WASHINGTON — Entering the final stretch of an arduous process, the Republican-controlled Senate began voting Monday on amendments to President Donald Trump’s massive tax cut and spending bill, with the goal of passing it later in the day.
The 940-page legislation, which the Senate advanced on a 51-49 vote late Saturday, was still taking shape even as the “vote-a-rama” — process in which senators can offer an unlimited number of amendments — began, with GOP leaders hoping to use the process to satisfy concerns from wavering factions.
Republicans need to hold 50 of their 53 senators to pass the bill. They have lost Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who complained that it adds too much to the national debt, and Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who blasted the Medicaid cuts as damaging to his home state.
“So what do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off Medicaid?” Tillis said in a fiery floor speech Sunday evening.
Tillis said “amateurs” are advising Trump and conflating longstanding health care policy with “waste, fraud and abuse.” He announced hours earlier that he won’t run for re-election in 2026, after clashing with Trump over his opposition.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine voted to advance the bill on Saturday but said she was “leaning against” voting for it on final passage. She has concerns with the Medicaid cuts and said she prefers taxes go up on high earners. And Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who also voted to keep the process moving over the weekend after discussions with Republican leaders, has voiced Medicaid concerns.
In addition, a group of conservatives — Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Mike Lee, R-Utah — are insisting on revising the bill to reduce the deficit impact.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that the Senate bill would increase the national debt by $3.3 trillion over the next 10 years — it found that revenues would fall by about $4.5 trillion and spending would be cut by $1.2 trillion. The bill is also projected to lead to 11.8 million people losing their health insurance by 2034 if it becomes law, the CBO said.
The GOP is using a budget trick known as “current policy baseline” to hide the cost of extending the tax cuts Trump singed into law in 2017, effectively lowering the sticker price by $3.8 trillion. That tactic has not been used in the budget process before and would set a precedent to weaken the Senate’s 60-vote rule.
The Senate voted 53-47 to greenlight the new baseline on Monday, with all Republicans voting in favor.
“This is the nuclear option,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., warning that it will “cut both ways” when the majority flips.
The legislation would also slash taxes on tips and overtime pay. It includes a $150 billion boost to military spending this year, along with a surge of federal money to carry out Trump’s mass deportation and immigration enforcement agenda. It would partly pay for that with cuts to Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and clean energy funding.
And it includes a $5 trillion increase in the debt ceiling ahead of an August deadline to avert a default on the country’s obligations.
“The permanent tax relief included in our bill means Americans keeping more of their hard-earned money and American businesses growing and investing in our country and our workers,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D.
The Senate version of the bill includes steeper Medicaid cuts than the House version, along with changes to the clean energy funding rollbacks. It shortens the timeline for an expanded $40,000 state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap to five years, before cutting it back down to $10,000. And it contains a series of provisions for priorities in Alaska, including a tax break for whaling captains, in an apparent attempt to win over Murkowski.
The Monday vote-a-rama comes after a rare weekend work session for the Senate.
On Saturday night, after hours of delays and uncertainty, the package for Trump’s agenda cleared its first major hurdle, with Tillis and Paul joining all Democrats in opposition.
The narrow but successful vote occurred after a small band of GOP holdouts — including Johnson, Scott and Lee — struck a deal with Thune on amendments. But those amendments still have to get a majority vote to be adopted. Vice President JD Vance, a former senator, attended meetings in Thune’s office and helped sway their votes, while Trump golfed and held his own meetings with key senators.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., forced a full reading of the bill, which delayed the process by about 16 hours. Democrats don’t have the votes to sink the bill, as Republicans are using the filibuster-proof “budget reconciliation” process to get around the 60-vote threshold.
“Senate Democrats will use vote-a-rama to highlight the disastrous impacts of the GOP’s historically unpopular proposal,” a Schumer spokesperson said, adding that “Republicans ripping away health care from millions of Americans and closing rural hospitals across the country to pay for tax cuts to the wealthy.”
If the bill passes the Senate, it would head to the House, which had passed its own version of the legislation on May 22 by a single vote.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and his leadership team have told rank-and-file members over the weekend to be prepared to return to Washington as early as Tuesday, with a possible final vote on the Senate bill on Wednesday.
GOP leaders are aiming to send the bill to Trump’s desk for his signature by the president’s self-imposed July 4 deadline, which is Friday.
Like in the Senate, Republican leaders in the House can only afford three GOP defections. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., has been opposed to the legislation from the start, arguing it adds to the debt. And a handful of moderate Republicans are sounding the alarm over Medicaid cuts to their district and the Senate’s changes to the SALT deduction.
