{"id":10840,"date":"2025-07-01T09:16:45","date_gmt":"2025-07-01T09:16:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/capitol-agenda-murkowski-slams-brakes-on-megabill\/"},"modified":"2025-07-01T09:16:45","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T09:16:45","slug":"capitol-agenda-murkowski-slams-brakes-on-megabill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/capitol-agenda-murkowski-slams-brakes-on-megabill\/","title":{"rendered":"Capitol agenda: Murkowski slams brakes on megabill"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Senate Majority Leader John Thune\u2019s ability to pass the \u201cbig, beautiful bill\u201d is hinging on Sen. Lisa Murkowski.<\/p>\n

The Alaska senator has been the subject of an intense whip effort by GOP leaders over the past couple of hours as they try to offer her reassurances on Medicaid and food assistance. Thune, Finance Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso talked to Murkowski on the floor for roughly an hour overnight. Thune and Murkowski huddled briefly in his office, and they were mum on details when they emerged shortly before 4 a.m.<\/p>\n

Just moments ago, the Senate parliamentarian ruled that proposed SNAP carve-outs for Alaska and other states are compliant with the Byrd rule. But Republicans have struggled to get approval for a Medicaid provision also aimed at Murkowski\u2019s home state.<\/p>\n

Murkowski is also among the Republicans who have been pushing an amendment to undo the rollback of clean-energy credits<\/a> under the Biden-era climate law.<\/p>\n

Thune insisted to reporters moments ago that senators were closing in on the end of their vote-a-rama.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re close,\u201d he said, adding that they have a few more amendments from senators and a final so-called wraparound amendment to come.<\/p>\n

In a potential sign of just how dire Thune\u2019s whip count was looking in the wee hours, the majority leader huddled in his office with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who\u2019s long said he would be a \u201cno\u201d on the bill over its debt-ceiling hike.<\/p>\n

Another big unknown right now is where Sen. Susan Collins will fall. The Maine senator reminded us less than two hours ago that she\u2019s \u201csaid all along that I have concerns with the bill\u201d and also reiterated, when prompted by reporters, that she would have preferred breaking out the tax portion of the policy package on a separate track. Certainly not helping win Collins over: Her bid to boost money for rural hospitals went up in flames<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And major policy fights remain unresolved, including Sen. Rick Scott\u2019s (R-Fla.) divisive amendment to scale back federal payments under the Affordable Care Act\u2019s Medicaid expansion. Scott has leadership\u2019s support on this one and said he expects it to pass. But several GOP senators have openly raised concerns with it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What else we\u2019re watching:<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\u2014 Megabill goes to House Rules: <\/b>Assuming the Senate passes the bill, the House is expected to bring the bill to the Rules Committee at noon on Tuesday, though two people with direct knowledge of the plans say it could get pushed amid delays with the Senate vote-a-rama.<\/p>\n

\u2014 The next funding battle begins: <\/b>Senate appropriators plan to move forward with marking up fiscal 2026 government funding bills starting next week. House Appropriations is scheduled to vote July 10<\/a> on the Commerce, Justice, Science bill and the Energy and Water Development bill. House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) wants to finish marking up all 12 funding bills by the end of July.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Senate Majority Leader John Thune\u2019s ability to pass the \u201cbig, beautiful bill\u201d is hinging on Sen. Lisa Murkowski. The Alaska senator has been the subject of an intense whip effort by GOP leaders over the past couple of hours as they try to offer her reassurances on Medicaid and food assistance. Thune, Finance Chair Mike […]<\/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-10840","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\/10840","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=10840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10840\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}