The Senate on Monday headed toward climactic votes on a sweeping Republican-crafted economic and domestic policy bill, with President Trump’s first-year legislative agenda hanging in the balance.
After a weekend session marked by sharp partisan conflict, Senate Republicans hoped to approve the measure and send it to the House. The bill extends nearly $4 trillion in tax cuts first passed in 2017 and partially pays for them by slashing spending on safety net programs.
The legislation, which is being considered under special budgetary rules that protect it from a filibuster, also would make significant investments in border security and the military — top priorities of congressional Republicans and the White House.
“We’re going to put in place border security measures that keep it secure,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican and Budget Committee chairman, in extolling the measure. “We are going to make the tax cuts permanent so your taxes do not go up in December.”
But the nearly $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid as well as reductions in federal nutrition programs that would offset the cost of continuing the tax reductions have drawn fierce opposition from Democrats and made several Republicans uneasy. Republicans can only afford to lose three G.O.P. votes on the bill, and two have already made clear their opposition, with others wavering.
One of the opponents, Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, announced on Sunday that he would not seek re-election next year after he came under harsh attack by Mr. Trump for his opposition to the bill. Mr. Tillis said he judged it would be too harmful to North Carolina’s health care system for him to back, and he took to the floor late Sunday to assail the measure and Mr. Trump, warning that his party was “about to make a mistake” in slashing Medicaid and betraying the president’s promise to protect it.
The other known G.O.P. opponent, Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, scoffed at claims by fellow Republicans that the plan would not add significantly to the federal debt, noting that it includes a $5 trillion increase in the federal debt limit.
“That is an admission that they know they are not controlling the deficit,” said Mr. Paul.
Republicans accused Democrats of misrepresenting the legislation, which they described as economic stimulus that would prevent a tax increase from hitting a large swath of Americans. They argued that the Medicaid reductions would return the program to its original purpose of helping poor families and knock able-bodied adults who could work off the rolls.
They also noted that besides extending the tax cuts from 2017, the legislation would provide new tax breaks such as working-class deductions for tips and overtime plus an expanded child tax credit, a larger standard deduction for some older Americans and one for buyers of new cars made in the United States.
“If the Trump tax cuts expire, taxpayers in all income groups would face massive tax hikes and the majority of the burden — $2.6 trillion — would fall on taxpayers making less than $400,000 per year,” Senator Mike Crapo, Republican of Idaho and chairman of the Finance Committee, said. “This legislation prevents that outcome and delivers more than $600 billion of new tax relief specifically targeted to benefit low- and middle-income families and workers.”
Senators were expected to begin a marathon series of rapid-fire votes on the bill on Monday morning. Many of them were Democratic proposals with little hope of passing that were aimed at imposing maximum political pain on Republicans as they pushed through a measure that polls show is unpopular with the public. But some of the measures could reshape the package and help determine its fate, including one from Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida, that would dramatically scale back the Medicaid expansion implemented through the Affordable Care Act.
The proposal would lower the share of medical bills paid by the federal government for childless adult Medicaid beneficiaries who sign up for the program after 2030, and could cause several states to abandon their Medicaid expansions. Deficit hawks have pressed for such a change, arguing that they could not support the bill unless it contained bigger spending cuts to curb federal deficits, but Republicans from politically competitive states have staunchly opposed it, and Speaker Mike Johnson promised his members he would not pursue it.
As debate opened on Sunday, Democrats harshly criticized Republicans for employing a budget maneuver they said violated Senate rules and hid the true impact of the bill’s tax cuts on the federal debt. Republicans unilaterally asserted that the tax cuts would not add to federal deficits since they are already in place, a break with past congressional accounting practices for tax cuts that were set to expire.
“It is fakery,” said Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the senior Democrat on the Finance Committee. “The budget numbers are a fraud, but the deficits will be very real. The prospect of a catastrophic debt spiral is very real.”
Even if Senate Republicans managed to squeeze the bill through, its fate was uncertain in the other chamber of Congress. Hard-right conservatives in the House have raised the alarm about the deficit impact, and others have objected to the Medicaid cuts in the Senate measure, which are deeper than those approved last month by the House.
Margot Sanger-Katz contributed reporting.
Catie Edmondson covers Congress for The Times.
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.
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