Senate Dems fail to advance major tax bill
The procedural vote—the final one before a nearly six-week break—was the latest in a series of Republican-blocked motions to move forward on Democratic legislative priorities.

Two days after the Senate approved the first child online safety legislation in nearly three decades, it failed to advance an $80 billion tax bill that cruised through the House six months ago and would have offered essential financial relief to American families and small businesses.
The bill would have partially restored the expanded Child Tax Credit—a benefit Democrats passed and President Joe Biden signed into law in 2021 that cut child poverty in half in six months. It also would have enhanced the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, a provision to expand affordable housing supply, and provided disaster tax relief to cover repairs from hurricanes, flooding, wildfires and the 2023 Ohio rail disaster. The bill, which was hammered out by Congress’s two tax chiefs—Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and House Ways & Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.)—also includes several business-friendly tax cuts.
“A few minutes ago, something very disappointing and stunning happened on the Senate floor: The vast majority of Republicans blocked hugely bipartisan package that would have helped families, would have helped businesses, would have helped housing and helped communities hit by natural disasters,” Schumer said moments after the vote. “Republicans voted no because of partisanship, not policy.”
The final tally was 48–44—a dozen votes short of the 60-vote threshold for the procedural vote—in the culminating act for senators before they skipped town for the August recess.
Many senators who supported the bill acknowledged its imperfections but said some help for their constituents is better than none.
The White House endorsed the bill in a policy memo this morning, which it called a fair bipartisan compromise. In addition to supporting the bill’s key provisions, the administration said the bill’s pay-for—through changes to combat fraud in the Employee Retention Tax Credit—is in line with President Joe Biden and Vice President’s policy of making wealthy people and big corporations pay higher taxes to provide relief to middle-class and working families.
However, Senate Republican leadership encouraged its members to prevent a debate on the bill. GOP senators have been open about their intention to run out the clock until after Election Day when they hope to win the governing trifecta in the House, Senate and White House required to extend the tax cuts former President Donald Trump signed into law in 2017.
But Wyden told me yesterday that this gamble could end in disaster for his colleagues on the other side of the aisle.
“$3.5 trillion tax bills do not happen by osmosis. Here, we’ve been working for a full two years on a $78 billion fully paid for bill that got 357 votes in the House,” he said. “So all these Senate Republicans who are now going to, if they have their way, go home and say we'll do it better for you in 2025, they’re gonna have some ‘splaining to do.”
It’s also worth noting that the electoral landscape has dramatically shifted in the months since Senate Republicans staked out this position now that Vice President Kamala Harris is at the top of the Democratic ticket and has tightened the race against Trump.
Republicans dismissed the vote as a political scheme by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to help vulnerable incumbents like Sens. Sherrod Brown (Ohio) and Jon Tester (Mont.) with their tough reelection campaigns back home.
Schumer previously held unsuccessful votes this summer on protections for abortion, birth control and IVF and on a Senate border deal Trump killed earlier this year—all issues that will take center stage in the final months of the campaign.
“Yes, we want to show where our Republican Senate colleagues are,” Schumer told reporters yesterday. “We want to show they’re out of touch with their own House Republican colleagues, who are often more conservative than they are.”
Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) characterized the bill as a big deal ahead of the doomed vote.
“This affects children, families, small businesses, those who are concerned about affordable housing, larger entities investing in innovation. This is really important,” she said. “And I do want to stress that for millions of small businesses who want to innovate and want to expand those who are worried about trying to keep their doors open, this bill that really is essential.”
Wyden also pushed back against the claim that the vote was for optics.
“The fact is we could have done this some time ago, except Senate Republicans have been a no-show. They’ve been no-shows on the big issues,” he said. “If we pass this now, we can get it to the president and it’ll be signed into law. That’s what’s on the line here.”
Beyond the political gripes, Senate Republicans also complained about their inability to amend the bill.
Schumer defended his decision to hold this afternoon’s vote because he said it was on a procedural motion, not final passage.
“Let them vote [today] on the motion to proceed and then we’ll see what happens,” he said. “All we’re voting on [today] is to open up the process, plain and simple. Let them vote for it. Why are they saying vote no?”
For what it’s worth, the House would have to pass the amended version of the bill with the Senate’s changes—a heavy lift in a condensed pre-election legislative calendar already cramped with a looming government funding deadline.
The top Senate Democrat also argued his members had tried for months to reach a compromise before he brought the bill to the floor.
“They are doing what Republicans have done on bill after bill, whether it’s border or AI, or now crypto,” Schumer said. “They don’t want to pass anything. That’s not what the American people want. That’s not what the American people are demanding. They’re saying do something to make our lives better. This bill does.”
Wyden said Democrats were willing to remove provisions Republicans like to earn more bipartisan support.
“We offered them compromises,” he said. “They weren’t acceptable to them.”
Senate Democrats claim the Republican opposition to a bill with generous business tax cuts will tarnish their brand as the pro-business party.
“Republicans talk a lot about competing with China and helping small businesses,” Wyden said. But ever since they messed up singlehandedly, and I use that word specifically, research and development credits back in 2017, they’ve been promising to fix it. They promised in ‘18, ‘19 and ‘21, ‘22, ‘23, ‘24—years and years of promises.”
Schumer also mentioned the GOP criticism of the bill cuts against their argument that when Congress cuts taxes on business, it reduces the deficit.
“And the R&D credit has proven to be a very, very successful measure of creating more jobs and bringing in more dollars.”
The no vote is also an affront to the GOP’s pitch to voters as pro-family policymakers.
“We’re hearing a lot on the campaign trail about families and who’s for family,” Wyden said. “Well, [today] everybody in the United States Senate, every Democrat and every Republican, [had a chance] to show not only are they for families, but they’re for the big family.”
But it wasn’t just Republicans who opposed the bill: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who caucuses with Democrats, did as well because the Child Tax Credit expansion fell short of the version Congress passed in the pandemic relief package more than three years ago.
House progressives faced the same dilemma before they voted on the bill. The Congressional Progressive Caucus provided its members with substantial resources on the impact of the Child Tax Credit to determine if the legislation was worth supporting. If there had been a formal strategy in the Senate to strengthen the CTC, House progressives would have been willing to hold the line. They even offered to whip 70 no votes to give Senate Democrats leverage to improve the policy. Ultimately, many members based their vote on how many kids in their district would be supported or excluded by the partial restoration.
The final House vote was 357–70, with 188 Democrats and 169 Republicans voting in favor.
Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) said after the House passed the bill that his members would likely prevent it from receiving a final vote unless so-called work requirements on the Child Tax Credit were tightened. But this was a red line for Hill Democrats given the generous tax breaks for businesses. The risk of losing the affordable housing and disaster relief credits complicated the politics for Democrats.
“The Joint Committee on Taxation says no, the bill encourages work,” Wyden said. “But then we went to them and offered to take out some of the things that they didn’t like.”
Stabenow said the provision—even in its shrunken form—was still a win for American families.
“We’re talking about giving parents some desperately needed breathing room in there as they’re caring for their children, whether it’s paying for childcare, whether it’s paying for clothes, or whether it’s paying for those tennis shoes or whatever is needed for their children,” she said. “Just a little bit of extra help to keep the lights on, keep food on the table.“
And Wyden warned that if Senate Republicans win a governing trifecta, they may cut the Child Tax Credit altogether.
“I personally believe, based on everything I’ve seen in the last two years, if Senate Republicans are in charge, I don’t see 16 million kids getting helped under their bill,” he said. “I think that their buddies in the business world are gonna get even more than the 16 million kids are gonna get.”
Schumer conceded the Child Tax Credit did not go far enough for him either but the product that emerged from the House is a repercussion of divided government.
"We all prefer the American Rescue Plan. It was one of the greatest things, it was one of the first things I did as majority leader," he said. "But this was a compromise. We had to deal with Republicans in the House. If we keep the Senate, get back the House, win the presidency, we're gonna go much further.”
It’s unclear if Senate Republicans will pay a political price for their summer blockade of bills like the tax package.
Wyden said he would leave it up to voters to make up their own minds.
“But the last time I looked, the best politics is doing good policy,” he said. “Some people think this is quaint, but I really do believe that when all the commercials are done and all the attack ads are in and the like, people are looking for results and that’s why I said we could have done this a long time ago.”
Schumer thinks a month back home could make a difference though.
“I think if they block the bill, they’re going to feel a lot of pressure over August recess and maybe they’ll come back to us and say, ‘OK, we’re willing to negotiate,’” he said. “That’s what we hoped would happen.”