Trump's megabill hits more trouble as Senate conservatives demand changes
The Senate version of legislation to enact President Trump's agenda is hitting new turbulence as conservatives led by Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) are demanding deeper spending cuts to address the nation's $2.2 trillion annual deficit.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has focused this week on addressing the concerns of Senate GOP colleagues such as Sens. Josh Hawley (Mo.) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), who raised alarms about cuts to federal Medicaid spending.
But Thune has to worry about his right flank as Johnson and his allies are threatening to hold up the bill unless GOP leaders agree to deeper cuts to federal Medicaid spending and a faster rollback of the renewable energy tax credits enacted under former President Biden.
Johnson, Lee and Scott are threatening to vote as a bloc against the bill next week unless it undergoes significant changes.
Thune plans to bring the bill to the floor Wednesday or Thursday next week, but he may not have enough votes to proceed on the legislation, say Republican senators.
'There's no way I vote for this thing next week,' Johnson told reporters.
'I don't want to go the Nancy Pelosi route, 'You got to pass this bill to know what's in it,'' he added, referring to the Democratic Speaker emerita who represents California.
Johnson noted that senators are taking a closer look at a proposal offered by Scott to significantly reduce the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP), or the federal government's share of Medicaid spending, in states that expanded the program under former President Obama's Affordable Care Act (ACA).
Lee is pushing for a fuller phaseout of the renewable energy subsidies enacted by Democrats in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
'Mike is handling the IRA provisions of this, Rick Scott is handling the Medicaid. You need to satisfy those two, too. All three of us have to be yes or none of us are yes,' Johnson said.
Scott, who founded the Columbia Hospital Corp. and went on to run Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp., one of the world's largest health care companies, wants to dramatically cut the 90 percent federal match for states that expanded Medicaid under the ACA.
'The focus should be on how do we take care of what Medicaid's original purpose was? It's children and the chronically ill,' he said.
Scott argues that able-bodied low-income adults are drawing far too much of Medicaid spending in states that expanded the program, such as California and New York.
'Half the people, half the adults that are on Medicaid under the expanded FMAP are not working,' he said, adding that these people are not disabled. 'We're running $2 trillion deficits.'
Scott says Medicaid shouldn't pay out more than Medicare and that states should not be eligible for expanded federal Medicaid payments for new enrollees after two years.
He also wants to further crack down on states' use of health care provider taxes to increase their share of federal Medicaid spending.
That sets up a fight next week with Senate Republican colleagues who have balked at the cuts to Medicaid spending unveiled Monday by Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho).
The current Senate bill would reduce the maximum permitted provider tax rate from 6 percent to 3.5 percent by 2031.
The Florida senator said colleagues such as Hawley and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who are worried about limiting health care provider taxes, have a 'legitimate concern' about the fate of rural hospitals. But he argued that the high rate of Medicaid spending won't solve their problems.
Collins has proposed a 'provider-relief fund' to the bill to help offset Medicaid cuts for rural hospitals, nursing homes and community health centers.
Lee, the Utah Republican, meanwhile is calling for a more rapid and complete phaseout of renewable energy subsidies in the bill and for tougher language to keep tax benefits from going to immigrants who entered the country illegally.
'Green New Deal subsidies that don't terminate by 2028 will effectively become permanent. If you don't want them to be permanent, tell your senators!' Lee posted on social platform X.
Language released Monday by the Senate Finance Committee would extend tax credits for hydropower, nuclear and geothermal energy into the 2030s.
A faster and broader phaseout of clean energy subsidies would be opposed by Republican senators such as Murkowski, Jerry Moran (Kan.), John Curtis (Utah) and Thom Tillis (N.C.), who warn that a sudden termination of federal support would disrupt the renewable fuel industry, cost jobs and strand billions of dollars in investment.
Yet Senate conservatives are ready for a showdown, arguing the deficit poses a major threat to the U.S. economy.
'The deficit will eat us alive if we don't get it under control. If not us, who? If not now, when?' Lee posted Thursday on X.
Johnson said Trump promised to balance the budget but argued 'the bill before us does not do it' and will instead worsen deficits over the next decade.
He said while the spending cuts in the legislation are 'the most spending reduction we've had ever,' the 'spending increase is unprecedented, 10 times more.'
'Look at the numbers,' he said.
The Congressional Budget Office unveiled a new projection that the House-passed bill to enact Trump's agenda would add $3.4 trillion to the debt.
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At the same time House Speaker Mike Johnson has signaled more potential problems ahead, warning the Senate package could run into trouble when it is sent back to the House for a final round of voting, as skeptical lawmakers are being called back to Washington ahead of Trump's Fourth of July deadline. 'I have prevailed upon my Senate colleagues to please, please, please keep it as close to the House product as possible,' said Johnson, the Louisiana Republican. House Republicans had already passed their version last month. It's a pivotal moment for the Republicans, who have control of Congress and are racing to wrap up work with just days to go before Trump's holiday deadline Friday. The 940-page 'One Big Beautiful Bill Act,' as it's formally titled, has consumed Congress as its shared priority with the president. In a midnight social media post urging them on, Trump called the bill 'perhaps the greatest and most important of its kind.' Vice President JD Vance summed up his own series of posts, simply imploring senators to 'Pass the bill.' The GOP leaders have no room to spare, with narrow majorities in both chambers. Thune can lose no more than three Republican senators, and already two — Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who warns people will lose access to Medicaid health care, and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who opposes raising the debt limit — have indicated opposition. Tillis abruptly announced over the weekend he would not seek reelection after Trump threatened to campaign against him. Attention quickly turned to key senators, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, who have also raised concerns about health care cuts, but also a loose coalition of four conservative GOP senators pushing for even steeper reductions. And on social media, billionaire Elon Musk was again lashing out at Republicans as 'the PORKY PIG PARTY!!' for including a provision that would raise the nation's debt limit by $5 trillion, which is needed to allow continued borrowing to pay the bills. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said his side was working to show 'how awful this is.' 'Republicans are in shambles because they know the bill is so unpopular,' Schumer said as he walked the halls. A new analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found 11.8 million more Americans would become uninsured by 2034 if the bill became law. The CBO said the package would increase the deficit by nearly $3.3 trillion over the decade. Senators to watch Few Republicans appear fully satisfied as the final package emerges, in either the House or Senate. Tillis said it is a betrayal of the president's promises not to kick people off health care, especially if rural hospitals close. Collins had proposed bolstering the $25 billion proposed rural hospital fund to $50 billion, but her amendment failed. And Murkowski was trying to secure provisions to spare people in her state from some health care and food stamp cuts while also working to beef up federal reimbursements to Alaska's hospitals. They have not said how they would vote for the final package. 'Radio silence,' Murkowski said when asked. At the same time, conservative Senate Republicans proposing steeper health care cuts, including Rick Scott of Florida, Mike Lee of Utah, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, filed into Thune's office for a near-midnight meeting. The Senate has spent some 18 hours churning through more than two dozen amendments in what is called a vote-a-rama, a typically laborious process that went on longer than usual as negotiations happen on and off the chamber floor. The White House legislative team also was at the Capitol. A few of the amendments — to strike parts of the bill that would limit Medicaid funds to rural hospitals or shift the costs of food stamp benefits to the states — were winning support from a few Republicans, though almost none were passing. Sen. Mike Crapo, the GOP chairman of the Finance Committee, dismissed the dire predictions of health care cuts as Democrats trafficking in what he called the 'politics of fear.' What's in the big bill All told, the Senate bill includes $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, according to the latest CBO analysis, making permanent Trump's 2017 rates, which would expire at the end of the year if Congress fails to act, while adding the new ones he campaigned on, including no taxes on tips. The Senate package would roll back billions of dollars in green energy tax credits, which Democrats warn will wipe out wind and solar investments nationwide. It would impose $1.2 trillion in cuts, largely to Medicaid and food stamps, by imposing work requirements on able-bodied people, including some parents and older Americans, making sign-up eligibility more stringent and changing federal reimbursements to states. Additionally, the bill would provide a $350 billion infusion for border and national security, including for deportations, some of it paid for with new fees charged to immigrants. Democrats fighting all day and night Unable to stop the march toward passage, the Democrats as the minority party in Congress are using the tools at their disposal to delay and drag out the process. Democrats forced a full reading of the text, which took 16 hours, and they have a stream of amendments. Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, raised particular concern at the start of debate late Sunday about the accounting method being used by the Republicans, which says the tax breaks from Trump's first term are now 'current policy' and the cost of extending them should not be counted toward deficits. She said that kind of 'magic math' won't fly with Americans trying to balance their own household books. ___ Associated Press writers Ali Swenson, Fatima Hussein, Michelle L. Price, Kevin Freking, Matt Brown, Seung Min Kim and Chris Megerian contributed to this report.
