As Congress inches toward final action on the sweeping domestic policy package that President Trump is calling the “big, beautiful bill,” it has come down to this: Republicans are preparing to back a measure that they fear gives their constituents little to love and lots to hate.
The struggle Republicans are experiencing in securing votes for the legislation emanates from the fact that they are being asked to embrace steep cuts to the government safety net that could hit their states and districts hard — all in the service of extending existing tax cuts that don’t offer much in the way of new benefits for most Americans.
The heart of the legislation — $3.8 trillion in tax cuts — is already in place, enacted eight years ago during the first Trump administration. The measure simply extends those tax breaks, leaving Republican lawmakers unable to trumpet generous new tax savings for Americans. On the other hand, the bill would scale back popular health and nutrition programs to pay for part of the enormous cost of keeping the tax rates that are already in place.
Reductions to Medicaid, SNAP and other safety net programs are not the only elements dividing the party. Republicans in states that have new clean energy projects started under a Biden-era program want those projects protected, while others want them ended immediately. A proposal to sell off public lands in the West has split Republicans from the region. A ban on states regulating artificial intelligence for 10 years is in dispute. Hard-right Republicans want much deeper cuts across the board.
At the same time, the bulk of new spending in the legislation goes to the Pentagon and border security, two areas where Americans won’t feel any boost in their own bank accounts.
“Generally speaking, it is not a success strategy,” Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, said about the difficulties of pushing legislation that has lawmakers so leery. Mr. Tillis, who is up for re-election next year, privately warned his Republican colleagues this week that the political consequences of the bill could be disastrous.
Multiple independent analyses have found it would cause millions of people to lose Medicaid and food assistance, and Democrats have made clear that those impacts will be the centerpiece of their campaigns to defeat Republican candidates next year and win back the majority in Congress.
The obstacles to the bill have turned the entire exercise into an exhausting slog. Republican leaders are working overtime to rally their members to support the package while weathering fierce attacks from Democrats, adverse rulings from the Senate parliamentarian and polls showing the legislation is underwater with the public.
A Fox News poll released this month found that voters opposed the legislation by a roughly 21-point margin, with about half of respondents saying it would hurt their family. A separate poll of registered voters released on Thursday by Quinnipiac University found that 55 percent of respondents opposed the legislation, and only 29 percent said they supported it.
Despite the myriad objections and issues, Senate Republicans still hope to approve the legislation as early as this weekend and send it to the House for quick passage despite skepticism there. They are under tremendous pressure to pass the legislation by the Fourth of July, the type of symbolic media moment that Mr. Trump relishes.
But they are going into the process in a defensive crouch, with many conceding that the final product is far from ideal.
“Not everybody’s going to be happy with this,” said Senator Markwayne Mullin, Republican of Oklahoma.
“I think we’re moving in the right direction to get to a landing spot that no one’s going to love,” he added, “but it’s better than the alternative.”
The chief G.O.P. refrain is that failure is not an option. Republicans know they need to extend the tax cuts, because while they might not get much credit for maintaining the status quo, they would surely be punished if they allowed the tax cuts to expire.
“That is the crux of this issue: how to protect what we already have,” said Senator John Boozman, Republican of Arkansas.
As they fend off detractors, Republicans have stepped up their efforts to emphasize that no action would mean that Americans would be hit with a hefty tax increase if they failed to pass the bill — though it was Republicans who originally made the tax cuts temporary.
“Our Republican bill stops the largest tax increase in American history,” Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the No. 2 Senate Republican, said on Thursday. “It means permanent tax relief. That means Americans can plan their future with certainty. It means higher wages and more jobs. That means Americans have more money in their pockets, purses and paychecks.”
Mr. Trump and other Republicans have also sought to remind Americans that the tax bill does include some new benefits promised by the president during his re-election campaign, including provisions for eliminating taxes on tips for service workers and a new deduction for overtime pay. It also contains a limited new deduction for people age 65, though it does not end taxes on Social Security as Mr. Trump pledged and as he continues to claim that it would.
“This is the largest tax cut in the history of our country,” Mr. Trump said at a White House event on Thursday. “There are hundreds of things in there. It is so good.”
Trump allies have begun airing commercials trying to build support for the measure that Democrats say is mainly a giveaway to the very wealthy, with one pro-Trump group bankrolling an ad extolling “Trump’s working family tax cuts.” The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has found that the legislation would lavish its largest benefits on the rich, while the poorest Americans would lose overall.
Mr. Trump also signaled that he would not look kindly on any Republicans who balk at what has become the signature legislation of his first year, characterizing them as “grandstanders.”
“Not good people, they know who I’m talking about,” he said. “We don’t need grandstanders,” the president said. On Friday, he again stated that about $1.7 trillion in cuts to safety net programs would be made with no discernible impact on beneficiaries of Medicaid and other assistance programs.
“It won’t affect anybody,” he said at the White House. “It is just fraud, waste and abuse.”
That is at odds with the findings of many independent groups that have studied the bill, and ignores the very real concerns of Republican senators that the measure would harm their constituents. Some of them have been working to scale back the Medicaid cuts or find a way to help hospitals and other providers absorb them so that fewer Americans will find themselves without care.
“My position is that cuts, and especially drastic cuts, to Medicaid have to be avoided,” said Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana.
He and others have been pushing to change a provision that would sharply limit a tax maneuver that many states use to finance their Medicaid programs, reverting to the House bill, which they see as less detrimental for rural hospitals.
“The Senate cuts in Medicaid are far deeper than the House,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and a potential “no” vote against the measure.
Republicans have also openly grumbled about an array of extraneous provisions that have been added to the sprawling legislation as it moved from the House to the Senate, from the proposal allowing the sale of public lands to the A.I. regulation ban.
“Why are we doing this at all?” Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri asked of the A.I. moratorium, adding: “I will do everything I can to try to kill it.”
Carl Hulse is the chief Washington correspondent for The Times, primarily writing about Congress and national political races and issues. He has nearly four decades of experience reporting in the nation’s capital.
Catie Edmondson covers Congress for The Times.
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