{"id":10632,"date":"2025-06-25T20:47:12","date_gmt":"2025-06-25T20:47:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/thune-faces-brewing-megabill-mutiny\/"},"modified":"2025-06-25T20:47:12","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T20:47:12","slug":"thune-faces-brewing-megabill-mutiny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/thune-faces-brewing-megabill-mutiny\/","title":{"rendered":"Thune faces brewing megabill mutiny"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Sen. Thom Tillis<\/a> warned his colleagues during a closed-door meeting on Wednesday that he would not vote to take up the party’s sweeping domestic policy bill<\/a> without further clarity on Medicaid changes, a person granted anonymity to disclose private discussions said.<\/p>\n

“He said he wouldn’t vote for a motion to proceed until he got some clarity on what’s going to happen with the provider tax,” the person said, referring to a funding mechanism Senate GOP leaders are hoping to curtail. Tillis has been trying to get details on how the Senate language will impact North Carolina, the person added.<\/p>\n

Tillis wasn\u2019t alone.<\/p>\n

Multiple other Republican senators warned Majority Leader John Thune<\/a> during the lunch that they were not ready to vote to launch floor debate on the megabill, according to three attendees. But it\u2019s Tillis, who is up for re-election next year, who has emerged as a key vote to watch as Thune moves to try and meet a July 4 target for final passage of the bill.<\/p>\n

Tillis told colleagues he spoke recently with CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz about the provider tax\u2019s impact on North Carolina but said he believed the numbers provided by Oz and his team underplayed the impact. Tillis handed out a document to his colleagues earlier this week that estimated his state\u2019s losses at more than $38 billion.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said just now in this meeting \u2026 \u2018If you proceed on this provider tax like you\u2019re going to do right now, you won\u2019t have a member from North Carolina sitting at this table after next year,\u2019\u201d the person added.<\/p>\n

It was just the latest instance of Tillis raising concerns privately about the Senate\u2019s Medicaid proposal. While the House-passed bill freezes existing provider taxes, the Senate\u2019s bill incrementally rolls back an existing federal cap.<\/p>\n

Senate leaders made their opening offer<\/a> on a rural hospital relief fund Wednesday morning. But that figure, $15 billion, is sparking pushback publicly and privately from Tillis and others.<\/p>\n

Sen. Susan Collins<\/a> (R-Maine), who is undecided on the reconciliation bill, told reporters Wednesday that \u201cany money is helpful, but, no, it is not adequate.\u201d She floated a $100 billion fund but added, \u201cI don’t think that solves the entire problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the other end of his conference, Thune is facing GOP senators who want the rural hospital fund to be shrunk further. He\u2019s not just facing pushback over health care provisions; a clutch of deficit hawks also still aren\u2019t on board<\/a> with the bill.<\/p>\n

The ongoing negotiations have some of his members openly questioning whether they will be able to meet his goal of passing the bill in the Senate this weekend. Thune can lose three GOP senators and still have Vice President JD Vance break a tie.<\/p>\n

“Well, I mean, everybody’s got their vote,\u201d Thune said when asked about the holdouts. \u201cWe’re working with all of their members to try to get people comfortable with the bill, and hopefully in the end, they’ll be there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other Republicans are banking that their colleagues’ rhetoric is a negotiating tactic and that they will ultimately fall in line \u2014 potentially with leadership agreeing to changes to assuage their concerns.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of our guys are going to keep advocating for what they want until we pass it,\u201d said Sen. John Hoeven<\/a> (R-N.D.), predicting that GOP leaders will ultimately get votes to proceed with the bill.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sen. Thom Tillis warned his colleagues during a closed-door meeting on Wednesday that he would not vote to take up the party’s sweeping domestic policy bill without further clarity on Medicaid changes, a person granted anonymity to disclose private discussions said. “He said he wouldn’t vote for a motion to proceed until he got some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10632\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}