⚡️ Special Edition: Senate finally passes reconciliation after turbulent night

SPECIAL EDITION

The Senate finally passes reconciliation bill

After a tortured and sometimes bewildering 26 hours, the Senate passed President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

The vote was 51-50. Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) voted no. Vice President JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote.

The focal point of the entire process in the final hours of dealmaking was Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the 23-year Senate veteran from Alaska. Murkowski exerted a tremendous amount of influence to benefit her home state.

Murkowski got a tax break for Native Alaskan subsistence whaling and local fisheries. She fought for provisions aimed at softening the blow of SNAP and Medicaid cuts for her state, though there were late procedural hurdles.

The legislation will now go to the House, where it faces an uncertain fate. The core of the reconciliation bill hasn’t changed since House passage on May 22.

But Senate Republicans approved cutting $1 trillion from Medicaid, more than the House. The bill’s crackdown on provider taxes – a mechanism states can use to boost Medicaid funding — is far harsher in the Senate version than it was in the House.

Moderate House Republicans already tell us they are skittish about Medicaid cuts in the bill.

Conservatives complain that they didn’t get the spending cuts they believe were promised. The House GOP’s budget plan called for $2 trillion in spending reductions to match $4.5 trillion in tax cuts. The Senate bill cuts just over $1.5 trillion but spends the full amount on taxes.

The House Freedom Caucus, in particular, is pressing for steeper repeals of IRA clean energy tax credits. The Senate’s bill ultimately moved further in that direction, but there were late changes that could upset HFC, like removing a new excise tax on solar and wind.

The House Rules Committee is expected to meet today to begin to prepare the bill for floor consideration. The full House is expected back in Washington Wednesday morning, giving the chamber two days to pass the package before the GOP’s self-imposed July 4 deadline.

Thune’s win. This is, by far, the biggest legislative victory for Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who assumed the GOP’s top slot at the beginning of this Congress.

Thune had everything working against him.

The South Dakota Republican, a 26-year veteran of Congress, was paired with Speaker Mike Johnson, a legislative novice who has been pressuring the Senate to stick as close to the House version as possible.

Thune has a very different style from Trump.

And as the bill hurtled toward the finish line, Tillis clashed with Trump and bowed out of a reelection fight in a key state for 2026. Tillis said he couldn’t support the bill’s Medicaid cuts.

“It’s been incredibly complicated — the most complicated thing I’ve ever tried to do,” Thune said in an interview before passage of the bill. “We have the full spectrum of ideological views in the conference and all this home-state stuff, reelection issues that people are dealing with.”

Inside Thune’s strategy. As the Senate process moved toward the endgame, Thune made it crystal clear that he was preparing to jam the House despite Johnson’s pleas.

Yes, Thune gave in on some major House GOP demands, including a bigger state and local tax deduction that virtually none of Thune’s members supported.

But Thune was dug-in — both in public and private — on key elements of the Senate GOP’s bill, especially the steeper Medicaid cuts. Johnson was caught by surprise when Senate Republicans unveiled Medicaid language that included a much harsher crackdown on states’ provider taxes.

Several GOP senators demanded a return to the House’s Medicaid language. Thune resisted.

During our interview, Thune happily pointed out that the Senate extracted more Medicaid spending cuts than the House — a counter to House conservatives who frequently complain that the Senate GOP Conference is full of RINOs who hate cutting spending.

Thune also has a deputy in Majority Whip John Barrasso, whose long-standing ties with conservatives have proven valuable. Barrasso viewed the White House — and Trump specifically — as an extension of his whip operation, and took advantage of Trump’s sway among GOP lawmakers. Barrasso was also locked in hours of intense conversations with Murkowski during the overnight vote-a-rama.

The politics. Thune was put in a major bind as Tillis’ warnings about the bill’s Medicaid cuts started to get more dire. Tillis argued in closed-door meetings that the Senate’s framework would lead to massive shortfalls for states and force rural hospitals to close.

Tillis asserted Republicans would get trounced in the 2026 midterms as a result. And he urged a return to the House’s less drastic crackdown on Medicaid provider taxes.

Thune and Tillis spent a lot of time together over the past week as the GOP leader tried to assuage the North Carolina Republican’s political concerns. Thune’s message to Tillis boiled down to this: Once you start touching entitlement programs, Democrats will go after you no matter what.

“We’re pregnant with that issue,” Thune said. “At the end of the day, it wasn’t going to make a lot of difference whether we’ve adopted a House provision or a Senate provision… Those attacks are coming.”

Thune also noted that Senate GOP leaders decided to delay the implementation of the provider tax freeze. “So you’re not really hitting anybody in 2026,” Thune added.

– Andrew Desiderio, Jake Sherman and Laura Weiss