Senate Republicans narrowly pushed through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on Tuesday after a marathon session that lasted 27 hours, clearing the way for the legislation to head to the House for a final vote.
With the vote split down the middle at 50-50, Vice President JD Vance cast the decisive vote, allowing the bill to move forward. This puts the Republican-led Congress on pace to get the legislation to President Trump before the July 4th deadline, assuming the House remains united behind it.
Republican Senators Susan Collins, Rand Paul, and Thom Tillis broke ranks and sided with all 47 Democrats to oppose the measure.
The comprehensive package, which spans nearly 900 pages, maintains the bulk of Trump’s tax reforms from 2017, introduces tax breaks for tips and overtime income, ramps up funding for defense, border control, and energy initiatives, and trims entitlement programs.
The legislation faced hurdles throughout its journey in Congress, with critics from within the Republican ranks expressing dissatisfaction over various elements of the bill.
After prolonged debate, the Senate altered the bill that had passed the House, adding deeper cuts to Medicaid, expanding corporate tax breaks, increasing the debt limit by $5 trillion, and removing federal restrictions on states that want to legislate artificial intelligence.
Some GOP senators, including Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, initially voiced serious concerns over the bill’s projected effect on federal deficits, threatening to hold up its approval.
To win over Johnson, Republican leadership added steeper Medicaid reductions than those included in the House-passed version.
“I’m convinced they’re committed to returning to reasonable pre-pandemic spending, and I’ll be highly involved in a process to achieve and maintain it,” Johnson told “Fox & Friends” Monday morning.
At the same time, Republican leaders needed to address resistance from centrist lawmakers who were alarmed by the potential impact of the Medicaid and SNAP (food stamps) changes.
“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,” Sen. Josh Hawley told NBC News last week.
Despite his concerns, Hawley ultimately supported the legislation, giving GOP leaders the numbers they needed to push it through.
One major sticking point had been the proposed 10-year freeze on state-level AI regulation, which was included in the House version of the bill.
That clause met fierce pushback from Sen. Marsha Blackburn and representatives like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who discovered the provision only after the bill cleared the House.
Following failed attempts at a compromise, senators decided to remove the AI-related language entirely from the final version.
Meanwhile, House Republicans from high-tax states continued to raise alarms over the existing $10,000 cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions.
To address those concerns, the Senate raised the SALT cap to $40,000 for most individuals earning under $500,000 annually. However, this higher limit will gradually expire over five years.
Still, House conservatives remained dissatisfied, with the House Freedom Caucus denouncing the changes as “not what we agreed to.” Rep. Keith Self criticized the updated version as “fiscally criminal.”
Senators also amended the original bill to make key tax breaks for businesses permanent, rather than allowing them to expire after five years.
According to projections from the Congressional Budget Office, the Senate’s version of the bill would add roughly $3.3 trillion to the deficit over 10 years. When interest payments on that debt are included, the number is expected to rise to around $3.9 trillion.
The White House has attempted to calm deficit hawks by pledging that additional spending cuts will be addressed during the fall budget process and insisting that revenue from tariffs and economic growth will help bring the deficit down.
Republican leadership is eager to avoid the mistakes of the past, with House Speaker Mike Johnson noting that delays in passing Trump’s 2017 tax legislation cost Republicans during the 2018 midterms.
Moreover, the bill serves as the primary vehicle for increasing the national borrowing limit, which would otherwise be breached in late summer or early fall.
The Senate-approved plan raises the debt ceiling by $5 trillion, an increase from the $4 trillion cap included in the House version.
GOP lawmakers utilized the reconciliation process in the Senate to pass the measure with a simple majority, limiting what they could include but allowing them to sidestep a filibuster.
If the House makes any changes to the Senate bill, both chambers will need to convene a conference committee to hammer out a unified version of the legislation, which would then have to be approved once more by both the House and Senate.

{Matzav.com}