Senate Republicans Struggle to Finalize 4.5 Trillion Tax Cut Bill

The Senate is in the midst of an extended overnight session that has carried over into Tuesday, as Republican leaders strive to finalize a comprehensive bill that includes tax breaks and spending cuts. The session has been marked by intense negotiations and efforts to fend off proposed amendments, primarily from Democrats aiming to derail the package.

An immediate resolution to the negotiations is not in sight. Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota is working to secure a last-minute agreement between those in his party who are concerned that the bill’s reductions to Medicaid will leave millions without care and the more conservative members who advocate for even deeper cuts to control deficits that are expanding due to the tax cuts.

Thune initially declared that they were in the “homestretch” as he hurried through the halls of the Capitol, only to later backtrack, indicating that progress was “elusive.”

Meanwhile, House Speaker Mike Johnson has signaled potential challenges ahead, warning that the Senate package could face difficulties when it returns to the House for a final round of voting. Skeptical lawmakers are being called back to Washington ahead of the Fourth of July deadline set by Trump.

“I have prevailed upon my Senate colleagues to please, please, please keep it as close to the House product as possible,” said Johnson, the Louisiana Republican. House Republicans had already passed their version last month.

This is a critical moment for the Republicans, who control Congress and are racing to complete their work with just days remaining before Trump’s holiday deadline on Friday. The 940-page “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” as it is formally titled, has consumed Congress as its shared priority with the president.

In a midnight social media post, Trump urged them on, calling the bill “perhaps the greatest and most important of its kind.” Vice President JD Vance summed up his own series of posts, simply imploring senators to “Pass the bill.”

The GOP leaders have no margin for error, with narrow majorities in both chambers. Thune can afford to lose no more than three Republican senators, and already two — Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who warns that people will lose access to Medicaid health care, and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who opposes raising the debt limit — have indicated their opposition. Tillis abruptly announced over the weekend that he would not seek reelection after Trump threatened to campaign against him.

Attention quickly turned to key senators, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, who have also raised concerns about health care cuts, as well as a loose coalition of four conservative GOP senators pushing for even steeper reductions.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said his side was working to show “how awful this is.” “Republicans are in shambles because they know the bill is so unpopular,” Schumer said as he walked the halls.

Few Republicans appear fully satisfied as the final package emerges, in either the House or Senate. Tillis said it is a betrayal of the president’s promises not to kick people off health care, especially if rural hospitals close. Collins had proposed bolstering the $25 billion proposed rural hospital fund to $50 billion, but her amendment failed. And Murkowski was trying to secure provisions to spare people in her state from some health care and food stamp cuts while also working to beef up federal reimbursements to Alaska’s hospitals. They have not said how they would vote for the final package.

“Radio silence,” Murkowski said when asked. At the same time, conservative Senate Republicans proposing steeper health care cuts, including Rick Scott of Florida, Mike Lee of Utah, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, filed into Thune’s office for a near-midnight meeting.

The Senate has spent some 18 hours churning through more than two dozen amendments in what is called a vote-a-rama, a typically laborious process that went on longer than usual as negotiations happen on and off the chamber floor. The White House legislative team also was at the Capitol.

A few of the amendments — to strike parts of the bill that would limit Medicaid funds to rural hospitals or shift the costs of food stamp benefits to the states — were winning support from a few Republicans, though almost none were passing.

Sen. Mike Crapo, the GOP chairman of the Finance Committee, dismissed the dire predictions of health care cuts as Democrats trafficking in what he called the “politics of fear.”

All told, the Senate bill includes $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, making permanent the 2017 rates, which would expire at the end of the year if Congress fails to act, while adding the new ones 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 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 infusion for border and national security, including for deportations, some of it paid for with new fees charged to immigrants.

Unable to stop the march toward passage, the Democrats as the minority party in Congress are using the tools at their disposal to delay and drag out the process. Democrats forced a full reading of the text, which took 16 hours, and they have a stream of amendments. Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, raised particular concern at the start of debate late Sunday about the accounting method being used by the Republicans, which says the tax breaks from Trump’s first term are now “current policy” and the cost of extending them should not be counted toward deficits. She said that kind of “magic math” won’t fly with Americans trying to balance their own household books.