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In the end, Democrats were unable to stop Republicans from getting their tax-cuts-and-spending plan across the finish line on Tuesday. But, in conversations with strategists close to the Democratic leaders, they had a pretty clever consolation spin: this bill is the most hated piece of major legislation since at least 1990, and Republicans have no plan to fix that.
GOP strategists seemed to understand the buzzkilling buzzsaw they were marching toward with a grim sense of inevitability. Even then, there was still no guarantee the House would accept the Senate’s rewrite of their work.
Fiscal conservatives hated the massive spending and budget trickery. Centrists despised the deep cuts to programs for the poor and elderly. Parochial lawmakers did not realize until the eleventh hour that subsidies for wind and solar energy would hit their states hard, plus an industry-killing hidden tax on those clean-energy sectors seemed to come from nowhere, before getting scrapped. And the pragmatists were watching the GOP’s biggest donor, Elon Musk, threaten everyone who voted for it with a primary challenge and throwing his money toward a new third party. (True to form, President Donald Trump on Tuesday threatened to deport the South African-born American citizen for his disloyalty.)
Add onto that pile of worry the polling that shows a majority of the American public doesn’t want anything to do with it. Quinnipiac University’s poll, released last week, showed 55% of voters opposing it, with just 29% backing it. Among Republicans, support was a shockingly low 67%.
For context, the same pollsters found in 2009 that the bill now known as Obamacare had the opposition of 44% of all voters before it passed, and 40% backing it.
A professor at George Washington University went back through the polling data on divisive legislation dating to 1990; nothing compares to what just cleared the Senate.
Democrats did not win this fight. But they certainly made sure that the external pressures to their colleagues across the aisle became toxic. The internal squabbling among Republicans kept lawmakers on the Senate floor voting for 27 hours and reflected the trouble they know is heading their way if Trump signs this into law. Among Republican strategists, there is no clear answer how to explain these votes or to make them popular. “I’m all ears if you have an idea,” one replied to a message sent Tuesday morning before the vote cleared.
As things settled down after the vote, House Democrats’ official campaign arm circulated a strategy memo about the 2026 midterms, outlining a plan to keep the consequences of the bill in the headlines for the next 16 months.
The megabill extends the first-term Trump tax cuts, rolls back clean-energy programs from the Biden era and beefs up immigration enforcement while increasing the national debt by trillions. The deep cuts to Medicaid and food-stamp programs are expected to hurt voters in spades, and advocates were already worrying that the spill-over effects would endanger everything from rural health centers to food centers for poor Americans to nursing home and home-health services. Congress’ scorekeeper said almost 12 million Americans would lose health care as a result of these cuts. And the spending cuts are mostly in service of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, while leaving those at the other end of the spectrum holding the bag.
By the time Senate Majority Leader John Thune was celebrating getting to a 51-50 vote, it was clear Republicans had turned themselves inside out. House members who walked the plank to back it—at least on the first vote—announced they were not seeking re-election. (G’day, Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska.) Colleagues who stuck to their guns and opposed it became targets of a White House led by their own party. (G’luck, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky.) And at least one of the three Senators who couldn’t stomach voting for it decided to pack it up and head home rather than face an impossible route to another term given primary- and general-election landmines of their own making. (Safe travels, Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina.)
Holdouts like Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mike Lee of Utah, and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming all got to yes. Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky did not.
But, man, this was messy. It might not be over, given both chambers have to pass matching legislation before Trump can sign it into law. Republicans in the House have already sounded off that they would take a red sharpie to the Senate’s version. If the sticking points become intractable, someone—namely Trump—may have to step in with a bullhorn and a bullying menace. And there’s no telling what a wronged Trump can do when he settles on proper retribution for anyone who dared impede his victory lap.
It’s rare for legislation like this to advance even as everyone in Washington understands it to be a political drag. Democrats, in a coordinated and careful way, found specific examples of how the cuts would hurt constituencies key to the Democratic Party as well as Republicans. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer held their caucuses together with discipline that has been rare since November. The messaging was clear and, more importantly, it worked. Efforts by Trump and other GOP leaders to tout this legislation have gotten the party nowhere. Now the bill is one painful step closer to getting to Trump’s desk.
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