The Senate on Tuesday appeared on the verge of voting on Donald Trump’s giant tax and spending bill, after Republicans spent all night locked in last-minute negotiations to win the support of holdouts for the president’s top legislative priority.
Signs were emerging that a deal may finally be at hand to pass the “one big beautiful bill” through the Senate and bring it closer to enactment on 4 July, the deadline Trump has set for the bill that will fund a number of his administration’s priorities – including a sweeping crackdown on undocumented immigrants and a number of new tax breaks – to reach his desk.
“After an all-nighter and more than 24 hours of debate and nearly 50 amendment votes, the Republican led Senate will soon deliver on [Trump’s] America First agenda by advancing the One Big Beautiful Bill. Gettin’ it done!,” the Republican senator John Cornyn wrote on X Tuesday morning.
The Senate GOP can only lose three votes on the bill, and two of their lawmakers have already rejected it, along with all Democrats. It also remains to be seen if the changes made by the Senate will pass muster in the House of Representatives, which approved the legislation by a single vote in May, and will have to vote again on the revised measure.
The bill will extend tax cuts enacted during Trump’s first term in 2017, while creating new ones for tips, overtime and car loan interest. It will also channel tens of billions of dollars into Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation operations, as well as further money into the construction of border fortifications.
To offset its costs, Republicans have proposed slashing two major federal safety net programs: Medicaid, which provides healthcare to poor and disabled Americans, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which pays for food. The bill will also phase out an array of tax credits and incentives created under Joe Biden to encourage consumers and businesses to adopt clean energy products.
But downsizing the safety net programs and phasing out the tax credits prompted objections from some Republican senators, who said they were worried about the bill’s impact on their constituents and businesses. Over the weekend, the majority leader, John Thune, scored a victory when his lawmakers voted to begin debate on the bill, and on Monday, they started a “vote-a-rama”, a process that stretched into Tuesday that saw senators from both parties offer amendments to the bill.
While most of the Democratic amendments were voted down, some of the Republican amendments are intended to assuage the concerns of holdouts in order to get them to vote yes. In a 99-1 vote, the Senate agreed to strip out language approved by the House that would have blocked states from regulating artificial intelligence for 10 years.
Nonetheless, the bill is expected to be very expensive, with the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimating it will increase the deficit by $3.3tn through 2034. That could prove to be a major issue in the House, where rightwing fiscal hardliners have demanded deep cuts to federal spending in the measure, and may withhold their votes until that is achieved.