Senate Passes Trump’s $3.3 Trillion Tax And Spending Bill

Update (1207ET): The Senate has passed the GOP’s tax & spending cuts bill by a vote of 51-50. 

🚨 BREAKING: Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill has officially PASSED the U.S. Senate, with JD Vance breaking the tie

It now heads back to the House for a vote on the changes made.

It COULD still hit Trump’s desk by July 4th. pic.twitter.com/qszGm5sAt3

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) July 1, 2025

It now heads back to the House, where it will first go to a Conference Committee and then the full house. 

Speaker Mike Johnson says he thinks it will be finished by July 4. 

*  *  *

After more than 21 hours of continuous voting, late-night negotiations, and a rare floor appearance by Vice President J.D. Vance, Senate Republicans remained mired in division early Tuesday over President Donald J. Trump’s $3.3 trillion tax and spending proposal, raising fresh doubts about the survival of his signature legislative priority.

At the center of the impasse is Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota, who has struggled to unite a fractured GOP conference around the sprawling bill. dubbed by Trump as the “One Big Beautiful Bill” – which includes sweeping tax cuts, a $5 trillion debt ceiling increase, significant Medicaid reductions, and a rollback of clean energy subsidies.

Currently, eight major Republican holdouts remain opposed or undecided. With only a razor-thin margin for defections, Thune can afford to lose just three votes. Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Thom Tillis of North Carolina have declared their opposition, and Maine’s Susan Collins is leaning no. That leaves Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — a perennial swing vote — as the potential deciding factor. Thune and Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo (R-ID) spent the early morning hours huddling with Murkowski, offering compromises and tweaks to the bill in hopes of flipping her vote.

“I think we’re going to get there,” Trump told reporters as he departed the White House Tuesday morning. “It’s tough. We’re trying to bring it down, bring it down so it’s really good for the country.”

But that optimism was not yet matched on the Senate floor, where votes on dozens of amendments continued into a second day. A visibly weary Thune said shortly after 5 a.m., “We’re getting to the end here,” though it remained unclear whether he had secured the votes.

Both Thune and Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) insist there’s a deal to pass the bill, but we shall see… 

BREAKING: Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) says Republicans have the votes to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill in the U.S. Senate, according to Fox News.

“Yeah we got em.” pic.twitter.com/evCSYxn8mG

— RedWave Press (@RedWave_Press) July 1, 2025

Tensions Boil Over on Medicaid, SNAP, and Debt Ceiling

Murkowski’s objections stem largely from the bill’s steep cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which could hit Alaska’s vulnerable populations particularly hard. Efforts to carve out protections for the state were dealt a blow when Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled key provisions in violation of the Byrd Rule, which restricts what can be included in budget reconciliation bills.

Negotiators scrambled to rewrite the language. A compromise on delaying SNAP cuts based on Alaska’s progress in improving administrative error rates appeared to gain traction. But language aimed at providing Alaska with an enhanced Medicaid funding match had not yet cleared MacDonough’s scrutiny by early Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Paul has proposed replacing the $5 trillion debt ceiling hike with a far smaller $500 billion increase — a move he argues would preserve leverage for deeper cuts in a follow-up reconciliation bill. But most Republicans see the idea as a nonstarter. “I don’t want anything,” Paul said when asked if he could be persuaded to support the package in exchange for concessions.

A Late-Night Drama on the Floor

Just before dawn, Murkowski was seen shaking her head repeatedly during an intense discussion with Thune, Crapo, and fellow Alaskan Sen. Dan Sullivan, Punchbowl News reports. At one point, she and Thune left the chamber to confer privately in his office. Though Thune called it “just chatting,” it was clear that GOP leaders were pulling out all the stops to secure her vote.

The ongoing drama frustrated even Democrats. “There’s still no text,” one exasperated Democratic senator told The Hill. “Have you seen what’s going on, on the floor, I’ve never seen anything like that,” the lawmaker continued. Meanwhile Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) accused Republicans of “slow-walking” the bill to buy time for internal negotiations. “They’ve made a lot of promises, contradictory promises to different parts of their caucus,” Schumer said on MSNBC.

Amid the floor chaos, senators did pass a bipartisan amendment, 99 to 1, to strike language in the bill that would have barred states from regulating artificial intelligence for a decade in a blow to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). The language was removed over concerns about consumer and child safety raised by Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA).

Other proposed amendments, however, failed. Collins’ bid to double the bill’s rural hospital relief fund to $50 billion – funded by restoring the top marginal tax rate for ultra-high earners, was rejected by a wide margin. A conservative amendment to roll back Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act has yet to receive a vote but threatens to split the conference further: if it fails, hardliners like Ron Johnson (R-WI), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Rick Scott (R-FL) may walk away. If it passes, moderates like Murkowski and Collins could defect.

Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, equated Collins’ amendment to “a band aid on an amputation.” Her amendment would have increased the top tax rate on individuals earning more than $25 million in a year to 39.6%. –Bloomberg

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), joined by Murkowski, has been circulating an amendment to soften the bill’s rollback of clean energy incentives. The Ernst amendment would delay the expiration of wind and solar credits, and remove a new excise tax on projects using components from China and other foreign adversaries. Fiscal hawks oppose the change, arguing it waters down promised savings.

And then we go back to the House…

Even if the Senate manages to pass the bill, trouble awaits in the House. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is under pressure from both moderates and Freedom Caucus hardliners, many of whom are dissatisfied with the Senate’s deeper Medicaid cuts and smaller spending offsets.

Part of the calculus is to strip language that could threaten the bill’s odds in the House, which is planning to vote on the Senate measure later this week. The House’s own version of the bill passed by a single vote.

The Senate’s deeper Medicaid cuts — which caused Tillis to defect — will put pressure on swing-district Republicans, while Freedom Caucus hardliners are angry that the Senate bill would create larger deficits than the House-passed measure. -Bloomberg

“This bill doesn’t deliver what we promised,” Rep. Nick LaLota (R-NY) said, citing insufficient relief on the state and local tax (SALT) deduction. LaLota supported the House version but has vowed to oppose the Senate’s.

Behind the scenes, Johnson has been urging Senate Republicans to use a “wraparound” amendment – a final catch-all tweak to the bill, to restore some House provisions, including provider tax language and SNAP reforms. But expectations of a major rewrite at the eleventh hour are slim.

“I have prevailed upon my Senate colleagues to please, please, please put it as close to the House product as possible,” Johnson said Monday. But few on Capitol Hill took that hope seriously.

In short, it’s still a shit show even if Thune and Mullin claim otherwise… for now. 

*  *  *

Grow your own food with HEIRLOOM SEEDS (39 varieties – 4,500 seeds) from ZH Store!  Free shipping in the USA.