Senate passes Trump’s big tax and spending cuts bill as Vance breaks a
50-50 tie
[July 02, 2025]
By LISA MASCARO, MARY CLARE JALONICK and MATT BROWN
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republicans hauled President Donald Trump’s big
tax breaks and spending cuts bill to passage Tuesday by the narrowest of
margins, pushing past opposition from Democrats and their own GOP ranks
after a turbulent overnight session.
The outcome capped an unusually tense weekend of work at the Capitol,
the president’s signature legislative priority teetering on the edge of
approval or collapse. In the end that tally was 50-50, with Vice
President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote.
Three Republican senators — Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Susan Collins
of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky — joined all Democrats in voting
against it.
“In the end we got the job done,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune of
South Dakota said afterward.
The difficulty for Republicans, who have the majority in Congress, to
wrestle the bill to this point is not expected to let up. The package
now goes back to the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana had
warned senators not to overhaul what his chamber had already approved.
But the Senate did make changes, particularly to Medicaid, risking more
problems ahead. House GOP leaders scheduled a Wednesday vote and vowed
to put it on Trump's desk by his July Fourth deadline, which is Friday.
It's a pivotal moment for the president and his party, as they have been
consumed by the now 887-page “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which was its
formal title before Democrats filed an amendment to strip out the name.
Republicans are investing their political capital in delivering on their
sweep of power in Washington.
Trump acknowledged it’s “very complicated stuff” as he departed the
White House for Florida.
“I don’t want to go too crazy with cuts," he said. "I don’t like cuts.”
Senators work around the clock
What started as a routine but laborious day of amendment voting, in a
process called vote-a-rama, spiraled into an all-night slog as
Republican leaders bought time to shore up support.
The droning roll calls in the chamber belied the frenzied action to
steady the bill. Grim-faced scenes played out on and off the Senate
floor, amid exhaustion.
Thune worked around the clock, desperately reaching for last-minute
agreements between those in his party worried the bill's reductions to
Medicaid will leave millions more people without care and his most
conservative flank, which wanted even steeper cuts to hold down deficits
ballooning with the tax cuts.
The GOP leaders had no room to spare. Thune could lose no more than
three Republican senators, and two — Tillis, who warned that millions of
people will lose access to Medicaid health care, and Paul, who opposes
raising the debt limit by $5 trillion — had already indicated
opposition.
Attention quickly turned to two other key senators, Lisa Murkowski of
Alaska and Collins, who also raised concerns about health care cuts, as
well as a loose coalition of four conservative GOP senators pushing for
even steeper reductions.
Murkowski in particular became the subject of GOP leaders' attention, as
they sat beside her for talks. Then all eyes were on Paul after he
returned from a visit to Thune’s office.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Republicans "are
in shambles because they know the bill is so unpopular."
An 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.
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Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., emerges from the chamber
just after passage of the budget reconciliation package of President
Donald Trump's signature bill of big tax breaks and spending cuts,
at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, July 1, 2025. (AP Photo/J.
Scott Applewhite)
Pressure built from all sides. Billionaire Elon Musk said anyone who
voted for the package should “hang their head in shame” and warned
he would campaign against them. But Trump had also lashed out
against the GOP holdouts, including Tillis, who abruptly announced
his own decision over the weekend not to seek reelection.
Senators insist on changes
Few Republicans appeared fully satisfied as the final package
emerged, in either the House or the Senate.
Collins fought to include $50 billion for a new rural hospital fund,
among the GOP senators worried that the bill’s Medicaid provider
cuts would be devastating and force them to close.
While her amendment for the fund was rejected, the provision was
inserted into the final bill. Still she voted no.
The Maine senator said she’s happy the bolstered funding was added,
but "my difficulties with the bill go far beyond that.”
And Murkowski called the decision-making process “agonizing.”
She secured provisions to temporarily spare Alaska and other states
from some food stamp cuts, but her efforts to bolster Medicaid
reimbursements fell short. She voted yes.
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.
“The big not so beautiful bill has passed,” Paul said.
Democrats fight all day and night
Unable to stop the march toward passage, the Democrats tried to drag
out the process, including with a weekend reading of the full bill.
Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the ranking Democrat on the
Appropriations Committee, raised particular concern 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.
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Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti, Darlene Superville, Seung
Min Kim and Kevin Freking contributed to this report.
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