Trump Administration Live Updates: Senate to Begin Voting on Policy Bill, as G.O.P. Grasps for Support

New York Times

19 hours ago

Provisions added to the president's domestic policy bill to help win the support of Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, center, violated Senate rules and may need to be dropped.
The Senate opened debate on Sunday on the embattled Republican tax cuts and domestic policy bill, as G.O.P. leaders toiled to build enough support in their own ranks to push it through before a Fourth of July deadline set by President Trump.
The bitter floor fight began in earnest after Senate clerks devoted almost 16 consecutive hours to reading aloud the 940-page bill. Democrats insisted on the reading as a protest and to delay the final showdown, stalling a vote on passage to Monday at the earliest. Late Sunday night, Republicans, still laboring to marshal backing for the measure, delayed a marathon series of votes on amendments to it, which had been expected to begin overnight, until Monday morning.
Still, Republicans took to the floor to hail the legislation, which extends a broad array of tax cuts enacted in 2017 during the first Trump administration and boosts spending on the military and border security, while making steep cuts to Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance to pay for them.
'It's a big, beautiful bill if you believe in cutting people's taxes, securing the border, having a strong military and controlling government spending,' Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and chairman of the Budget Committee, said, using the name bestowed upon the legislation by Mr. Trump.
Democrats assailed the bill, which also would increase the federal debt limit by $5 trillion, noting that it was projected to significantly increase the deficit and deny essential safety net programs to millions of Americans in order to provide tax benefits mainly to the wealthiest.
'This is a recipe for disaster,' said Senator Gary Peters, Democrat of Michigan, calling the legislation reckless and unconscionable.
In a stark display of the political peril for Republicans around the bill, Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, one of the party's most vulnerable incumbents, suddenly announced Sunday that he would not run for re-election next year after voting against bringing the bill to the floor. His opposition had drawn a harsh rebuke from Mr. Trump, who threatened to recruit a primary opponent to challenge him.
Later, in a scathing speech on the Senate floor, Mr. Tillis assailed the bill and Mr. Trump, saying the measure was a betrayal of the president's promise to protect Medicaid and warning that his party was 'about to make a mistake.'
But Republicans were determined to plunge ahead. As the debate began, they used an accounting gimmick to upend longstanding budget rules and unilaterally declare that extending the tax cuts, estimated to cost roughly $3.8 trillion over a decade, would add nothing to the federal deficit.
The move amounted to a substantial blow to the filibuster: It effectively lets Republicans ignore budgeting rules that are meant to prevent adding to the deficit, while still availing themselves of a special process that allows them to pass their bill with a simple majority vote, rather than the 60 votes required to overcome a filibuster.
Democrats called the maneuver a trick that would pave the way for disastrous policies.
'Rather than be honest with the American people about the true costs of their billionaire giveaways, Republicans are doing something the Senate has never, never done before, deploying fake math and accounting gimmicks to hide the true cost of their bill,' said Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader.
But Republicans said they were within their rights and were prepared to roll over the Democratic objections.
Even as the endgame drew nearer for the legislation, it continued to change as several Republicans remained unsatisfied with it.
The Senate official who enforces the chamber's rules determined that two last-minute provisions — added on Saturday to benefit Alaska and Hawaii and help secure the vote of Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska — violated Senate rules and would likely need to be dropped from the bill, according to an aide.
Those provisions had been seen as crucial to winning the support of Ms. Murkowski on the initial procedural vote that narrowly passed late Saturday night 51 to 49, with two Republicans and all Democrats opposed. It was uncertain whether she would still back the legislation if those sweeteners were dropped.
The ruling by the chamber official, the Senate parliamentarian, involved a special boost to the two states' Medicaid payment rates and one to the prices Medicare pays hospitals in those states for some medical services.
Adding to the uncertainty around the measure were new estimates by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which showed that it would pile at least $3.3 trillion on the already-bulging national debt over a decade, nearly $1 trillion more than the version passed by the House. That could pose big problems for the measure in the House, which must give it final approval. Fiscal hawks there have warned that the price tag of the measure must not rise.
The C.B.O. also reported that the Senate version of the measure would result in deeper cuts in federal support for health insurance and in more Americans losing coverage than the House version, underscoring the political risks for Republicans.
The analysis found that the legislation would leave 11.8 million more Americans uninsured by 2034. Federal spending on Medicaid, Medicare and Obamacare would be reduced by more than $1.1 trillion over that period, with more than $1 trillion of those cuts coming from Medicaid alone.
Image
Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, wants to offer an amendment to revert the tax rate for the most affluent Americans to the level before the 2017 tax cuts were enacted.
Credit...
Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times
Once the clerks finished their reading, the clock started on 20 hours of debate on the legislation, evenly split between the two parties, though Republicans were not expected to use all their time. At the end of the debate, members of both parties would have the opportunity to offer more changes and force floor votes on those amendments in an hourslong process known as a vote-a-rama.
The resolution of those amendments could be crucial to determining the fate of the bill when senators cast their final votes.
For instance, Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, wants to offer an amendment to revert the tax rate for the most affluent Americans to the level before the 2017 tax cuts were enacted, generating new revenue. Ms. Collins voted to open the debate on Saturday but told Republican leaders that her vote did not represent a commitment to support the final bill.
A group of hard-right conservatives who held out for four hours on Saturday night before agreeing to begin debate also want changes to produce greater savings in Medicaid, a proposal that could weaken support from other senators worried about health care cuts in their states.
Democrats are dug in against the proposal.
On CNN's 'State of the Union,' Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, warned on Sunday that 16 million Americans could lose their health care coverage under the bill. The cuts could make health care more expensive and have a 'ripple effect to all of us who have traditional health care as well,' he added, setting the total number of uninsured back to 'where we were before Obamacare.'
But Senator Katie Britt, Republican of Alabama, appearing on the same program, dismissed recent polls showing a lack of support for the bill. She maintained that Americans would greatly benefit and said she was excited about the bill's potential.
'I think when the American people actually get to see this in fruition, they absolutely are going to be, too,' Ms. Britt said.
Andrew Duehren , Margot Sanger-Katz and Annie Karni contributed reporting.