Senate Narrowly Passes Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill,’ Sending It Back to House

Updated: July 1, 2025 2:04 PM EDT | Originally published: July 1, 2025 12:08 PM EDT

A bleary-eyed Lisa Murkowski exited the Republican whip’s office early Tuesday morning with a coffee in hand, after more than 24 straight hours of backroom negotiations over President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax and spending bill. “It’s in the hands of the people that operate the copy machine,” the Alaska Senator quipped, signaling that she planned to flip her vote and deliver the final commitment GOP leaders needed to secure passage.

With that, Senate Republicans pushed Trump’s 940-page “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” across the finish line on a narrow 51-50 vote, with Vice President J.D. Vance casting the tie-breaker. The vote capped a grueling overnight session full of closed-door huddles, hastily scribbled amendments, and a desperate hunt for votes as Republican leaders raced to deliver Trump’s top legislative priority before his self-imposed July 4 deadline.

Three Republicans—Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina—broke ranks to oppose the bill. Paul objected to the legislation’s raising of the debt ceiling by $5 trillion—a move needed to avoid a default later this summer—while Tillis and Collins opposed Medicaid funding changes that could reduce coverage for millions of people and deliver less money to hospitals. Republican leaders could not spare any more defections.

Murkowski emerged as the crucial swing vote, holding out for changes that would delay food stamp cuts for states with high error rates like Alaska, preserve some clean-energy tax incentives, and expand rural health funding. After tense negotiations, Senate Republicans agreed to delay certain SNAP provisions, remove an excise tax on wind and solar projects, and double a rural hospital fund to $50 billion—concessions that cleared the way for her to support the bill. “This is probably the most difficult and agonizing legislative 24 hour period I've encountered,” Murkowski said. Still, she made clear that her support was reluctant, and urged House Republicans to revise the legislation further. “Kill it, and the provisions that are going to be very helpful for economic development in my state would no longer be available,” she said of her decision to vote in favor of a bill she believes still needs work.

The bill’s passage marks the first major legislative victory for Senator John Thune since taking over as Republican Majority leader in January.

The legislation now returns to the House, where its passage remains far from certain. Several House Republicans have voiced alarm over the Senate’s changes—particularly deeper Medicaid cuts and a larger projected deficit—warning that the revised bill could struggle to gain support from both hard-line conservatives and vulnerable moderates in a chamber that Republicans control 220-212. House Speaker Mike Johnson will have just three days to meet Trump’s deadline and marshal his slim majority to endorse the Senate bill many of his members believe violates the framework they had sent over, which kept tax and spending cuts at or below $2.5 trillion.

Trump called the Senate’s passage of his bill "music to my ears" and added that he thinks “it will be easier” to pass the House. “It tells you there’s something for everyone,” he said. “It’s a great bill.”

The legislation represents a sweeping rewrite of tax and spending priorities, making permanent the Trump-era tax cuts set to expire at the end of this year and adding new breaks for tipped workers, overtime pay, and factory construction. It also includes deep cuts to Medicaid and nutrition assistance, introduces new work requirements for low-income Americans, and slashes green energy tax credits. The bill would redirect hundreds of billions of dollars toward border enforcement and defense, including $350 billion in new spending and fees for immigration operations.

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the package would add nearly $3.3 trillion to the deficit over the next decade and lead to 11.8 million more Americans becoming uninsured by 2034. Still, most Senate Republicans cast the legislation as a crucial and long-awaited victory.

Now that different versions of the bill have passed both chambers, the House can send the bill directly to Trump for his signature by adopting the Senate version. If the House intends to make more changes to it, Republican leaders from both chambers will have to hammer out a version that can draw enough support for final votes in the House and Senate.

Part of Thune’s strategy to secure just enough votes in the Senate was to shape a more conservative bill than the House did in several key areas, particularly over Medicaid. House Republicans had sought to trim the bill’s price tag by imposing new work requirements for childless adults without disabilities, but the Senate plan expanded those requirements to also target the parents of children older than 14. The CBO estimated that the new work requirements provision would reduce federal spending by more than $325 billion over the next decade. However, those changes may be unworkable to moderate House Republicans in districts with a large percentage of residents enrolled in Medicaid.

The Senate also moved to rein in provider taxes that states use to secure more federal matching dollars for Medicaid, a plan that would cut spending by $375 billion, according to the CBO report. The House-passed bill would have frozen the tax rate for most states, whereas the Senate version would require many states to lower their existing taxes in 2027.

“The House—I appreciate the narrow margins they have over there and the challenge the Speaker and his team have in front of them—but I think we gave them a really strong product,” Thune told reporters.

Rep. Ralph Norman, a South Carolina Republican who sits on the House Rules Committee, called the bill a “nonstarter” and said that he would oppose the rule that would tee up floor consideration.

“What we ought to do is take exactly the House bill that we sent over and go home and say ‘when you're serious, come back,’” Norman told reporters Tuesday afternoon. “That's my message. Send the House bill back. When they're serious, come back to us.”

The ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus issued a similar statement the day before the Senate vote that read in part, “The Senate must make major changes and should at least be in the ballpark of compliance with the agreed upon House budget framework.”

Senate Republicans had trudged through more than 24 hours of motions and amendments, starting midmorning Monday and continuing well past sunrise Tuesday. Many were seen carrying energy drinks and snacks as they shuffled between meetings overnight.

But not all Senate Republicans were pleased by the negotiations. Over the weekend, Paul, the Kentucky Republican who has long warned about ballooning deficits, proposed a last-minute amendment to cap the debt limit increase, but it never received a vote. After a late-night meeting in Thune’s office Monday, Paul emerged visibly frustrated and declined to say whether he had been offered any concessions.

“The big not-so-beautiful bill has passed,” Paul said after the vote.

Tillis, who voted against the bill days after announcing he would not be seeking re-election next year, said he could not support legislation that would gut Medicaid funding for hospitals and vulnerable patients in North Carolina. The departing Senator signaled his discomfort for days but ultimately remained unswayed by leadership's eleventh-hour revisions. His objections centered on the Senate’s expansion of Medicaid work requirements and changes to the so-called provider tax system, which he warned could cost his state tens of billions of dollars in federal aid over the next decade.

Likewise, Collins, who is up for re-election next year in a state that Trump lost, objected to the effects of Medicaid cuts. She had offered an amendment to double a rural healthcare fund to $50 billion and raise taxes on ultra-wealthy households to offset costs, which gained a handful of votes from Democrats but failed to pass. Collins was able to secure a version of the rural healthcare fund increase in the final bill, but without the tax hikes she proposed. “I strongly support extending the tax relief for families and small businesses,” Collins said afterwards. “My vote against this bill stems primarily from the harmful impact it will have on Medicaid, affecting low-income families and rural health care providers like our hospitals and nursing homes.”

Democrats unanimously opposed the bill, framing a permanent extension of Trump’s first-term tax cuts as a giveaway to wealthy Americans and predicting that cuts to Medicaid spending would shatter rural healthcare and hurt working Americans. Many also cited recent polling that shows Americans largely disapprove of Trump’s bill.

“The American people will remember the Republican betrayal and Americans will pay the price for this perfidy for generations,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters.

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