After five weeks of endless political posturing, high-stakes negotiations and late-night text releases, Senate Republicans – especially Majority Leader John Thune and GOP leaders – face a moment of truth.
Thune is readying a key procedural vote on the massive GOP reconciliation package later this afternoon. The Senate came into session at 2 p.m. At lunch, Republican senators were told to expect a motion to proceed vote at roughly 4 p.m. If it passes, final Senate passage on the reconciliation bill would come sometime Sunday.
But a huge amount is going to need to happen between now and then.
State of play. Right now, there are two GOP no’s on the motion, which needs a simple majority to pass. Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) are opposed, although for different reasons.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said he was a no on the motion to proceed and final passage. This is potentially a big problem for Thune, although he looks to have enough votes to begin debate. Thune can only lose three votes.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said she would vote to proceed, but that doesn’t mean she will vote yes on final passage. Collins said she will be filing a number of amendments on the package and wants to see the bill “substantially changed.” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who has been on the fence, said he’d vote to proceed as well and supports final passage
GOP Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Mike Lee (Utah) and Rick Scott (Fla.) haven’t said what they’ll do yet either, though Lee praised the bill’s steeper IRA cuts this morning. Scott played golf with President Donald Trump on Saturday, according to our friend Burgess Everett at Semafor, so he’s unlikely to be a no.
Tillis has been warning about changes to IRA clean energy credits, a big issue back home. Senate Republicans have majorly stiffened the IRA provisions to more closely align with Trump and conservative House Republicans. Cuts to wind and solar subsidies are harsher than what even the House passed.
Tillis — along with Collins, Hawley and others — got a big win on delaying implementation of the Medicaid provider tax changes from the House GOP bill. Senate GOP leaders also added a $25 billion stabilization fund to the package released late Friday night for these wavering Republicans. This won’t be enough for some Senate Republicans, however, and it faces an uncertain future in the House.
Tillis has been saying that he worries the Medicaid provisions will hamper the Republican legislature in Raleigh. But GOP state Sen. Phil Berger, the party’s leader in the chamber, said he supports the bill and Republicans would “work through any implementation issues.”
Changes. There were a lot of changes made in the legislation – most of which were released late Friday night and early Saturday morning. Some edits were to comply with the Byrd Rule, but many were to add House or Senate priorities and to solve political problems.
The SALT deal is in the bill. It shortens the higher $40,000 deduction cap for state and local taxes to five years. After that, it snaps back to $10,000. A new crackdown on SALT cap workarounds is out.
Closing the so-called de minimis loophole for foreign goods shipped into the U.S. has been added back. It was in the House bill and is a $38 billion pay-for. That helps since Republicans dropped their $52 billion “revenge tax” that could’ve hit foreign companies doing business in the U.S. after a breakthrough in international tax talks.
The Senate made major changes to their endowment tax hike, dropping the exemption for religious institutions, which didn’t pass muster with the parliamentarian. But the Senate also exempted more small schools with fewer than 3,000 students.
This is going to be a problem in the House, where members wanted both a much bigger endowment tax hike and to avoid hitting religious universities. Some notable schools, like Notre Dame, could now see a tax increase.
But there were several other changes moving back toward the House version that could help move votes like the IRA cuts. Republicans’ new boost to the standard deduction starts in 2025 — as it did in the House bill — instead of 2026, which means Americans will feel it before the midterms. Plus, a couple of HSA expansions are back.
Swing senators got legislative treaties, too. Alaska – Murkowski’s home state – got rewarded in the bill. The GOP bill now expands the charitable deduction for Native Alaskan subsistence whaling. Fisheries in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands got tax help, as well.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) won a provision to send more revenue from rum purchases to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The so-called “rum cover over” is a Cassidy priority.
Thune’s challenge. For Thune, the key is passing the motion to proceed. If he can pass that, Thune can likely pass the bill, figuring no Republican wants to be the senator who kills the measure.
Once the motion is adopted, that triggers 20 hours of debate equally divided between the Republicans and Democrats. Republicans aren’t going to take all 10 of their hours, although Democrats will. Some GOP senators will want to talk.
There’s also speculation that Democrats will force the clerk to read the entire bill, which could add a number of hours to the process.
Then a vote-a-rama begins, with senators allowed to offer an unlimited number of amendments. Democrats will force votes on Republicans’ plans for massive Medicaid and SNAP spending cuts, tax cuts for rich Americans and other hot-button issues that they can use in next year’s elections.
Republicans are also planning amendments, which could vex Thune. That includes Sen. Marsha Blackburn’s (R-Tenn.) push to strip the AI moratorium and Collins’ attempts to force changes.
Then Thune will cut off debate at some still undetermined time and move for final passage. That’s when the real drama starts.
This will be the biggest moment so far for Senate Republicans during the 119th Congress, and by far Thune’s most important vote since becoming majority leader.
Trump – whose legislative agenda is on the line – has been leaning in hard. He’s called and met personally with a number of senators, including Johnson. The White House issued a “Statement of Administration Policy” backing the measure. Top White House officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, have become drawn directly into the negotiations, taking part in an intense back and forth over the state-and-local tax deductions directly with Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) and holdout blue-state House Republicans.
The House. The House is eyeing a return either Monday or Tuesday – depending on when the Senate passes its bill. The plan would be for the House Rules Committee to convene on the first day back, followed by a vote the next day. We’ll see if this timeline holds.
House GOP leaders will hold a 3 p.m. conference call with members today.
