tipped workers, overtime pay and factory construction. It would lower Medicaid spending by adding work requirements and forcing more frequent eligibility checks. The bill directs hundreds of billions of dollars toward border security and national defense.

First up Monday morning is a vote that would bless Republicans' attempt to declare that $3.8 trillion of expiring tax cuts don't count against the budgetary cost of the bill. That is a crucial part of their strategy to extend tax cuts permanently with a simple-majority vote, though Democrats and budget experts call it a gimmick.

Key amendments to watch include an attempt by Sen. Rick Scott (R., Fla.) to roll back Obamacare's Medicaid expansion, in which the federal government pays 90% of the cost for some adults. Scott's proposal would reduce the bill's red ink -- estimated at $3.3 trillion through 2034 -- but it could also draw objections from House Republicans who prevented a similar idea from getting into their bill.

Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine), who hasn't declared whether she will support the bill, has filed an amendment that would provide more money to rural hospitals and let the top income-tax bracket revert to 39.6%, for individual income above $25 million and married couples' income above $50 million.

Democrats will also be actively seeking to alter the bill, with amendments aimed at squeezing certain Republicans politically. There might even be a few cases where they can win enough GOP support to change the bill -- though Republican leaders can wipe those out with a final amendment if they have enough support.

A final Senate vote could come late Monday or early Tuesday. If it passes, the measure would then move back to the House, where it faces an uncertain fate thanks to loud grumbling from different Republican blocs over its deficit spending and its reductions to Medicaid.

It is a tough balancing act for Senate GOP leaders, who are working to squeak through the bill that will fund Trump's top priorities through a process called reconciliation, which allows the Senate to avoid the typical 60-vote threshold to pass a bill. If any four GOP senators oppose the measure, it will fail to advance.

On Saturday night, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) and other GOP leaders spent hours wrangling Republican holdouts to vote to advance the bill, before ultimately doing that 51-49. Trump was making calls while Vice President JD Vance made a rare appearance at the Senate to work the holdouts and be in person, in case he needed to help break a tie vote.

Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Thom Tillis of North Carolina ultimately voted against advancing the bill. Tillis announced Sunday afternoon that he would not seek re-election for another term, hours after Trump threatened to recruit a primary challenger against Tillis unless he got in line.

Tillis, speaking from the Senate floor Sunday night, argued the Senate bill's changes to Medicaid would betray the voters and the president's promises to only target waste, fraud and abuse, rather than kick deserving recipients off the program.

"The people in the White House advising the president, they're not telling him that the effect of this bill is to break a promise," said Tillis. "I'm telling the president, you have been misinformed. You supporting the Senate mark will hurt people who are eligible and qualified for Medicaid," Tillis said.

GOP Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin was among one of the holdouts who changed his vote to "yes" Saturday, after he was assured that Trump and Senate leaders would back the Scott amendment.

It has already been an exhausting sprint, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) successfully delaying the vote by half a day after asking the Senate clerks to read the entirety of the nearly 1,000-page bill after the procedural vote. Nearly a dozen hours of debate followed on the Senate floor, before the Senate broke for the night and returned Monday morning for the so-called vote-a-rama on amendments.

The Senate bill also adds nearly a trillion dollars to budget deficits, compared with the House bill. It would add $3.3 trillion more to the deficit over a decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan budget scorekeeper.

The altered bill will have to return to the House, in which Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) and other House GOP leaders passed it by just one vote in May. The Senate changes come after Johnson repeatedly urged and warned GOP senators not to make major adjustments to the bill, arguing it will make it more difficult to move it with his more rowdy and populist conference of members.

The House is preparing to vote as early as Wednesday, which would allow Trump to sign the bill on July 4. Any House changes would have to go back through the Senate, and there would still be time to negotiate further. The tax cuts don't expire until Dec. 31, and the bill's debt-limit increase isn't needed until August.

Write to Olivia Beavers at Olivia.Beavers@wsj.com and Richard Rubin at richard.rubin@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 30, 2025 09:29 ET (13:29 GMT)

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