President Donald Trump’s domestic agenda is in a state of flux on Capitol Hill.
As of press time — roughly 19 hours into a vote-a-rama — Senate Majority Leader John Thune was struggling to round up enough GOP votes to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill. Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) are opposed to the package, while Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) haven’t yet been convinced to vote for the sprawling legislation. Republicans can’t afford to lose more than three votes.
Senate GOP leaders were dealt a major blow by the parliamentarian in the early morning hours that moved Murkowski into the “no” column, causing a mad scramble on the Senate floor overnight.
Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough — already a controversial figure in Trump’s orbit — ruled that a revised provision aimed at shielding Murkowski’s home state of Alaska from the reconciliation bill’s Medicaid cuts does not comply with the Byrd Rule. Separately, MacDonough upheld a provision intended to assuage Murkowski’s concerns about cuts to the SNAP program.
Thune and Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso huddled with Murkowski on the Senate floor as they tried to win her over. Murkowski could be seen repeatedly shaking her head. Off to the side, Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) appeared to be livid. Murkowski and Thune left the floor just before 4 a.m. to meet briefly in Thune’s office.
After a 15-minute meeting in the GOP leadership suite, Thune said he and Murkowski were just “chatting” and declined to say whether they had a deal to move forward. Just before 5 a.m., Thune said, “We’re getting to the end here.” It’s unclear if Thune has the votes necessary for passage, or if he’s prepared to plow ahead with a final vote anyway.
Murkowski then huddled with Thune and members of the Senate Finance Committee on the floor just after 5 a.m.
This is how bad things appear to be at the moment – not only is the Senate still voting on amendments with no end, but Collins floated reverting to a two-bill approach the Senate initially preferred. This was an issue hashed out months ago in favor of the “one-bill” process.
At one point, Paul was summoned to Thune’s office where he met with the majority leader, Graham and Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho). When asked if he would accept an offer to switch his vote, Paul responded: “I don’t want anything.” Paul opposes the bill because of the $5 trillion debt-limit increase and has separately proposed lowering that number to just $500 billion.
A $500-billion debt-limit hike would play into Speaker Mike Johnson’s hand, although world financial markets wouldn’t like it and could potentially align a debt fight with a government-spending showdown. Johnson has said he wants to pass another reconciliation bill in the fall to deal with entitlements and the deficit., although this is seen as a longshot.
But Thune and Barrasso are prioritizing flipping Murkowski. And Republican senators think Paul’s proposal is a bad idea. Not only will Trump hate it, but it would give Democrats leverage because of the filibuster.
Collins’ proposal and the meeting with Paul shows you the logjam Thune faces is in. Thune could get onto the OBBB, yet he’s unable as of now to bring it to a close. He’s still more likely than not to get there, but the landing is very ugly.
Separately, the Senate passed a bipartisan amendment by Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) to strip out a controversial provision to restrict state-level regulation of AI for a decade from the bill.
Blackburn and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who supported the moratorium, had a deal for a shorter moratorium, but Blackburn pulled out from that agreement because she said it lacked protections for children and consumers. The Senate then approved the Blackburn-Cantwell amendment by a 99-1 margin. This is a big setback for Cruz.
OBBB and the House. The Senate was supposed to be the easy part. This GOP reconciliation bill is going to hit even choppier waters in the House.
Speaker Mike Johnson is dealing with simmering frustration across the House Republican Conference.
Why? Because this bill does not fulfill the promises that the speaker made to the House Republican Conference. It cuts $1.5 trillion in exchange for $4.5 trillion in tax cuts – $500 billion short of the savings Johnson vowed to achieve in this scenario.
There are more problems than this. The Senate’s Medicaid cuts total close to $1 trillion, irking GOP moderates.
This is why Johnson’s leadership team spent the last few days trying to convince Thune to use the “wraparound” amendment at the end of the vote-a-rama to restore the House’s version of the provider tax, change SNAP language and even add more spending cuts.
This was highly unrealistic. Johnson’s leadership team — and, in fact, Johnson himself — left open the possibility all Monday that the Senate package would revert closer to the House’s language. House Republicans spent all day telling us that they were holding out hope that Thune would change the bill to mollify conservatives.
Johnson even said this to us on Monday evening.
“I have prevailed upon my Senate colleagues to please, please, please, put it as close to the House product as possible,” Johnson said.
Johnson has been saying for weeks that he was confident the Senate’s bill would closely mirror the House’s legislation. Of course, that was never realistic. Most people realized that. That was poor expectation-setting on behalf of Johnson and the GOP leadership.
The House Rules Committee is slated to come at noon to begin to prepare the bill for floor consideration. The full House is expected back Wednesday.
