Senate Republicans were racing on Tuesday morning to lock down the votes to pass their sweeping tax and domestic policy bill, after an all-night session of voting and negotiating with holdouts left President Trump’s agenda hanging in the balance.
Debate on the package stretched into a third day as party leaders pressed to keep the legislation on track to meet Mr. Trump’s deadline of enactment by July 4. All day Monday and into the early hours of Tuesday morning, Republicans held firm against numerous Democratic efforts to challenge every element of the measure, particularly its cuts to Medicaid and federal nutrition programs, as well as tax cuts for the wealthy.
But the bigger challenge for the G.O.P. was the nagging reservations in its own ranks over the bill, which polls have shown to be deeply unpopular with voters. Fiscal hawks upset that the measure would pile at least $3.3 trillion onto an already soaring national debt were pressing for bigger cuts to Medicaid to offset more of the cost. Moderate Republicans were agitating to scale back the bill’s cuts, fearing the impact on their constituents’ access to health care coverage and other government services.
The legislation would extend roughly $3.8 trillion in tax cuts enacted in 2017 that are slated to expire at the end of the year, and add new tax cuts Mr. Trump campaigned on, including for tips and overtime pay, while bolstering funds for national and border security. To cover part of the enormous cost, it would slash spending on Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance, as well as clean energy programs. And it would raise the federal debt limit by $5 trillion.
With Democrats uniformly opposed to the legislation, Republican leaders were pushing the measure through Congress using special rules that shield it from a filibuster and require only a majority for passage. Still, they could afford only three defections from senators in their own party — and even then, they would need Vice President JD Vance to break a tie. So far, two Republicans, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Rand Paul of Kentucky, have said they will not vote for the measure.
But as night fell on Monday, at least a half-dozen other Republican senators had issues that remained unresolved, with several pointing to specific policy concerns that they said could make or break their decisions and that had yet to come to a vote.
Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, toiled through the night with other party leaders in a bid to win them over. He told reporters late Monday that they were “just figuring out what everyone has to have in terms of votes and trying to construct a list,” and said he remained optimistic that the legislation would pass. By Tuesday morning, he said his party was “close” to completing the bill, though the exact timing of a final vote was not known.
At the same time, the measure continued to change. Senators voted overwhelmingly overnight to strip a provision that would effectively block states from passing and enforcing laws on artificial intelligence for the next decade. The vote was 99-1, with Mr. Tillis casting the sole vote against it.
Even if Senate Republicans manage to push through the bill, its fate remains uncertain in the closely divided House. After protracted haggling that allowed their bill to pass by only the narrowest of margins last month, several representatives have been alarmed by the modifications in the Senate’s version of the legislation.
Hard-right conservatives in the House have raised concerns about the deficit impact, a worry amplified by Elon Musk, the country’s biggest Republican donor. Several moderate Republicans have objected to the Medicaid cuts in the Senate measure, which are deeper than those approved in May by the House.
Republicans have said they are imposing changes to Medicaid that would make the program more sustainable by cutting out “waste, fraud and abuse.” But nonpartisan analyses showed that the bill would slice nearly $1 trillion from the program, and that the bill could lead to more than 11 million people could losing health coverage.
Democrats have focused intently on those cuts as they attack the bill. Much of Monday was spent voting on their party’s efforts to force Republicans to revise provisions on Medicaid funding, proposals that had next to no chance of success but were meant to force Republicans to take tough votes that could haunt them in elections.
Mr. Tillis, who announced on Sunday that he would not run for re-election next year, has cited the Medicaid cuts as one of his chief objections to the bill.
Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine had not yet committed for voting the bill, raising separate concerns about funding cuts. A proposal by Ms. Collins to double the size of a special rural health fund in the bill, included to help blunt the effects of its extensive Medicaid cuts, and raise taxes for wealthy people failed in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, leaving her backing in doubt.
Ms. Murkowski has been vocal in making the case that the legislation would hurt Alaska, and Republican leaders had stuffed the bill with benefits for her state in hopes of winning her support. But it was not clear whether some of those sweeteners — particularly one to exempt her state from new work requirements in the bill for nutrition assistance — would survive. The Senate’s parliamentarian, who enforces the chamber’s rules, had already said that a separate provision shielding Alaska from having to pay for a share of food assistance payments currently financed by the federal government could be included, while one insulating the state from new Medicaid work requirements could not.
At the same time, a group of conservatives, including Senators Rick Scott of Florida, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Mike Lee of Utah and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, have pressed for further cuts to Medicaid, through a proposal to alter the formula used to determine what share of the program’s bills are paid by the federal government.
After more than 20 hours of debate, that amendment had not yet come to a vote. Mr. Johnson, a fiscal hawk, has said he would wait to see whether it was adopted before deciding whether he would support the overall bill.
But in a sign of the divisions among Republicans, if Mr. Scott’s amendment were to succeed, the measure could lose the support of senators who are already concerned that it cuts Medicaid too deeply.
Catie Edmondson contributed reporting.
Michael Gold covers Congress for The Times, with a focus on immigration policy and congressional oversight.
Megan Mineiro is a Times congressional reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for early-career journalists.
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