Senators have convened in D.C. to begin voting on President Donald Trump’s tax and spending bill, dubbed the “Big, Beautiful Bill.” The voting session began on the Senate floor just before 10 a.m., with lawmakers racing against the clock to get the bill on Trump’s desk for July 4th.
The bill, which is a whopping 940 pages long, underwent some changes before being finalized on Friday. Many of Trump’s campaign promises are on the table, including a larger child tax credit, a national debt ceiling increase, extensions of his 2017 tax cuts, border security, cuts to the clean energy sector, and changes to Medicaid requirements and budget.
Senate Republicans can only afford to lose three votes to pass the bill. Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Caroline and Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky are both projected to vote no. Tillis remarked on the Senate floor, “What do I tell 663,00 people in two or three years when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding’s not there anymore?”
Senator Tillis continued, “We owe it to the American people–and I owe it to the people of North Carolina to withhold my affirmative vote until it’s demonstrated to me that we’ve done our homework [that] we’re gonna make sure that we fulfill the promise. And then I can feel good about a bill that I’m willing to vote for. But until that time, I will be withholding my vote.”
Senator Paul said, “The bill increases the debt ceiling by $5 trillion. What does that mean? That is an admission that they know they aren’t controlling the deficit…. That doesn’t sound conservative to me, and that’s why I’m a no.”
One point of major contention is the proposed cuts to Medicaid, which currently insures over 70 million low-income and disabled Americans. As it exists at the time of reporting, nearly 11.8 million people would lose their health insurance coverage by 2034 due to cuts in federal support and the changes to eligibility and work requirements.
During the vote-a-rama, the marathon voting session, Senate democrats will have opportunities to put forth amendments to the bill with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer stating, “Senate Democrats will put one amendment after another, again and again and again,” prior to the start of voting.
The vote-a-rama is expected to take hours. This story is developing.
