Senate Republicans are furiously working Saturday to advance their final version of President Trump’s “big beautiful bill,” setting the stage for a marathon weekend session they hope meets the commander-in-chief’s July 4 deadline.
Senate members are expected to take a procedural vote at 2 p.m. to kick off debate on the revised, 940-page multi trillion-dollar bill that makes Trump’s 2017 tax cuts permanent, ends taxation on tips and overtime, boosts border security funding and scraps green-energy tax credits passed during the Biden administration.
But Sen. Ron Johnson (R- Wisconsin) already told Fox News’s “Fox & Friends Weekend” that he will vote “no” on the bill.
“President Trump, his goal in the Senate was to make the Big Beautiful Bill even better. I’d like it much better,” he said Saturday. “Right now, I’m not going to vote for a motion to proceed today. We just got the bill. I got my first copy about 1:23 in the morning, this morning.”
The megabill is expected to raise the debt ceiling by roughly $5 trillion in order to cram all the provisions in.
The latest version includes a vast majority of the policies the House narrowly approved in May, but also includes changes to programs such as Medicaid and reducing federal spending for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
Republicans from states with large rural populations have long opposed a reduction in state tax revenue for Medicaid providers including rural hospitals. The newly released legislation delays that reduction and includes $25 billion to support rural Medicaid providers from 2028 to 2032.
The bill raises the cap on federal deductions for state and local taxes to $40,000 with an annual 1% inflation adjustment through 2029, after which it would fall back to the current $10,000. The bill would also phase the cap down for those earning more than $500,000 a year.
With a 53-47 majority in the upper chamber, the GOP can only afford to lose three votes and still pass the package with a tie-breaking ballot cast by Vice President JD Vance.
A version of it passed the House by a single vote May 22. But the lower chamber will have to vote on the bill again after the Senate finalizes its changes to it
Trump had been hoping the bill would pass both chambers and reach his desk for signing by July 4.
“The Great Republicans in the U.S. Senate are working all weekend to finish our ‘ONE, BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL,’” the president posted on his Truth Social on Friday.
GOP momentum screeched to a halt Thursday as the Senate’s “parliamentarian,” Elizabeth MacDonough — the “referee” of the chamber who ensures proposed legislation abides by the rules — threw out line items that would have eliminated health-care coverage for non-citizens.
With Post wires.
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