A marathon voting session on President Donald Trump’s sweeping domestic policy bill is underway in the Senate and has stretched overnight into the early hours of Tuesday morning after a weekend of negotiations and delays.
The vote-a-rama – an open-ended, hourslong series of votes on amendments, some political, some substantive – started around 9:35 a.m. on Monday and is still going with no end in sight. The extended voting session provides an opportunity for Republicans to make any eleventh-hour adjustments to the package and Democrats to push on GOP weak points in the bill and put their colleagues on the spot. Those politically tough votes are likely to provide fodder for campaign ads down the line.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters around 1 a.m. on Tuesday that “progress is a very elusive term” when asked if lawmakers are making progress toward a final vote.
Trump’s multitrillion-dollar bill would lower federal taxes and infuse more money into the Pentagon and border security agencies, while downsizing government safety-net programs including Medicaid.
Democrats have zeroed in on Medicaid and other safety-net programs, such as food stamps, as they message against the president’s agenda. The vote-a-rama comes after Senate Democrats employed a major delay tactic over the weekend that forced clerks to spend more than a dozen hours reading aloud the entire bill.
Lawmakers are up against an extremely tight timeline to pass the legislation. The president has demanded Congress deliver the bill to his desk by the Fourth of July, but the measure must still go back to the House if it passes the Senate.
In the House, Speaker Mike Johnson is confronting growing levels of consternation in his ranks about the final product, raising questions about that measure’s fate in his chamber.
Historic cuts to Medicaid
A number of Republicans in each chamber are closely watching any changes made to Medicaid provisions in the bill.
In the Senate, Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski – who GOP leadership had to convince to advance the legislation over the weekend – crossed the aisle to vote with Democrats on several amendments affecting the bill’s SNAP and Medicaid provisions, as well as to shore up support for rural hospitals. The proposed changes were ultimately unsuccessful, but underscore the flashpoints within the Republican Party.
GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine offered an amendment during the vote-a-rama aimed at raising more money for rural health care providers, a move that comes as changes to Medicaid’s provider taxes in the bill have been contentious for the GOP.
The funds for this would come from increasing taxes on those who make more than $25 million annually, or couples who make more than $50 million. The Senate ultimately took a procedural vote on the amendment, rather than voting on the amendment itself, and it failed to advance.
Asked if she was disappointed by the outcome of the vote, Collins said “I was surprised at the hypocrisy of the Democrats on it. Had they voted for it, it would have passed easily. So that was a surprise.”
However, Collins maintained that her amendment’s failure to advance “has absolutely no impact on my vote on final passage.”
“We’ll see what the final bill looks like,” she added. “I’m not going to announce that prematurely.”
The Senate version of the megabill would leave 11.8 million more people without health insurance in 2034, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis released over the weekend. That’s more than the 10.9 million more people projected to be left uninsured by the House-passed version of the bill.
Both chambers are calling for historic spending cuts to Medicaid, which provides coverage to more than 71 million low-income Americans, including children, senior citizens, people with disabilities and other adults. The package would also enact changes to the Affordable Care Act that are projected to reduce enrollment in the landmark health reform law that Trump and Republicans have long sought to dismantle.
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