Congress
Senate GOP scrambles to rewrite Trump’s megabill
Senate Republicans are scrambling to rewrite major parts of their “big, beautiful bill” in deference to key holdouts and the chamber’s parliamentarian as the clock ticks on a self-imposed deadline.
GOP leaders are aiming to start voting Thursday, but senators emerged from a closed-door briefing on the status of the megabill Monday night saying that some of their biggest sticking points — ranging from key tax decisions to a deal on Medicaid — remain unresolved.
The multitude of unresolved issues has left Republicans unsure when the bill will get to the Senate floor, even as leaders project confidence they are on track to pass it and send it back to the House this week — setting up final passage ahead of their July 4 target.
Most crucially, it could be Wednesday night or later before Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough finishes ruling on whether major tax provisions, including some measures at the very heart of the domestic policy bill, pass muster under the budget rules GOP lawmakers want to use to pass their bill on party lines.
“I think we’ll eventually pass something, I just can’t tell you when,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.). “We’ve got a lot of stuff to work out, and the bill will be changed on the floor.”
Republicans had initially hoped to have a revised bill ready to be released Monday. Now they aren’t expected to release it while the parliamentarian’s review — the so-called “Byrd bath” — is pending, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss internal thinking.
Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said that he hoped to be able to hold an initial vote on Thursday, setting up passage over the weekend, but that “part of it right now is the Byrd bath, and it’s taking a little bit longer.”
It’s not just the procedural hoops senators have to jump through. Multiple substantive matters need to be settled, including a high-stakes dispute between the House and Senate GOP over a key tax break.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) briefed his colleagues on talks he’s brokering with House Republicans on raising the state-and-local-tax deduction cap, known as SALT. Mullin signaled afterward he thought they were getting close to “acceptance” on what the final proposal would entail.
A $40,000 cap negotiated by the House would not be touched, he suggested, but an income threshold where the deduction starts to phase out could be lowered. But that combination was publicly rejected by SALT-focused House members just days ago, and several GOP senators left the briefing under the impression that Mullin was only laying out potential options and did not have anything resolved.
Beyond the tax fight, Republicans are still working through thorny Medicaid issues. Thune told GOP senators during the closed-door meeting that the Senate would follow the House’s lead in one key respect — it would not change the share of Medicaid costs the federal government pays for those enrolled under the program’s 2010 expansion, according to Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley.
GOP leaders also discussed including a fund to help offset the impact to rural hospitals due to other Medicaid changes in the Senate bill. Blue Light News reported Monday that the fund is expected to be included in the bill, but Republicans say they have not yet gotten details on how it would work.
“I am absolutely happy with a rural fund; I think that would be great,” Hawley said. “Will that solve the issue? I don’t know.”
Senate Republicans included language in their bill to curtail provider taxes, which most states use to fund their Medicaid programs and garner larger federal reimbursements. House GOP leaders, who chose only to freeze those taxes, are increasingly worried that they’ll have to spend weeks more negotiating the megabill if the Senate doesn’t quickly retreat from some of its proposed changes.
Hawley said that he has been talking to House leaders who are warning that the language can’t pass their chamber, necessitating a time-consuming “conference” with the Senate. Speaker Mike Johnson has urged senators to keep their changes to the House-passed bill to a minimum but senators have eyed major changes to the tax package while sanding down some of the proposed spending cuts.
At Monday’s briefing, Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina handed out a paper that estimated how much Medicaid funding several states, including his and Hawley’s, would lose under the Senate provider tax proposal.
Republicans are also getting heartburn as MacDonough warns that several key provisions do not comply with the strict rules governing what can be included under reconciliation, which lets them skirt a 60-vote filibuster.
For instance, a plan to shift some food-aid costs to states, generating tens of billions of dollars in savings, is in flux after MacDonough ruled over the weekend that the scheme, which penalized states for their payment error rate, did not comply. Senate Agriculture Committee Republicans are hoping they can salvage the plan with relatively small changes.
Losing the cost-sharing proposal would be a setback for leadership, which is already facing pushback from House and Senate conservatives who believe the bill doesn’t go far enough on cutting spending. Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), chair of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, warned Monday that if the bill “should pass the Senate in its current rumored form, it probably would have trouble in the House.”
MacDonough has also warned that an effort championed by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) to overhaul the federal rulemaking process does not comply with reconciliation rules, but Republicans expect Lee could try to revive it as a floor amendment. Lee and Sens. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) met separately with Trump on Monday as the president steps up his efforts to win over the trio of outspoken fiscal conservatives. Trump, according to Scott, said that he supports full repeal of clean energy tax credits enacted under predecessor Joe Biden, as well as a focus on waste, fraud and abuse in Medicaid.
Senate conservatives later relayed Trump’s message Monday evening to a closed-door Freedom Caucus meeting, according to four people granted anonymity to describe the gathering.
The centerpiece of the GOP package — its tax and health care language — remains under review with MacDonough. Senate Finance Committee staff met with her Monday to discuss the health provisions and are expected to reconvene on Tuesday to go over the tax language.
Final rulings are not expected to be finished until Wednesday at the earliest — less than a day before Thune wants senators to start voting.
Meredith Lee Hill and Benjamin Guggenheim contributed to this report.
Congress
Megabill delay ‘possible,’ Johnson says
Speaker Mike Johnson opened the door Friday to a possible megabill delay past the GOP’s self-imposed July 4 deadline.
“It’s possible … but I don’t want to even accept that as an option right now,” he told reporters as Republicans scramble to cut a series of deals with holdout members. Johnson said he had spoken with his Senate counterpart, Majority Leader John Thune, in the “last 20 minutes.”
Already time is running tight for Republicans. With the Senate not expected to start debating the bill until Saturday at the earliest, the House might not get the bill until Sunday. Johnson confirmed he plans to observe a House rule giving members at least 72 hours to review the bill before floor consideration begins.
“The House will not be jammed by anything,” he added.
Congress
Mike Johnson hails ‘progress’ toward SALT deal
The White House is close to clinching an agreement on the state and local tax deduction after a last-ditch flurry of negotiations with blue-state House GOP holdouts and Senate Republicans, according to three people granted anonymity to describe the talks.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is brokering the politically complex deal that is key to unlocking the GOP megabill, will attend Senate Republicans lunch later today, according to a another person with direct knowledge of the matter.
Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters Friday morning that there was “a lot of progress yesterday” at an evening meeting of SALT Republicans and Treasury officials and that he expected the issue to get “resolved in a manner that everybody can live with.”
“No one will be delighted about it, but that’s kind of the way this works around here,” he said. “But the other issues [with the megabill], I think, will be resolved, hopefully today, and we can move forward.”
However, one hard-line SALT holdout, New York Rep. Nick LaLota, said: “If there was a deal, I’m not a part of it.”
Jordain Carney contributed to this report.
Congress
Capitol agenda: How Trump could get his July 4 megabill
Republicans’ “big, beautiful bill” is in tatters. President Donald Trump still wants it on his desk by July 4. Here’s everything that will have to go right to make that happen:
GOP senators and staff now believe Saturday is the earliest voting will start on the bill. Senate Majority Leader John Thune acknowledged Thursday that parliamentarian rulings forcing Republicans to rewrite key provisions of the bill are throwing his timeline into chaos.
A Saturday vote would assume no more major procedural issues, but that is not assured: Republicans could run into trouble with their use of current policy baseline, the accounting tactic they want to use to zero out the cost of tax-cut extensions. Other adverse recommendations from Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough could force additional redrafts of Republicans’ tax plans.
Even if Republicans resolve every outstanding issue with the parliamentarian in the next 24 hours, Thune needs to firm up his whip count. The cap on state provider taxes remains among the thorniest issues, with senators threatening to block debate on the megabill until the Medicaid financing issue is resolved.
If the Senate does vote Saturday to proceed, expect Democrats to use the bulk of their 10 hours of debate time, while Republicans forfeit most of theirs. Then comes the main event — vote-a-rama — which would set up likely final passage for sometime Sunday.
That starts the timer for the House. GOP leaders there have pledged to give members 48 hours’ notice of a vote — and they have already advised the earliest that voting could happen is Monday evening. Republicans will have to adopt a rule before moving to debate and final passage.
But the House’s timeline depends wholly on what condition the megabill is in when it arrives from the Senate. Groups of House Republicans are already drawing red lines on matters ranging from SALT to clean-energy tax credits to public land sales. The hope is that the Senate will take care of those concerns in one final “wraparound” amendment at the end of vote-a-rama.
If they don’t, House GOP leaders are adamant that there will need to be changes — likely pushing the timeline deep into July, or perhaps beyond. For one, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said Thursday the Senate’s slower phase-out of clean-energy tax credits “will need to be reversed,” or else.
“If there are major modifications that we cannot accept, then we would go back to the drawing board, fix some of that and send it back over,” Speaker Mike Johnson said Thursday. “So we should avoid that process, if possible.”
What else we’re watching:
— Senate war powers vote: Senators are expected to take an initial vote at 6 p.m. on Sen. Tim Kaine’s (D-Va.) resolution that would bar the president from taking further military action in Iran without congressional approval. Kaine believes Republicans will support the measure but won’t say who or how many.
— House Iran briefing: House members will receive a briefing on the Iran conflict from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Gen. Dan Caine and CIA Director John Ratcliffe in the CVC auditorium at 9 a.m. This comes as some House lawmakers are mulling two competing war powers resolutions, which Johnson could attempt to quash in advance using a rule.
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