A divided Senate on Tuesday narrowly passed Republicans’ marquee bill to slash taxes and social safety net programs, as the G.O.P. muscled through deep internal rifts in a bid to deliver President Trump’s agenda.
The 51-to-50 vote sent the legislation to the House, where its passage was far from certain even though Mr. Trump has demanded that lawmakers send the bill to his desk for enactment by July 4. Three Republicans, Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, and Rand Paul of Kentucky joined all Democrats in voting against it, forcing Vice President JD Vance to cast the tiebreaking vote.
It came after a brutal slog of debating, voting, and negotiating that lasted more than 24 hours, as party leaders worked through Monday and into Tuesday morning huddling with Republican holdouts — particularly Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
In the end, she supported the legislation after G.O.P. leaders packed it with sweeteners for her state, including a provision aimed at insulating Alaska from some of the bill’s harshest impacts.
The bill would extend roughly $3.8 trillion in tax cuts enacted during Mr. Trump’s first term in 2017, provide tens of billions of dollars in new funding for border security and the military, and include versions of the president’s campaign promises to not tax tips and overtime. Republicans hailed it as the legislative pinnacle of their governing trifecta.
“We have before us today a once-in-a-generation opportunity to deliver legislation to create a safer, stronger and more prosperous America,” Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the majority leader, said as debate on the measure began. “With one bill we can deliver on a number of priorities: tax relief for hard-working Americans, economic growth, a stronger national defense, a more secure border, a more reliable energy supply and reductions in waste, fraud and abuse across the federal government.”
“We seldom have an opportunity to take the kind of action that we’re planning to take on just one of these priorities,” he continued, “let alone all of them.”
But the product that Republicans are advancing — which Mr. Trump has named the “big, beautiful bill” — has caused their rank and file considerable angst in both chambers, and still faces resistance in the House, which must give it final approval before it can go to Mr. Trump for his signature. In the days leading up to the Senate vote, several Republicans publicly savaged the plan before voting to pass it. The process of squeaking it through the chamber was remarkably messy, with Republicans shattering longstanding budgeting rules, cutting side deals and haggling with skeptics until the very last moments.
The Senate vote amounted to a political and policy gamble for Republicans, who embraced the bill despite considerable reservations in their ranks about a measure that would swell the deficit and cut vital federal programs including Medicaid — and that polls show is deeply unpopular with voters. In the end, spurred by fear of crossing Mr. Trump and allowing a tax increase to take effect at the end of the year, they rallied around the measure — just barely.
The changes senators made to a version of the bill the House passed in May have raised the cost of the package while also teeing up deeper cuts that would lead to more Americans losing health insurance coverage. That alienated both poles of the party — fiscal hawks concerned about soaring deficits and mainstream Republicans wary of shredding the social safety net — complicating its path in the Senate and threatening its prospects in the House.
It would add at least $3.3 trillion to the already-bulging national debt over a decade, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said on Sunday — a cost that far exceeds the $2.4 trillion price of the version passed in the House. And it would result in $1.1 trillion in health care cuts, nearly $1 trillion of them to Medicaid, causing 11.8 million more Americans to become uninsured by 2034, the same office found.
That left little for the detractors of the legislation to champion.
“In deciding whether to vote for the big, not-so-beautiful bill, I’ve asked a very specific question: ‘Will the deficit be more or less next year?’” Mr. Paul said. “The answer, without question, is this bill will grow the deficit.”
Other Republicans, particularly those up for re-election, were openly wary about a measure they worry could be a political loser and will result in the loss of access to health care and nutrition assistance for their constituents.
“We can’t be cutting health care for working people and for poor people in order to constantly give special tax treatment to corporations and other entities,” Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri said on Saturday. “If we’re going to be a working-class party, we’ve got to protect working people. The Medicaid stuff in here, I think is bad. We’ve delayed the worst of it; in the short term for my state, it’s going to be fine. But on a going-forward basis, we cannot go on like this.”
After Mr. Tillis said he could not support the legislation because it would result in cutting billions of dollars to his state, Mr. Trump attacked him and called for his ouster. Less than a day later, Mr. Tillis announced he would not seek re-election next year — and then went on the Senate floor to rip into the bill.
“What do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years, when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding is not there any more?” Mr. Tillis asked.
“Republicans are about to make a mistake on health care and betraying a promise,” he continued. “It is inescapable that this bill in its current form will betray the very promise that Donald J. Trump made” to go after only waste, fraud and abuse in the program.
That is exactly the message Democrats plan to trumpet in the midterm elections.
“The bill is the wrong answer for the American people,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader. “It’s not only a violation of how the Senate is supposed to work, it’s a violation of the promises that Republicans and Donald Trump, when they campaigned, made to the American people to look after their issues, not those at the very top.”
The core of the legislation is an extension of the 2017 tax cuts that were set to expire at the end of the year. It also includes 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,” said Senator Michael D. Crapo, Republican of Idaho and the chairman of the Finance Committee. “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.”
It includes a plan to lift the cap on the state and local tax deduction, currently set at $10,000, to $40,000.
It would steer about $175 billion toward immigration enforcement and border security, and add about $150 billion in new military spending.
In an effort to offset the costs of some of the tax breaks and new spending, the 940-page legislation puts forward reductions in Medicaid that would be unprecedented in the history of the program. It establishes a new, strict national work requirement for some people on the program and puts in place new restrictions on a strategy many states use to finance Medicaid, by imposing taxes on medical providers to leverage a larger federal contribution.
The legislation would impose new work requirements on recipients of the nutrition assistance program known as SNAP, or food stamps, and would require some states for the first time to shoulder some of the costs.
And it would make sharp cuts to clean energy tax credits established under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. for renewable energy projects including wind and solar farms, as well as for makers of electric vehicles and hydrogen fuels.
G.O.P. leaders in the Senate also agreed to add several costly provisions to the legislation in a bid to win the votes of some of the holdouts in their ranks. They added a $25 billion fund for rural hospitals to help health care providers absorb the impact of the Medicaid cuts the bill advances, which are far deeper than what the House proposed.
And they tucked into the bill an array of measures aimed at winning the vote of Ms. Murkowski, Alaska’s senior senator, who spent months before the vote warning that the legislation could lead to devastating cuts in the state.
None of those changes have endeared the legislation to House Republicans, particularly hard-liners who were hoping the Senate would rein in the cost of the bill, not make it more expensive.
At the same time, Republicans facing tough re-election races next year have balked at the Senate’s more aggressive approach to Medicaid cuts. Representative David Valadao of California, who represents a district in the Central Valley where 64 percent of residents are on Medicaid, said he could not support the bill.
“I’ve been clear from the start that I will not support a final reconciliation bill that makes harmful cuts to Medicaid, puts critical funding at risk or threatens the stability of health care providers across” the district, he said in a statement.
Reporting was contributed by Andrew Duehren, Margot Sanger-Katz, Brad Plumer, and Tony Romm.
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.
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.
The post Senate Narrowly Passes Trump’s Policy Bill Amid Deep G.O.P. Divisions appeared first on New York Times.
