It's amazing how the prospect of catastrophic failure can unite a political party.
The House was hopelessly fractured until 48 hours prior to the floor vote. Then, Speaker Mike Johnson turned on the charm, Donald Trump threatened political Armageddon against the holdouts, and the Big Beautiful Bill (BBB) passed by one vote, 215-214.
In the weeks leading up to the passage of the BBB in the House, some senators expressed serious reservations about the bill's prospects in the upper chamber.
The loudest voices of opposition came from budget hawks who claim the bill doesn't go far enough in cutting spending. Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson says there are at least four of his colleagues who will refuse to vote for the BBB without further spending cuts.
“There should be a goal of this Republican Senate budget resolution to reduce the deficit, not increase it. We’re increasing it. It’s a nonstarter from my standpoint,” he said.
Another group of senators objects to the Medicaid cuts in the House bill. This group includes Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, Maine Sen. Susan Collins, Alaska's Lisa Murkowski, and Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran.
Collins said: “We’re still trying to figure out what the provider tax reforms are, but I’m very worried about our rural hospitals in Maine.”
Hawley was worried about beneficiaries paying more.“These are working people in particular who are going to have to pay more,” he said.
Together, that's eight senators who are definite "no"s on passage of the BBB. Majority Leader John Thune can only afford to lose three senators and still win the day.
The Senate is now debating whether to do a complete tear-down of the BBB or just give it a makeover. At this point, a tear-down seems unlikely.
“I don’t know about blowing things up,” said Murkowski. “You can kind of see the writing on the wall here. You’ve got Republicans in the House that have been able to move something out. You’ve got a Republican majority here, and you have a president who very clearly wants this to pass,” she added.
Yes, the prospect of being hanged concentrates the mind wonderfully.
Senate Republicans are also looking at slashing the House’s generous state and local tax deduction, or SALT, changing its spectrum auction language and potentially beefing up the child tax credit. But House and Senate leaders have been coordinating for weeks, and Republicans believe there’s a decent chance that the Senate passes something that closely resembles what the House passed on Thursday morning.
“There’s been a lot of coordination,” said Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., after the GOP’s first party meeting since House passage. “There’s going to be some changes, but they’ve laid down a good bill, and, you know, we make sure it fits our rules and I believe we’re going to make some changes and pass it.”
“We’ve got to put our fingerprints on it," said Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin. How much the Senate smudges the House version of the BBB will determine its prospects for passage.
But Johnson knows that his House majority for the BBB sits on a knife's edge. One bad change to the BBB by the Senate could blow up the delicately balanced high-wire act he so carefully negotiated in the wee hours of Thursday morning.
At least one senator sees Moody's cutting the U.S. AAA rating as a wake-up call to do something about the debt.
“Our debt is becoming a vulnerability,” said North Dakota Sen. Kevin Cramer. “I really think that vulnerability is being exposed, and I think it’s sort of a license to get something done.”
At the top of the list for some lawmakers are deeper cuts to Medicaid, the state-federal program that insures low-income Americans. Senators might also try to revise a House deal that raises the cap on the deductions for state and local taxes to $40,000 from the current $10,000. That agreement secured crucial votes from House members in high-tax states such as New York and New Jersey, but SALT has no clear champion among Senate Republicans.
“Why are we subsidizing New York’s and California’s property taxes?” said Sen. Rick Scott (R., Fla.).
At the same time, individual Republican senators will also try to protect home-state priorities, such as renewable-energy projects whose planning would be upended by a provision in the House-passed bill that would rapidly phase out tax credits.
Many Republican senators want to phase out the renewable energy project subsidies rather than cut them off entirely.
“If millions or billions of dollars have been deployed, we’ve got to give those businesses some off-ramp that’s not devastating,” said North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis.
It's possible that the Senate will only make superficial changes to the BBB. But passage of the amended bill in the House will still be tricky given the bill's close call on Thursday.
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