Senate pushes ahead on Trump's tax break and spending cut plan
Voting had come to a standstill, dragging on for more than three hours, with holdout senators huddling for negotiations and taking private meetings off the Senate floor.
In the end, two Republicans opposed the motion to move ahead on Mr Trump's signature domestic policy plan, joining all 47 Democrats.
'Tonight we saw a GREAT VICTORY in the Senate,' Mr Trump said in a social media post afterwards.
Republicans are using their majorities in Congress to push aside Democratic opposition, but they have run into a series of political and policy setbacks.
Not all Republicans are on board with proposals to reduce spending on Medicaid, food stamps and other programmes as a way to help cover the cost of extending some 3.8 trillion dollars (£2.77 trillion) in Trump tax breaks.
Mr Trump had threatened to campaign against one Republican, senator Thom Tillis, who had announced he could not support the Bill because of Medicaid cuts that he worried would leave many without health care in his state.
A new analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the Senate version of the Bill would increase by 11.8 million the number of people without health insurance in 2034.
Mr Tillis and senator Rand Paul voted no.
Renewed pressure to oppose the 940-page bill came from billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, who called it 'utterly insane and destructive'.
Ahead for senators now will be an all-night debate and amendments. If they are able to pass it, the Bill would return to the House for a final round of votes before it could reach the White House.
With the narrow Republican majorities in the House and Senate, leaders need almost every lawmaker on board.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Republicans released the bill 'in the dead of night' on Friday and were rushing through before the public fully knew what was in it.
He forced a full reading of the text that began late on Saturday and continued into Sunday morning.
At its core, the legislation would make permanent many of the tax breaks from Mr Trump's first term that would otherwise expire by year's end if Congress fails to act, resulting in a potential tax increase on Americans.
The Bill would add new breaks, including no taxes on tips, and commit 350 billion dollars (£255 billion) to national security, including for Mr Trump's mass deportation agenda.
But the cutbacks to Medicaid, food stamps and green energy investments are also causing dissent within republican ranks.
Senator Ron Wyden said the environmental rollbacks would amount to a 'death sentence' for America's wind and solar industries.
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The Guardian
41 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Lisa Murkowski's new book details centrist senator's clash with Trump, dismay at supreme court
Lisa Murkowski is Alaska's four-term senator, first appointed in 2002 by Frank Murkowski, her father and the state's governor. An avowed moderate Republican, she entertains the possibility of caucusing with the Democrats if the Senate emerges deadlocked from next year's midterms. Her relationship with Donald Trump is fraught. In 2016, she voted for the former Ohio governor John Kasich. In Far From Home, her first book, she writes: 'One of my simple rules … has been to withhold my vote from any candidate of bad character, regardless of the politics.' Trump … failed the test. In office, Murkowski clashed with him over the attempted repeal of the Affordable Care Act, AKA Obamacare, and the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the supreme court. Trump trashed her (to Don Young, then Alaska's congressman) as 'that bitch Murkowski'. Young and Murkowski were allies. It made no difference to the president. At Trump's second impeachment trial, Murkowski voted to convict. Out of office, he attempted to doom her 2022 re-election – and failed. Still, of the seven Republican senators who voted to convict, only Murkowski, Susan Collins of Maine and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana remain in Congress. Subtitled An Alaskan Senator Faces the Extreme Climate of Washington, Murkowski's memoir sheds light on her life, family and career, brimming with anecdotes and grudges. Well-paced and informative, with an assist from Charles Wohlforth, a seasoned Alaska writer and politico, the book offers a window into Murkowski's mind. 'I call myself a Republican because of the values I hold, such as personal responsibility, small government, a strong national defense, and the individual's right to make her own choices,' she writes. Along with Collins, she is the last of that tribe. The geographic and ideological centers of the GOP reside in the Rust belt and the south, not in New England and Alaska. Murkowski is wary of populism and shows little respect for Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor who was the Republican nominee for vice-president in 2008. Two consecutive sentences sum up her take. 'Sarah Palin didn't know she was helping start a movement – she was just being Sarah Palin – but she became the prototype for Donald Trump, the showman without principle,' Murkowski observes, acidly. 'And he took populism much further, partly because he didn't need a script.' Murkowski viewed Palin as both lazy and a dim bulb, unfit for higher office. 'I would have warned John McCain about selecting her as his vice-presidential running mate if I had given any credence to the rumors that he was considering Palin,' Murkowski writes. 'I did not, because I thought the idea was preposterous.' Palin failed to complete her term as governor, resigning in summer 2009, as she faced ethics investigations and growing legal bills. More recently, she has lost in two attempts to sue the New York Times for defamation. In 2010, Murkowski lost the Republican primary but won in November as a write-in. After the initial loss, Joe Biden, then vice-president, called to console her. 'Goddamn it, what were those people thinking?' he said. Murkowski devotes considerable space to the Kavanaugh confirmation, the #MeToo movement and sexual assault. She discloses for the first time how as a second-grader, walking alone in a forest, she was abused by a relative of a neighbor. 'I was terrified,' she writes. 'He said if I ever told anyone what happened, I would get in horrible trouble for being bad. I believed him. I never told anyone, not even my sisters. I was ashamed as well as afraid.' Murkowski is pro-choice. Kavanaugh signed the majority opinion and wrote a concurrence in Dobbs, the decision that overturned Roe v Wade and gutted the federal right to abortion. She accuses him of bad faith. 'Kavanaugh had emphasized the strength of precedent over and over, in formal and colloquial language, in a way that could hardly be interpreted any other way than as saying Roe should not be overturned,' Murkowski says. 'More than being angry, I was discouraged. I had believed that the court would keep Americans' trust as an institution, as we needed it to do.' Only 44% of the US views the supreme court favorably. Only one-fifth agree that the court is politically neutral – 58% disagree. Murkowski also dives into religion. A Georgetown University graduate and a practicing Catholic, she addresses the role of faith in public life, particularly given her support for Roe. It wasn't simple. 'In my own life, harsh voices declared I was not a good enough version of who I am – a Catholic unworthy of Communion, a Republican in name only … not even a real Alaskan,' Murkowski writes. At church, a parishioner handed out anti-abortion leaflets critical of Murkowski. 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NBC News
43 minutes ago
- NBC News
To fight Trump's funding freezes, states propose a new gambit: Withholding federal payments
Democratic legislators mostly in blue states are attempting to fight back against President Donald Trump's efforts to withhold funding from their states with bills that aim to give the federal government a taste of its own medicine. The novel and untested approach — so far introduced in Connecticut, Maryland, New York and Wisconsin — would essentially allow states to withhold federal payments if lawmakers determine the federal government is delinquent in funding owed to them. Democrats in Washington state said they are in the process of drafting a similar measure. These bills still have a long way to go before becoming law, and legal experts said they would face obstacles. But they mark the latest efforts by Democrats at the state level to counter what they say is a massive overreach by the Trump administration to cease providing federal funding for an array of programs that have helped states pay for health care, food assistance and environmental protections. 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He's also threatened to withhold federal funding from states that implement policies he politically disagrees with, including 'sanctuary' policies for undocumented immigrants, though some such freezes have been halted by courts. A Trump White House spokesperson didn't respond to questions for this story. Wisconsin state Rep. Renuka Mayadev, a Democrat, introduced two near-identical bills that she said would seek to compel the federal government to release money it has withheld that had previously been paying for Department of Agriculture programs that help farmers, and for child care centers that mostly serve low-income families. 'We've seen the Trump administration is willfully breaking the law by holding back federal funds to which Wisconsinites are legally entitled. So these bills are really about providing for a legal remedy and protecting Wisconsinites,' she said. In all four states, the bills direct state officials to withhold payments owed by the states to the federal government if federal agencies have acted in contravention of judicial orders or have taken unlawful actions to withhold funds previously appropriated by Congress. Payments available for withholding include the federal taxes collected from the paychecks of state employees, as well as grant payments owed back to the federal government. In Wisconsin, the bills are unlikely to move forward because Republicans control both chambers of the Legislature. But the trajectory of the bills in Maryland, New York and Connecticut — where Democrats control the legislatures and governorships — is an open question. The same is true in Washington, where Democratic lawmakers plan to introduce similar bills next session. 'It's a novel concept,' said Washington state Sen. Manka Dhingra. 'I don't think states have ever been in this position before … where there's someone making arbitrary decisions on what to provide funding for and what not to provide funding for, contrary to current rules and laws and congressional allocation of funds.' Legal experts have raised substantial questions about the hurdles such bills would face if they were enacted. For one, they said, the U.S. Constitution's supremacy clause clearly gives the federal government precedence over states, which could complicate legal arguments defending such laws — even though it remains an open legal question whether the executive branch has the power to single-handedly control funding. More immediate practical obstacles, they explained, stem from the fact that there's vastly more money flowing from the federal government to the states than the other way around. 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Not because it's going to make a huge material difference for the state treasury or for the people of the state, but just to essentially show the federal government like, 'Hey, we know what you're doing and we don't like it,'' he said. 'States need to be enterprising and creative and somewhat feisty in figuring out their own scope of authority and the ways in which they can challenge the law.' But another potential drawback is one foreseen by the Democratic lawmakers themselves: further retribution from Trump. 'We would all be foolish to not acknowledge that the feds hold more cards than states do with respect to the budget,' said Moon, the Maryland legislator. 'There's certainly a risk of retaliation by the White House.'
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Democrat grandstanding over nearly 16-hour long reading of Trump's budget bill draws ire of social media users
Social media users are seeing right through the grandstanding of Senate Democrats as they pull out every trick in the book to delay the passage of the GOP 's 'big, beautiful' budget bill. President Donald Trump has imposed a deadline of July 4th for the passage of his signature domestic policy legislation, and the bill still currently has not passed the U.S. Senate, or gone back to the House of Representatives for a vote on the Senate's version. At 11:08 PM Saturday evening, Democrat Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called for the bill to be read in its entirety, kicking off the hours long marathon reading of the 940 page document. 'Senate Republicans are scrambling to pass a radical bill, released to the public in the dead of night, praying the American people don't realize what's in it,' Schumer (D-N.Y.) professed on the Senate floor Saturday night. 'If Senate Republicans won't tell the American people what's in this bill, then Democrats are going to force this chamber to read it from start to finish,' Schumer added. Massachusetts Senator and former Democrat Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren posted at just after 2:00 AM Sunday morning that she was on the way to call for a reading of the nearly 1,000 page bill, nearly three hours after the reading had already started. FROM THE SENATE FLOOR: I objected to stop Republicans moving forward on their Big, Ugly Bill until they read every single word of it to the American people They are scrambling to pass their radical bill, released in the dead of night, praying Americans don't realize what's in it — Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) June 29, 2025 It's 2AM on Sunday and I'm heading to the Capitol to FORCE a full reading of the Republicans' 940-page bill. This bill will rip health care coverage away from 16 million people and cut food assistance. It's sick. And we will not stand for it. — Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) June 29, 2025 X user @crza_11 responded to Warren saying 'Why are you on your way there now? Shouldn't you be there the whole time listening to the reading?' X user @crza_11 replies to Senator Elizabeth Warren. A user with the handle @TMIWITW wrote 'It's absolutely amazing that Trump got you people to FINALLY read bills before you pass them. X user @TMIWITW replies to Senator Elizabeth Warren. As pointed out by a number of social media users, the latest Democrat approach to legislating is a far cry from from years past, when former House speaker Nancy Pelosi said during the 2010 debate over the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare that 'we have to pass the bill ... so that you can find out what is in it.' In its present form, the budget bill extends most of the tax cuts Trump signed into law in 2017, including slashing rates on estates and for corporations. Deductions for state and local taxes as well as business owners are included. The legislation also fulfills a campaign promise to eliminate taxes on tips for the next three years. It doubles the child tax credit, as well as the standard deduction for tax filers. To pay for the massive tax cuts, the Senate is choosing to rein in spending programs for low-income Americans. One provision requires most Medicaid recipients with children over the age 15 to work. It also imposes more rules to qualify for health care subsidies. Still, not all of the members of even the President's own party are on board with passing the bill. Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky voted no the motion to proceed on the bill Saturday due to the additional projected increases to the national debt. Paul said Friday that the 'deficit is the biggest threat to our national security, we've got to do something about it.' 'This bill has about $400 -$500 billion worth of new spending,' Paul also noted. Paul continually raised concerns about the $5 trillion dollars in additional debt through the entire Senate negotiation process. North Carolina Republican Thom Tillis was the second of two Republican senators who voted against the 'motion to proceed' on Trump's budget bill Saturday evening, along with Paul. In a post made to his social media site Truth Social Sunday morning, President Trump came after Tillis, claiming that he 'hurt the great people of North Carolina' and calling him a 'talker and complainer' 'Thom Tillis has hurt the great people of North Carolina. Even on the catastrophic flooding, nothing was done to help until I took office. Then a Miracle took place! Tillis is a talker and complainer, Not A Doer! He's even worse than Rand 'Fauci' Paul,' Trump wrote just after 10:00 AM Sunday morning. Tillis has since announced Sunday that he will not be seeking reelection during the 2026 midterms.
