The Republican-controlled Senate of the United States has voted to take President Donald Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” into the next phase of discussion, making it more likely to pass in the coming days.
The measure, which is Trump’s top legislative goal, passed its first procedural hurdle in a 51 to 49 vote on Saturday, with two Republican senators joining all Democrats in voting against it.
The result came after several hours of negotiation as Republican leaders and Vice President JD Vance sought to persuade last-minute holdouts in a series of closed-door negotiations.
Trump has pushed his party to get the bill passed and on his desk for him to sign into law by July 4, the US’s Independence Day.
He was monitoring the vote from the Oval Office late into the night, according to a senior White House official.
One Big Beautiful Bill Act
Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna, reporting from Washington, DC, said the 940-page “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” was released shortly before midnight on Friday, and senators are still attempting to understand exactly what it means.
“One of the clear things in the bill is that it provides a $150bn boost to military spending. It also adds funding for mass deportations and building that border wall. Now, in order to get this money, what has happened is that there are cuts to Medicare, as well as to the Clean Energy funding programme,” he said.
“The other issue is that there are 53 Republicans and 47 Democrats in the Senate. Now all the Democrats are opposed to the bill. That means every single Republican vote will count,” Hanna added.
The procedural vote on Saturday, which would start a debate on the megabill, began after hours of delay.
It then remained open for more than three hours of standstill as three Republican senators – Thom Tillis, Ron Johnson and Rand Paul – joined Democrats to oppose the legislation.
Three others – Senators Rick Scott, Mike Lee and Cynthia Lummis – negotiated with Republican leaders into the night in hopes of securing bigger spending cuts.
In the end, Wisconsin Senator Johnson flipped his no vote to yes, leaving only Paul and Tillis opposed among Republicans.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Republicans unveiled the bill “in the dead of night” and are rushing to finish the bill before the public fully knows what is in it.
He immediately forced a full reading of the text in the Senate, which would take an estimated 15 hours.
“Future generations will be saddled with trillions in debt. Debt is abstract, but what does it mean for the average American? Raising your costs, raising your costs to buy a home, raising your costs to buy a car, raising your costs on credit card bills. And why are they doing all this?” he asked.
“Why are they doing the biggest Medicaid cuts in history? Now it’s getting close to a trillion dollars, just in Medicaid alone, all to cut taxes for the ultra-rich and special interests.”
Elon Musk renews criticism
If passed in the Senate, the bill would go back to the House of Representatives for approval, where Republicans can only afford to lose a handful of votes – and are facing stiff opposition from within their own ranks.
Republicans are split on the Medicaid cuts, which will threaten scores of rural hospitals and lead to an estimated 8.6 million Americans being deprived of healthcare.
The spending plan would also roll back many of the tax incentives for renewable energy that were put in place under Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden.
Nonpartisan analysts estimate that a version of Trump’s tax cut and spending bill would add trillions to the $36.2 trillion US government debt. They also say that the bill would pave the way for a historic redistribution of wealth from the poorest 10 percent of Americans to the richest.
The bill is unpopular across multiple demographic, age and income groups, according to extensive recent polling.
On Saturday, billionaire Elon Musk, with whom Trump had a public falling out this month over his criticism of the bill, again doubled down on his criticism of the draft legislation.
The Tesla and Space X CEO called the package “utterly insane and destructive”.
“The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country,” he wrote on X. “It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future.”
He later posted that the bill would be “political suicide for the Republican Party.”
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