Trump’s megabill barely survives the Senate
Lisa Murkowski broke with key GOP holdouts to support the tax and safety net overhaul, clearing the way for JD Vance to cast the tie-breaking vote. The legislation now returns to the House.
After days of uncertainty, Senate Republicans passed a sweeping tax, immigration, defense, and energy package on Tuesday afternoon, which stands as the centerpiece of President Donald Trump’s second-term legislative agenda.
The final vote came after more than 24 hours of record-breaking amendment votes, late-night negotiations with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and a tie-breaking appearance by Vice President JD Vance, who cast the decisive vote after Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.), Thom Tillis (N.C.) and Susan Collins (Maine) joined all Democrats in opposition.
The bill includes the largest cuts to Medicaid and SNAP in American history and now heads back to the House for final consideration.
The vote completes a stunning turnaround for Murkowski, who was one of three Republican senators, alongside Collins and the late John McCain of Arizona, famously helped preserve the Affordable Care Act in 2017, casting a decisive vote against repeal that cemented her reputation as an independent-minded defender of health care access.
Eight years later, she became the final holdout to support a bill that would defund Planned Parenthood for a year and enact the deepest cuts to SNAP and Medicaid in U.S. history, policies that independent estimates suggest could strip health coverage from as many as 17 million Americans.
Murkowski’s evolution underscores both the political pressure that Republican moderates face under unified GOP control and the strategic concessions that party leaders are willing to make to secure critical votes.
She told reporters after the vote that she wants the House to return the bill to the Senate so Republicans can improve it, an unlikely scenario at this juncture.
“My hope is that the House is gonna look at this and recognize that we’re not there yet,” Murkowski said, adding that she voted for it to keep from killing the bill altogether. “Kill it and it's gone. There is a tax impact coming forward. That's gonna hurt the people in my state.”
Collins, who voted on Saturday night to allow the bill to be debated, said she strongly supported tax relief for families and small businesses, but the cuts to the safety net were a bridge too far.
“My vote against this bill stems primarily from the harmful impact it will have on Medicaid, affecting low-income families and rural health care providers like our hospitals and nursing homes.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) blasted the Republican megabill just moments after its passage, describing a sense of gloom among GOP senators in the chamber.
“They knew deep in their hearts how bad this bill is for them, their states and the Republican Party,” he said. “When people start losing their Medicaid, when their electric bills go up, when kids and parents lose SNAP funding, the people of America will remember this vote.”
Schumer framed the debate as a moral and political battle that Democrats fought aggressively.
“We broke through with the American people, who by a two-to-one margin don’t like this bill,” he said. “We won a remarkable number of cases with the parliamentarian. And because of our relentless focus on a simple, unified message, it has sunk in with the American people and it will remain.”
He promised sustained campaigning against vulnerable Republicans.
“We’re going to be in their states in every way. You’re going to see a constant, constant battle in those states reminding people day in day out of what happened.”
As for whether the vote will help Democrats win back the Senate in 2026: “We didn’t do this for electoral purposes. We did this because we passionately believe how bad this is. But of course it’ll be an issue in the election.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told me that he and Schumer were in close contact over the last several days.
“[Schumer] and Senate Democrats fought hard to remove several extreme provisions from the GOP tax scam that will soften some of the blows that are being directed at the American people and every single one of them strongly opposed it, as will be the case with House Democrats.”
Final passage came more than 24 hours after the Senate began what’s known as vote-a-rama, a rapid-fire voting session when senators can offer an unlimited number of amendments.
But unlike most vote-a-ramas, where majority leaders aim to move swiftly toward a wraparound amendment and final passage, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) slowed the process to a crawl, allowing Republicans to lock down wavering votes—most notably those of Murkowski—amid internal tensions and unresolved demands.
Democrats argued the delay was proof the bill wasn’t ready for primetime and that Republicans lacked the votes for passage. Thune, however, defended the slow pace, arguing it reflected the complexity and high stakes of legislation often finalized in the eleventh hour. But the slowdown prolonged floor drama and spotlighted the fragile state of GOP unity.
Arriving at the Capitol as vote-a-rama dragged into its second day, Vance told reporters, “We’re gonna find out,” when asked this morning if Republicans had the votes to pass the megabill.
Before he arrived on Capitol Hill this morning, Vice President Vance posted on X that “everything else—the CBO score, the proper baseline, the minutiae of the Medicaid policy—is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions,” a statement Democrats seized on as evidence of how MAGA immigration politics have distorted Republican policymaking.
For Democrats, the comment encapsulates the party’s core critique that the megabill prioritizes punitive immigration enforcement over policies that will directly harm millions of Americans, including deep cuts to Medicaid, SNAP and tax credits for billionaires and big corporations. Vance’s framing reinforced the view that immigration is not just a policy area but the ideological engine driving the GOP’s legislative agenda.
In the end, this came down to a strategic bet: Republican leaders believed it was easier to negotiate with their own members on extreme, deeply polarizing policies against strict self-imposed deadlines than to strike bipartisan compromises with Democrats on more widely supported goals like cutting taxes, funding national defense, securing the border and promoting energy independence.
The result validated Thune’s methodical strategy through the vote-a-rama and confirmed that conservative policy groups, such as Heritage Action, which announced that the vote would count toward the public rating system the group uses to measure lawmakers’ adherence to its conservative priorities, still have influence.
The final bill reflects a key concession to Murkowski, the last Republican to join the effort. GOP leaders rewrote the SNAP cost-sharing rules to temporarily exempt states like Alaska, which have high payment error rates, giving them more time to comply. Democrats fumed that the change exempted some states from the requirements while still imposing burdensome ones on others.
Despite that deal, the bill still includes a one-year ban on federal Medicaid funding for providers that offer abortions, a move Democrats say will effectively defund Planned Parenthood clinics across the country. The provision only allows exceptions for rape, incest or if the patient’s life is in danger. It’s a major victory for anti-abortion groups and one of the most politically charged pieces of the package.
The bill also maintains deep cuts to Medicaid. Republicans are moving forward with plans to phase out extra federal funding for states that expanded Medicaid and to impose new work and cost-sharing requirements on low-income adults. Democrats warn these changes could leave millions without health coverage and have blasted the bill as the most aggressive attack on Medicaid in history.
One high-profile provision that didn’t survive: The proposed 10-year federal ban on state AI regulations. The idea was to prevent a patchwork of conflicting laws across the country, but a bipartisan group of senators successfully removed it. That means states are still free to regulate AI however they choose, even as Congress struggles to agree on a national standard.
Another notable change is a tweak to the state and local tax (SALT) deduction. Senate Republicans reached a deal with the White House to temporarily raise the cap from $10,000 to $40,000, at least through the end of the decade. It’s a win for Republicans in high-tax states who’ve pushed for relief ever since the 2017 tax law limited the deduction. But Democrats say their GOP counterparts shouldn’t receive credit for raising a cap that didn’t exist eight years ago.
The bill also locks in several extensions of President Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which were set to expire after 2025.
These include lower income tax rates, a doubled child tax credit baseline, expanded standard deductions and a higher estate tax exemption. Republicans argue that these provisions will protect middle-class families from tax hikes, although Democrats contend that the benefits are skewed toward the wealthy.
In an effort to frame the bill as worker-friendly, Republicans added new tax deductions for overtime pay, tips and a portion of workers’ payroll taxes that go toward Social Security. While the provisions may result in modest savings for some workers, they fall short of Trump’s campaign promise to eliminate taxes on these income sources. And Democrats contend they pale in comparison to the bill’s larger tax breaks for corporations and the ultra-wealthy.
Final passage in the House, while likely, is not a foregone conclusion.
The bill still falls short of the House Freedom Caucus’s demands for deeper spending cuts and more aggressive deficit reduction, while also drawing concern from so-called moderate Republicans who want a lighter touch on Medicaid and safety net programs. With just a narrow majority, House GOP leaders can’t afford many defections, especially as outside pressure campaigns intensify ahead of the vote.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and his leadership team released a joint statement that said the House would work to send the bill to Trump’s desk by the president’s July 4th deadline.
“This bill is President Trump’s agenda and we are making it law,” they said. “House Republicans are ready to finish the job and put the One Big Beautiful Bill on President Trump’s desk in time for Independence Day.”
Thune acknowledged the uphill battle awaiting House Republicans but expressed confidence in the bill his chamber sent over.
“I appreciate the narrow margins they have over there and the challenge the speaker and his team have in front of them,” Thune told reporters after the vote. “But I think we gave them a really strong product.”
The House Rules Committee is currently meeting to prepare the bill for floor consideration as early as 9 a.m. on Wednesday morning. Jeffries will meet with his leadership this evening and House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) will convene a caucus meeting shortly after to discuss House Democrats’ opposition to the bill. House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) will hold a whip meeting in the morning to continue the conversation ahead of the first procedural vote.
Jeffries said he expects all Democrats will be present and all tools to delay final passage, including his floor privilege to speak as long as he wishes, are on the table.
“House Democrats are going to everything we can for the next few hours—today, tomorrow, for the balance of this week and beyond—to stop this bill from ever becoming law.”