WASHINGTON ― The Senate took a big step toward passage of President Donald Trump’s sweeping legislative agenda on Saturday after several key Republican holdouts voted to advance the $4 trillion package that includes tax cuts for the mostly wealthy as well as major cuts to safety net programs.
The vote on the motion to proceed squeaked by in a 51-49 vote, with Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) joining all Democrats against the measure.
Republicans are moving the bill under a special, fast-track process known as budget reconciliation, which only requires 51 votes instead of the usual 60. Trump has said he wants the bill on his desk by the July 4 holiday, and GOP lawmakers in both chambers of Congress are racing to meet his deadline.
After some uncertainty about whether GOP leaders would indeed have the votes to proceed on Saturday, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), two holdouts on provisions in the legislation cutting Medicaid, announced they were ready to move forward.
Hawley, who repeatedly argued against cutting Medicaid, cited a $25 billion fund in the bill that will benefit rural hospitals in his state and a one-year delay in imposing some cuts to Medicaid as reasons why he ultimately came around to supporting it.
“I’m going to spend the next however long, trying to make sure that the cuts that we have are successfully delayed and never take place,” Hawley told reporters on Saturday. “You cannot take away health care from working people. And unless this is changed going forward, that is what will happen in coming years.”
The legislation also includes new “work requirements” for nondisabled adults ― the largest Medicaid cut in the program’s history that is estimated to kick millions of Americans off their health insurance plans. All Republicans supported those provisions.
Collins, meanwhile, said her vote to advance the bill on Saturday was made under procedural grounds and did not mean she would ultimately support it on final passage. The Maine Republican, who is up for reelection next year, said she wanted to see “substantial” changes, including to provisions dealing with Medicaid and federal food assistance.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) also voted to advance the bill after holding the chamber in suspense for an hour about how she intended to vote. She did so after intense cajoling from Vance and several GOP leaders on the Senate floor.
The Senate’s draft of the bill, which isn’t final and could change, initially included a controversial plan from Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) to sell over a million acres of public lands across 11 states in the American West. Several GOP senators threatened to vote against the bill in opposition to Lee’s plan, forcing him to ultimately announce that he was pulling the scheme on Saturday evening.
But Tillis, a top Democratic target in next year’s Senate elections, said he couldn’t support Trump’s signature bill due to its negative impact on health care in North Carolina.
“I did my homework on behalf of North Carolinians, and I cannot support this bill in its current form,” Tillis said in a statement. “It would result in tens of billions of dollars in lost funding for North Carolina, including our hospitals and rural communities. This will force the state to make painful decisions like eliminating Medicaid coverage for hundreds of thousands in the expansion population, and even reducing critical services for those in the traditional Medicaid population.”
Trump responded by attacking the senator, accusing him of grandstanding and threatening to back a primary challenger against him.
“North Carolina will not allow one of their Senators to GRANDSTAND in order to get some publicity for himself, for a possible, but very difficult Re-Election,” the president wrote on his social media website TruthSocial. “Thom Tillis is making a BIG MISTAKE for America, and the Wonderful People of North Carolina!”
“Numerous people have come forward wanting to run in the Primary against ‘Senator Thom’ Tillis. I will be meeting with them over the coming weeks, looking for someone who will properly represent the Great People of North Carolina,” he added.
Paul and Johnson, two conservative deficit hawks, said they weren’t happy with the way the bill would explode the debt over the next 10 years. But Johnson switched his vote from “no” to “aye” late in the night, allowing Republicans to move the bill forward without a tie breaking vote from Vice President JD Vance, who was on hand.
Democrats also lambasted the GOP bill as a giant giveaway to corporate interests, vowing to fight against it every step of the way, even if they have little power to block it if Republicans remain united under the reconciliation process.
That didn’t stop Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) from throwing up roadblocks, however. The New York senator announced that he would force the Senate clerks to read the entire bill in the chamber ― a lengthy process that’s typically waived with bipartisan support ― to give the American public time to digest it fully.
“Republicans won’t tell America what’s in the bill so Democrats are forcing it to be read start to finish on the floor,” Schumer wrote in a post online. “We will be here all night if that’s what it takes to read it.”
The reading of the 940-page bill could take over 15 hours, delaying a vote on final passage. In 2021, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) forced a reading of Democrats’ 600-page American Rescue Plan, which took nearly 11 hours but ultimately didn’t stop its passage.
A final vote on the bill is expected sometime on Monday. It must then get approval from the House, where a group of Republican lawmakers are threatening to vote no due to its cuts to Medicaid and its effect on the deficit.