The fate of President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” remains uncertain this evening, but the process to pass it is unquestionably ugly.
The Senate began a lengthy vote-a-rama Monday morning, considering a series of dozens of amendments before it can move on to a final vote on the package of tax and spending cuts. It’s been slow going, as Republicans reportedly continue to work to win over potential holdouts while Democrats blast the legislation, its huge cuts to Medicaid and food aid programs and the route Republicans have chosen to try to pass it.
“Having started votes just past 9:30 a.m., senators had completed just 14 roll call votes in about seven hours, with little sign of urgency from Republicans to get things moving,” The Washington Post’s Paul Kane noted. “At the current pace, the Senate would not reach a final vote till 5:30 a.m. Tuesday if there are at least 40 roll call votes.”
Republican leaders still face concerns and divisions within their conference on some key issues. Those divisions were visible Saturday night, when it took hours for GOOP leaders to round up the necessary votes to begin debate. The legislative process was also extended by Democrats who, as a protest against the bill, required the entire text, nearly 1,000 pages, to be read aloud on the Senate floor, a process that took nearly 16 hours.
Here's a look at some of the most controversial aspect of the bill.
Baseline battle: The Senate voted 53-47 to adopt a “current policy” baseline for consideration of the bill, treating nearly $4 trillion in extended tax cuts as having no cost because they maintain the status quo. Republicans had refused a Democratic request for a bipartisan meeting with the Senate parliamentarian on the issue, arguing that Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham has the authority to set the baseline.
A Congressional Budget Office analysis using the current policy baseline found that the GOP legislation would reduce the deficit by $508 billion. Another CBO analysis using traditional scoring assumptions calculated a $3.3 trillion deficit increase (see more below).
Democrats decried the Republican move, warning that the numbers being used are fake — “as fake as Donald Trump’s tan,” Sen. Ron Wyden said — but the coming deficits will be very real.
“This means that reconciliation—for the first time ever—can now be used to increase the deficit in perpetuity. That’s never been the case before,” Michael Linden, a Democratic budget expert and former official in the White House Office of Management and Budget, wrote on X. “Any Republican who is ok with this should never be allowed to claim they care about the deficit ever again.”
Policy wonks warned that Republicans were embracing an accounting gimmick that would reverberate for years, opening the door to more accounting games and policy maneuvers. “A political system that is looking for every opportunity not to cover the bills will use and abuse this going forward,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which advocates for deficit reduction.
Experts also complained that Republicans are playing games by setting expiration dates at the end of 2028 for a series of new tax breaks, including deductions for tipped workers, overtime pay, senior citizens and interest on car loans. Those expiration dates helped keep down the official cost of the tax provisions — but assuming they are extended, their true cost could be $1 trillion higher.
More Medicaid cuts? Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina warned his party against cutting Medicaid. On Saturday, he voted against moving ahead with the bill. Then, faced with the threat of a GOP primary challenge backed by Trump, on Sunday he stunned lawmakers by announcing he won’t seek another term. “Republicans are about to make a mistake on health care and betray a promise," Tillis warned.
But Tillis’s misgivings about Medicaid cuts have gone unheeded in other corners of his party. Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida has proposed an amendment that would change the federal government’s 90% cost chare for Medicaid enrollees who became eligible for the program under the Affordable Care Act. Enrollees who sign up starting in 2031 would have their Medicaid costs reimbursed at lower rates, placing additional burdens on states. The Scott amendment would reportedly result in another $313 billion in Medicaid cuts, and it would strip healthcare coverage from millions more beneficiaries. In some states, the change would trigger an automatic end or review of the Medicaid expansion. Democrats warned that these trigger laws could mean that millions more people across nine states would lose their coverage, bringing the total coverage losses to nearly 20 million people.
Several Republican senators have criticized the Medicaid cuts already in the bill, which would seemingly make it unlikely that Scott’s amendment is approved
Cutting tax incentives for wind and solar power: The updated Senate bill includes a surprise: it slashes tax incentives for wind and solar energy and would levy a new tax on those projects in the future.
The sweeping changes to clean energy policies would save an estimated $516 billion over 10 years. But the proposals have led to warnings that Republicans are undercutting key parts of the energy sector and that the tax changes will lead to higher prices for consumers and a greater struggle to meet increased energy needs.
“These new taxes will strand hundreds of billions of dollars in current investments, threaten energy security, and undermine growth in domestic manufacturing and land hardest on rural communities who would have been the greatest beneficiaries of clean energy investment,” Jason Grumet, CEO of the American Clean Power Association, said in a statement.
Elon Musk, the CEO of electric vehicle maker Tesla, who over the weekend called the GOP bill “insane,” also warned that the clean energy provisions are “a massive strategic error” that “will leave America extremely vulnerable in the future.”
A number of Republicans are fighting to preserve the wind and solar incentives, pushing an amendment to undo the harsher approach to clean energy tax credits in the revised Senate bill. The fate of that amendment could determine the fate of the overall bill.
The bottom line: The White House has urged congressional Republicans to unite behind the bill and get it to Trump’s desk by July 4, but the package still faces some uncertainty in the Senate, where Sens. Tillis and Rand Paul of Kentucky are firmly in the “no” column, meaning that GOP leaders can afford to lose only one more vote. The package may be met with even more uncertainty if or when it is sent back to the House, where lawmakers have been upset by the Senate’s changes to the version they narrowly passed last month.