A sign in an Indianapolis store shown on Aug. 1, 2023, says SNAP benefits are accepted. A new analysis by the Congressional Budget Office projects 2.4 million fewer people per month will participate in the program under Republicans’ tax cut and spending law. (Photo by Getty Images)

About 10 million people, mostly Medicaid recipients, will lose access to health insurance and 2.4 million fewer people per month will participate in a federal food aid program under Republicans’ massive tax cut and spending law, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Monday.

Median-income U.S. households will see a small overall gain in resources from President Donald Trump and the GOP’s “big, beautiful” law, CBO said.

But major changes to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, mean Americans at the bottom of the income distribution will see a net loss of benefits, CBO said.

The law, which both chambers of Congress passed without any Democratic votes and Trump signed July 4, significantly narrows eligibility for Medicaid and SNAP.

Those changes, even combined with federal tax cuts, will lead to a roughly 3% drop in resources over the next nine years for households in the bottom tenth of earners, the CBO analysis said.

“The changes in resources will not be evenly distributed among households,” the congressional scorekeeper said. “The agency estimates that, in general, resources will decrease for households toward the bottom of the income distribution, whereas resources will increase for households in the middle and toward the top of the income distribution.”

The projection shows households in the bottom two-tenths of the income distribution would see a net loss of resources.

Households in the middle 20% of the income distribution would receive, on average, between $800 and $1,200 more per year, which would account for 0.8% to 1% of their income.

At the top of the income distribution, households in the top tenth would see, on average, $13,600 more annually, about 2.7% of their projected income, from 2026 to 2034, the CBO said.

But the lowest tenth of households by income would see a drop of about $1,200 per year, which accounts for 3% of that group’s projected income, the CBO said.

Millions to lose benefits

Roughly 10 million people will lose access to health insurance by 2034, the CBO projected. Most of that group, 7.5 million, would lose Medicaid benefits.

A single section of the law creating new work requirements for Medicaid recipients would result in 5.6 million people losing access to care, the CBO said.

The law also creates new work requirements for SNAP participants and mandates that at least some states pay for a portion of the benefits. States had never been required to cover any share of the cost of SNAP benefits.

The changes to work requirements will result in reduced participation in the program by about 2.4 million people, the CBO said in another analysis published Monday.

The changes to state cost-share in SNAP will save the federal government about $41 billion from 2026 to 2034, CBO said. The agency expects states to pick up most, $35 billion, of that spending.

But the new requirements for states would still likely lead to 300,000 people fewer accessing benefits monthly. The report considered state officials would choose from policy responses including cutting benefits, reducing eligibility or leaving the program altogether in response to the new cost-share.

‘Stealing from working families’

In a press release, a quartet of Democratic leaders in Congress highlighted the regressive impact the CBO projected.

“Prices keep rising and American families are struggling,” House Budget Committee ranking Democrat Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania said. “So what are President Trump’s Republicans doing to help? They passed a law that will make things worse by stealing from working families to give billionaires a tax break.”

“It is truly unfathomable that Trump and Republicans in Congress are championing a bill that gives the top 10 percent $13,600 more per year – while the least affluent 10 percent will lose $1,200 per year,” Senate Budget ranking Democrat Jeff Merkley of Oregon said. “This is families lose, and billionaires win.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both of New York, made similar statements in the release.

Middle income Wisconsinites got a $180 tax cut and lost services worth much more than that. | 3D illustration rendering by Getty Images Creative

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and state legislators cut taxes by $1.3 billion in the new state budget, paying out a quarter of the state’s $4.6 billion surplus so that Wisconsinites who earn up to $200,000 can get a tax break worth an average of $180 per year.

That’s not a lot of money to trade for losing access to child care, reducing services that help veterans find jobs and housing, and cutting programs at schools. But somehow cutting taxes has become an agreed-upon, bipartisan top priority, even as the defunding of everything begins to take a major toll on our quality of life.

As Baylor Spears reports, more than 65% of Wisconsin school districts will face a reduction in funds under the new state budget. Many will go to local property taxpayers to ask for more – to the annoyance of citizens who are getting tired of the constant begging from schools that no longer receive adequate funding from the state. Local residents were willing to say yes to a record number of school funding referenda in 2024. But there are signs their patience is wearing thin.

Republican legislators are tapping into that annoyance with a bill to repeal the results of Evers’ partial veto of the last budget, which extended a temporary increase in the cap on revenue school districts could raise for the next 400 years. Evers’ maneuver outraged Republicans, who challenged the veto before the Wisconsin Supreme Court and lost. The new bill would undo the veto’s effect on school revenue caps (and the bill itself will also, presumably, be vetoed by Evers).

“The pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock 402 years before this veto,” the Republican sponsors of the bill write. “It is hard to justify locking in a funding increase for just as long into the future.” 

But like the 180 bucks a year in “tax relief” Republican legislators are touting as a major victory for middle class Wisconsinites, Evers’ 400 year veto amounts to less than meets the eye. For one thing, it doesn’t lock in an increase — it just allows districts to raise an additional $325 per pupil through a combination of local property taxes and state aid. Individual school boards must still vote to pass any property tax increase. And the state could head off those property tax increases by putting more money into schools. Instead, Republican legislators insisted on no increase at all in general school aid in the budget. The same legislative Republicans who are howling about property tax increases created the problem, refusing to fund education and then blaming districts that turn to the only other source of funding they can tap.

Overall, the Wisconsin Policy Forum reports, Wisconsin has slipped from one of the top states for education spending into the bottom half over the last 25 years. Tax-cutting replaced education as the state’s top priority. While most other states increased spending on education after the pandemic, in Wisconsin spending on schools went down. And we spend far less as a share of personal income on education now than we did in the early 2000s, and less than the national average.

Behind all of this budget math is the sad reality that, if we don’t agree to shoulder some expenses as a society, a lot of the elements of a decent life are out of reach for most people. Not paying for things through taxes doesn’t make expenses go away. It just makes them more burdensome on the smaller group that has to pay. It takes a bigger bite out of local property tax payers to pick up the cost of their schools than if the cost is spread across the state in the form of income taxes, and it’s even more expensive for individual families to pay the full cost of educating their kids. In the early 2000s, Wisconsin had the best school system in the Midwest at a cost of about 5% of personal income for taxpayers, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum. That’s about $2,500 of a $50,000 income. Try to find full-time private education for less than that. 

Not just schools but a clean environment, public safety, good roads and reliable services and infrastructure that doesn’t fail are things we’ve long taken for granted. Those things are all threatened now. 

When I was a high school exchange student in Quito, Ecuador, I learned that running water in the affluent suburb where I lived was not guaranteed. Sometimes the water would go out when you were taking a shower. Keeping a bucket of water in the bathroom just in case was normal. Then a well known government official moved into the neighborhood and the problem, temporarily, cleared up. 

We are moving toward that sort of social setup now in the U.S. 

The assumption that drives tax-cutting mania at the state and national level is that we shouldn’t have to spend money toward collective, public goods. We should all pay our own way. That’s fine if you can hire your own private security firm, send your kids to private academies, and avoid contact with an increasingly desperate populace. For most people, it’s a terrible bargain.

It’s both cheaper and better for all of us, as individuals, to support a decent society for all. It only becomes unaffordable when we start pulling apart the fabric of society, convincing people they’ll be better off going it alone, after liquidating our collective wealth.

Undermining confidence in public institutions and cutting taxes so those institutions are underfunded and strained are part of the same push to increase the wealth of the already wealthy, and help them shirk any responsibility to contribute to society

Why should poor people have health care? Why should the elderly and disabled be protected from being thrown out on the street? Why should little kids have nutritious meals? If you weren’t clever enough to be born rich, you deserve nothing. That’s not exactly how the Trump administration puts it, or the Republicans in the state Legislature who have been insisting for years on frittering away the state’s budget surplus on tax cuts worth very little to anyone who doesn’t already make a ton of money. But it’s the basic, underlying idea.

This argument is compelling only to people who don’t understand the math.

Elon Musk, whose $400 billion fortune is more than the wealth owned by one-half of all U.S. citizens combined, doesn’t want to pay what for him is a pittance to help maintain the health and wellbeing of our country.

Wisconsin Republicans were unwilling to spend $4 million — .004% of the total state budget — to maintain veterans’ services to keep military vets from becoming homeless.

Efficiency, cost savings — these are the alleged goals of the federal and state austerity programs. But the real goal is to make you forget what it was like to live in a functional society, one where kids had enough to eat and people didn’t die of preventable diseases, the environment was clean and Wisconsin children could get a great, free education, afford to go to college and dream of owning a home.

What the anti-government tax-cutters want is a society riven by resentment and anger, where people are divided against each other and the dysfunction makes it easy to “divide and conquer” as our last Republican governor memorably put it.

Down with education, down with clean water, down with health care and nutrition for poor kids. Up with lurid crime stories and hateful, divisive rhetoric.

When society falls apart, it’s much easier for greedy charlatans to plunder and steal the wealth of the state. And after we’ve codified irresponsibility — spent down the treasury and starved society and made permanent the arrangement whereby the richest people in society are not obligated to contribute, well then it becomes much harder to make the rich pay their fair share.

Try to remember what it was like to have a decent, functional Wisconsin. Try not to give in to the politics of distraction and division. Because $180 is a pathetic bribe to give up stability, security and the opportunity for the kids of today to grow up with hope that they can still have a decent life. 

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Shelley Feist, 61, of Washington, D.C., who was raised in North Dakota, protests outside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, July 2, 2025, as House Republicans try to pass the "big beautiful bill." Feist said she's worried about effects on rural hospitals as a result of Medicaid cuts because her parents, in their 80s, depend on rural health care in Minot, North Dakota. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Protesters demonstrated against the “big beautiful bill” outside the U.S. Capitol Wednesday as House Republicans whipped votes to get the bill across the finish line and to President Donald Trump’s desk by a self-imposed July Fourth deadline.

Shelley Feist stood on Independence Avenue near the entrance to the House of Representatives holding signs above her head, one reading “Cruel Corrupt Cowards,” the other a Republican elephant with the word “Treason” written on it.

“I think they’re being cruel. I think cruelty is the point,” Feist, 61, of Washington, D.C., and originally from North Dakota, told States Newsroom. “It’s also extremely alarming that there’s such cowardice in the GOP.”

The massive budget reconciliation package, passed by Senate Republicans Tuesday with a tie-breaking vote by Vice President JD Vance, extends and expands 2017 tax cuts at a cost of roughly $4.5 trillion over the next decade. It also yanks funding from federal food and health safety net programs.

The bill aggressively rolls back clean energy tax credits, as well as raising the nation’s borrowing limit to $5 trillion.

Latest figures from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office show the package would add $3.4 trillion to the nation’s deficit over the next decade, when the country is mired in record-breaking debt. That office’s earlier analysis of the House-passed bill found the package would reduce resources for low-income families while padding higher earners.

Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, who chaired an hours-long final committee hearing about the bill overnight, said Wednesday the package is an “embodiment of the America First agenda and we would all do well to remember that.”

Medicaid cuts

Top of mind for Feist is the bill’s cuts to Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for low-income individuals and some with disabilities. The Senate version of the package, passed Tuesday, included a  $1 trillion cut to Medicaid over 10 years, according to the CBO.

“I have parents in North Dakota who are 85 and 86. They already have difficulty seeing their doctor. For every doctor that leaves, he takes on 14 times more burden. Rural health care is already extremely difficult. I would expect there will not be a hospital near where my parents live if this bill is signed into law,” said Feist, whose parents live near Minot.

Rural hospitals rely on Medicaid payments. In a last-minute move before Tuesday’s vote, Senate Republicans doubled a fund to $50 billion to subsidize hospitals that will lose funding. Critics say that amount is not enough to fill the gap.

GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Thom Tillis of North Carolina voted no after voicing concerns over Medicaid cuts.

Nadine Seiler, 60, of Waldorf, Maryland, stood near a press conference by the Congressional Hispanic Conference protesting the bill. Seiler held a large spray-painted sheet above her head with a message on each side: “Free America from Big Bad Bill” and “Coming Soon Freedom in Name Only.”

“I’m concerned about my fellow citizens who are going to be losing Medicaid, food stamps, human health services. People are going to die,” Seiler said.

“And I know Joni Ernst says that we all gonna die, but we gonna die faster and unnecessarily and I care about that.”

Seiler was referring to Sen. Ernst’s response to her Iowa constituents who expressed concern about Medicaid cuts at a town hall on May 30.

SNAP and ICE

Mark Starr sang a protest song he wrote about the “big beautiful bill” as he played guitar and harmonica outside the Longworth House Office Building Wednesday.

The 39-year-old Albuquerque, New Mexico, native told States Newsroom he drove to the capital in late April to begin protesting the bill. He said he’s particularly focused on additional funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement contained in the package as well as cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which provides food benefits to low-income households.

“New Mexico is pretty poor, and so if these cuts to SNAP go, kids can go hungry in New Mexico,” Starr said. “It’s just, like, really gonna mess us up, and we’re just one of the many states that will be affected that way.”

New Mexico has one of the highest poverty rates in the nation.

A provision in the bill will shift food assistance costs to state governments for the first time in the federal program’s history. Critics worry that states could tighten eligibility requirements or drop the program because of the financial burden.

The left-leaning Center for Budget and Policy Priorities estimates 55,000 teens age 14 and up, and adults up to age 64 could lose food assistance in New Mexico because of the bill’s cuts to state work requirement waivers. Children would remain eligible but households would overall see significantly decreased SNAP dollars.

The CBO found in late May that the House-passed bill would result in over 3 million people nationwide losing food assistance.

Starr said he’s also against additional funding provided for immigration enforcement.

“I think they have enough,” he said, pointing to Trump’s visit to a new detention facility in Florida that the White House is touting as “Alligator Alcatraz.”

The Senate-approved version includes an additional $45 billion for ICE detention facilities and $29.9 billion for ICE enforcement and deportation, among billions more directed toward the Southern border.

Clean energy to take a hit

Tiernan Sittenfeld, of the League of Conservation Voters, huddled just outside the House with a group wearing t-shirts that read “Hands off our air, land and clean energy.”

Sittenfeld, the organization’s senior vice president of government affairs, argues the rollbacks of clean energy tax credits in the Senate version will “kill clean energy jobs.”

“It is bad for our economy. It’s bad for jobs. It’s going to raise people’s energy bills. And of course, it’s bad for the planet,” she said.

Senate Republicans accelerated the phase-out of some residential, manufacturing and production credits at a faster rate than the House bill. A last-minute change loosened the timeline on some tech-neutral energy credits though, and removed a previously added tax on wind and solar projects.

Industry groups and energy companies small and large have warned early termination of the credits will have a major impact on growth.

The tax credits for solar, wind, batteries for energy storage, and electric vehicles, among others, were enacted under Democrats’ own 2022 budget reconciliation bill known as the “Inflation Reduction Act.”

The majority of investment in new clean energy manufacturing and production has been concentrated in rural states and states that elected Trump to his second term, according to data collected since 2022 by the Clean Investment Monitor, a joint project by the Rhodium Group and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research.

“Any Republican who votes for this legislation is voting against the interest of their constituents, voting to kill jobs in their district, voting to kill clean energy projects, voting to make their constituents’ energy bills go up,” Sittenfeld said.

Far-right House members who as of Wednesday afternoon were withholding their votes maintain the rollbacks on the clean energy tax cuts, which they’ve dubbed the “green new scam,” do not go far enough.

Republican Sens. John Barrasso of Wyoming, John Thune of South Dakota, Mike Crapo of Idaho and Lindsey Graham of South Dakota speak to reporters after passage of their sweeping tax break and spending cut bill on Tuesday, July 1, 2025. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

This report has been updated.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Republicans approved their signature tax break and spending cuts package Tuesday with a tie-breaking vote cast by Vice President JD Vance, following days of tense, closed-door negotiations that went until the few last minutes of a marathon amendment voting session.

The 51-50 mostly party-line vote sends the legislation back to the House, where GOP leaders hope to clear the bill for President Donald Trump’s signature this week. But frustrations throughout the conference over changes made in the Senate could delay or even block final approval. 

Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Thom Tillis of North Carolina voted against approving the legislation over concerns it would not benefit the country’s finances or Republican voters.

Changes made in final negotiations were not immediately clear or publicly available.

Majority Leader John Thune said the passage marked “a historic day.”

“We’re very excited to be a part of something that is going to make America stronger, safer and more prosperous, and it really starts with the agenda that President Trump laid out when he was running last year.

“He talked about modernizing our military, securing our borders, restoring energy dominance in this country, bringing tax relief to working families and low income taxpayers in this country, and doing something about the runaway, spiraling spending and debt,” the South Dakota Republican said minutes after the vote.

“So this was an incredible victory for the American people, and we as a team are delighted to be a part of it.”

The bill now heads back to the House. The chamber’s Committee on Rules is expected to meet Tuesday afternoon, which will be the final stop for the bill before it reaches the House floor.

Thune said he believes Senate Republicans have given the House “a really strong product.”

“I think we took what they sent us and strengthened and improved upon it. And so I’m hopeful that now, when it gets sent over there, as they deliberate about how they want to handle it, we’ll find the votes that are necessary to pass it and want to put it on the president’s desk,” he said.

Trump praised the Senate’s passage on his Truth Social media platform, saying “Almost all of our Great Republicans in the United States Senate have passed our ‘ONE, BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL.’”

He added: “We can have all of this right now, but only if the House GOP UNITES, ignores its occasional “GRANDSTANDERS” (You know who you are!), and does the right thing, which is sending this Bill to my desk. We are on schedule — Let’s keep it going, and be done before you and your family go on a July 4th vacation.”

Several House conservatives have railed against the Senate version, including Reps. Andy Ogles of Tennessee, Ralph Norman of South Carolina and others.

House Speaker Mike Johnson issued a joint statement with House Republican leaders saying the chamber “will work quickly to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill that enacts President Trump’s full America First agenda by the Fourth of July. The American people gave us a clear mandate, and after four years of Democrat failure, we intend to deliver without delay.”

“Republicans were elected to do exactly what this bill achieves: secure the border, make tax cuts permanent, unleash American energy dominance, restore peace through strength, cut wasteful spending, and return to a government that puts Americans first,” the Louisiana Republican said in the statement that included House Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana, Majority Whip Tom Emmer of Minnesota and conference chair Lisa McClain of Michigan.

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski , whose support had been unclear until the vote, and Majority Whip John Barrasso, of Wyoming, left the chamber to catch an elevator together just after 9:30 a.m. Eastern.

Asked if the bill was in the hands of the parliamentarian, Murkowski quipped, “I think it’s in the hands of the people that operate the coffee machine.”

Barrasso said “Yes” when asked if it would pass this morning.

Murkowski: ‘difficult and agonizing legislative 24-hour period’

Flooded by reporters after the vote, Murkowski said “we do not have a perfect bill by any stretch of the imagination.”

“My hope is that the House is gonna look at this and recognize that we’re not there yet, and I would hope that we would be able to actually do what we used to do around here, which is work back and forth in the two bodies to get a measure that’s gonna be better for the people in this country and more particularly, for the people in Alaska,” she said.

“This is probably the most difficult and agonizing legislative 24-hour period that I have encountered, and I’ve been here quite a while, and you all know I’ve got a few battle scars underneath me,” Murkowski added. “But I think I held my head up and made sure that the people of Alaska are not forgotten in this, but I think that there is more that needs to be done, and I’m not done.”

“I am gonna take a nap, though,” she said.

When asked about Murkowski’s decision to vote for the bill, Thune said, “She, as you know, is a very independent thinker and somebody who studies the issues really, really hard and well. And I’m just grateful that at the end of the day, she included what the rest of us did, or at least most of the rest of us did, and that is that this was the right direction for the future of our country.”

Democrats react

Senate Democrats walking off the floor seemed somber, a sentiment that Senate Leader Chuck Schumer said also extended to Republicans after the bill’s passage.

“On the Republican side, when the bill passed, there was a bit of somberness that I don’t think was expected, and that’s because they knew deep in their hearts how bad this bill is for them, their states and the Republican Party,” Schumer said.

“When people start losing their Medicaid, when they start losing their jobs, when their electric bills go up, when their premiums go up, when kids and parents lose SNAP funding, the people of America will remember this vote,” the New York Democrat continued.

Criticism poured in from others as well, including the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which likened the Senate’s bill passage to jumping “off a budget cliff.”

“The level of blatant disregard we just witnessed for our nation’s fiscal condition and budget process is a failure of responsible governing. These are the very same lawmakers who for years have bemoaned the nation’s massive debt, voting to put another $4 trillion on the credit card,” the organization’s president Maya MacGuineas said in a statement.

CRFB estimates the Senate version of the bill would add $600 billion to the national deficit just in 2027.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released a calculation Sunday showing the bill would add $3.25 trillion to deficits over 10 years.

Trump weighs in ahead of vote

Trump told reporters on Tuesday morning before leaving for a Florida visit to the “Alligator Alcatraz” immigrant detention site that “it’s very complicated stuff” when asked about Senate Republicans’ debate over spending cuts.

“We’re going to have to see the final version. I don’t want to go too crazy with cuts. I don’t like cuts. There are certain things that have been cut, which is good. I think we’re doing well,” Trump said. “We’re going to have to see, it’s some very complicated stuff. Great enthusiasm as you know. And I think in the end we’re going to have it.”

The heart of the nearly 1,000-page legislation extends and expands the 2017 tax law to keep individual income tax rates at the same level and makes permanent some tax breaks on business investments and research and development costs.

The bill would also put in motion some of Trump’s campaign promises, including no tax on qualifying tips, overtime or car loan interest, but only for a few years.

And it slashes spending on the Medicaid program for low-income people and some people with disabilities as well as shifting significant costs of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, to states for the first time. It also overhauls federal education aid.

It would also bolster spending on border security and defense by hundreds of billions of dollars, including line items for the “golden dome” missile defense system and additional barriers along the southern border.

The measure would provide a substantial funding increase for federal immigration enforcement for detention and removal of people without permanent legal status, aiding the president in carrying out his campaign promise of mass deportations.

The Senate version of the bill also would revive the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act fund, a bipartisan measure championed by Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri. The fund provides money to victims of certain types of cancer and surviving family members in several states affected by the United States atomic bomb testing program and radioactive waste left behind. 

Uranium miners would also be eligible under the measure. While reviving the fund has received wide bipartisan approval in the Senate, the House has not shown the same support.

The Senate bill would raise the debt limit by $5 trillion, a figure designed to get Congress past next year’s midterm elections before the country would once again bump up against the borrowing limit.

On to the House

House approval is far from guaranteed.

Johnson can only lose four Republicans if all lawmakers in that chamber attend the vote. Several GOP members have voiced frustration with how the Senate has reworked the legislation, signaling an uphill climb for the bill.

House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith said as he left the Senate cloakroom just after 9:20 a.m. Eastern that lawmakers are “getting closer to a bill signing on July Fourth.”

“If you followed this journey over the last six months, over and over, people said that we could not accomplish a budget (reconciliation bill). We did. They said we would never pass it out of the House. We did. The Senate is going to pass it. The House is going to pass it, and the president’s going to sign it into law,” the Missouri Republican said.

Three amendments succeed

The Senate had adopted three amendments to the bill following an all-night amendment voting session, known as a vote-a-rama.

Tennessee Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn was able to remove language from the package that would have blocked state and local governments from regulating artificial intelligence for five years if they wanted access to a $500 million fund. That vote was 99-1 with only North Carolina’s Tillis voting to keep the language in the package.

Blackburn said the change was necessary because lawmakers in Congress have “proven that they cannot legislate on emerging technology.”

Senators approved an amendment from Iowa GOP Sen. Joni Ernst by voice vote that would disqualify “anyone making a million dollars or more from being eligible for unemployment income support.”

Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy was able to get an amendment adopted by a voice vote that would move up the date when Medicaid administrators must begin checking the Social Security Administration’s death master file to determine if a new enrollee is alive before adding them to the health program. It was set to begin on Jan. 1, 2028, but will now begin one year earlier.

Senators rejected dozens of amendments offered by both Democrats and Republicans, some of which deadlocked on 50-50 votes. Maine’s Collins and Alaska’s Murkowski broke with their party several times to vote with Democrats.

National private school voucher program

Hawaii Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono tried to eliminate a sweeping private school voucher program that’s baked into the reconciliation package, but that vote failed 50-50. Collins, Nebraska Republican Sen. Deb Fischer and Murkowski voted in support.

The original proposal called for $4 billion a year in tax credits beginning in 2027 for people donating to organizations that provide private and religious school scholarships.

But the parliamentarian last week deemed the program to not comply with the “Byrd Bath,” a Senate process named for the late Sen. Robert Byrd, forcing senators to rework the program.

Details on the finalized version of the program remain unknown as the final bill text has not been released.   

Safety funding for Virginia airport across from D.C.

Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner tried to add language to the bill that would have increased safety funding for airports near Washington, D.C., and established a memorial for the victims who died in a crash this January. The vote failed on a tied 50-50 vote, with Collins, Kansas GOP Sen. Jerry Moran and Murkowski voting with Democrats in support.

“Colleagues, we all know that on January 29 of this year, 67 individuals lost their lives when a military helicopter and a passenger jet collided near Reagan National Airport. This tragedy underscores the need for more safety improvements at National Airport,” Warner said. “The reconciliation bill increases, actually doubles, the amount of rent that National and Dulles pay the government but doesn’t use any of that money to make those airports and the people who use them any safer.”

He argued there was “no good rationale for increasing those rents and not using them for aviation safety.”

Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz spoke against Warner’s amendment, saying the rents for the two airports in Virginia near the nation’s capital haven’t been updated in decades.

“The federal government originally calculated the rent in 1987 at $7.5 million dollars, massively below market rates,” Cruz said. “This bill increases that to $15 million, still dramatically below market rates.”

Cruz — chairman of the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation — said the legislation includes $12.5 billion for the Federal Aviation Administration to “transform the air traffic control system” and said his panel is looking into the collision in order to prevent something similar from happening again. 

Trump budget director’s office targeted

Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen also got within one vote of having an amendment adopted when he tried to remove a section from the bill that would increase funding for the White House budget office by $100 million.

“This is at a time when (Federal Emergency Management Agency) grants to many of our states have been canceled, grants for law enforcement have been frozen, grants for victims of crimes are on hold,” Van Hollen said. “That is not efficiency. That is creating chaos and uncertainty. And I ask my colleagues, why in the world would we want to send another $100 million to OMB?”

Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson opposed the efforts, saying “the Office of Management and Budget needs to identify budgeting and accounting efficiencies in the executive branch. They need the resources to do it.”

The amendment was not added to the bill following another tied 50-50 vote with Collins, Murkowski and Paul voting with Democrats in favor.

Had GOP leadership wanted either of those proposals added to the package, they could have had Vance break the tie, but they did not.

Collins loses vote on rural hospital fund

Maine’s Collins tried to get an amendment added to the legislation that would have increased “funding for the rural health care provider fund to $50 billion dollars and expand the list of eligible providers to include not only rural hospitals but also community health centers, nursing homes, ambulance services, skilled nursing facilities and others.”

Collins said the additional $25 billion in funding for the fund would be paid for by “a modest increase in the top marginal tax rate, equal to the pre-2017 rate for individuals with income above $25 million and married couples with income above $50 million.”

Collins’ amendment was subject to a Senate procedural limit known as a budget point of order. She was unable to get the votes needed to waive that on a 22-78 vote.

Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden spoke against Collins’ proposal, calling it “flawed,” and introduced the budget point of order against her amendment.

“The danger Senate Republicans are causing for rural hospitals is so great, Republicans have had to create a rural hospital relief fund so they can look like they are fixing the problem they are causing,” Wyden said. “It is a Band-Aid on an amputation. It provides just a tiny fraction of the nearly $1 trillion in cuts the bill makes to Medicaid. It would be much more logical to simply not cut $1 trillion from Medicaid in the first place.”

Collins received a mix of support from Republicans, including West Virginia Shelley Moore Capito, Louisiana’s Bill Cassidy, Utah’s John Curtis, Nebraska’s Fischer, South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, Missouri’s Josh Hawley, Ohio’s Jon Husted and Bernie Moreno, Mississippi’s Cindy Hyde-Smith and Roger Wicker, Louisiana’s Kennedy, Kansans Roger Marshall and Moran, Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell, Alaskans Dan Sullivan and Murkowski and Indiana’s Todd Young.

Also voting to waive the point of order and move forward with the amendment were Georgia’s Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock and Virginia’s Warner, all Democrats, and independent Maine Sen. Angus King. 

The U.S. Capitol on Sunday, June 29, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate began floor debate on Republicans’ “big, beautiful bill” Sunday afternoon, though there are several steps to go before the legislation can become law, and any one of those could lead to additional GOP opposition — potentially dooming the measure. 

Senators must wrap up an ongoing review of the bill with the parliamentarian to ensure it meets the strict rules for using the reconciliation process and then run the gauntlet during a marathon amendment voting session.

Additional changes to the sweeping tax and spending cuts package, some of which were being worked on as debate took place, need to garner the support of nearly every Republican in Congress. Otherwise, it will never become law.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune signaled during a brief hallway interview there may be enough votes for a new twist in the Medicaid changes in the bill — an amendment reducing in some way how much the federal government spends on Medicaid in states that expanded the program as a result of Democrats’ 2010 health care law. The federal government currently pays 90% of the costs for enrollees in the expansion.

“We’re going to do what we can to support the effort,” Thune said, referring to an amendment offered by Florida Sen. Rick Scott that was not yet public. “It’s great policy and something that there’s a high level of interest in our conference in getting made part of the bill, and obviously scores a substantial savings.”

But Thune, R-S.D., sidestepped a question about whether making that change would create vote-count issues if Republicans in the House with affected districts object, potentially preventing the bill from reaching President Donald Trump’s desk.

“We have had some of these conversations with (Speaker Mike Johnson) and others over there, and then also with our colleagues for some time,” Thune said. “But I think the way this is designed, and the way that Sen. Scott has written it; it should be something that I don’t know how Republicans couldn’t be in favor of what he’s trying to get done here.

“So, you know, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Obviously, we’ve still got to get into the debate over here and get through the amendment process and we’ll see what the fate of the amendment is on the floor.”

Currently 41 states, including the District of Columbia, have adopted the Medicaid expansion, according to the health care research organization KFF.

A Scott spokesperson told States Newsroom they would share his amendment once it was final.

Still fluid

Typically when a major piece of legislation comes to the Senate floor the text is set and amendment debate is closely controlled to ensure delicately negotiated deals don’t crumble in full public view.

That isn’t the case this time around and much could change before senators take a final passage vote later this week, potentially as soon as Tuesday.

GOP leaders using the complex reconciliation process to move their signature policy bill through Congress means every provision must have an impact on federal spending or revenue that is not “merely incidental.”

That involves Democrats and Republicans going before the Senate parliamentarian, the chamber’s official referee, to argue over dozens of provisions. She then decides if a given policy meets the strict and sometimes murky rules.

That process hadn’t yet wrapped up when debate on the megabill began and is expected to continue as the 20-hour clock ticks down toward a marathon amendment voting session.

Senate bill would add $3.2 trillion to deficits

There are also increasing concerns among Republicans, including those in the House Freedom Caucus, over how the bill will impact the federal government’s balance sheet during the next decade.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office announced Sunday morning the Senate’s revised tax and spending cuts package will add $3.253 trillion to deficits during the next decade compared to current law.

Trump appeared to try to assuage concerns through a social media post.

“For all cost cutting Republicans, of which I am one, REMEMBER, you still have to get reelected,” Trump wrote. “Don’t go too crazy! We will make it all up, times 10, with GROWTH, more than ever before.”

The latest score came just hours before senators officially began floor debate on the sweeping package that will extend the 2017 GOP tax law, rework how much state governments have to contribute to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, overhaul several aspects of Medicaid and cut its spending, restructure higher education aid programs and much more.

Senators voted mostly along party lines late Saturday to proceed with the legislation, though leaders had to hold the vote open for more than three hours as they worked to get the votes needed.

Even after taking that crucial procedural step, the bill continued to evolve.

The parliamentarian ruled Sunday morning that another six provisions must be revised to comply with the rules or be removed from the 940-page package. 

One Alaska sweetener knocked out

GOP senators cannot include, or might need to restructure, language meant to bring Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski on board by enhancing the federal matching rate for Medicaid in two states with high poverty guideline levels: Alaska and Hawaii. The program for low-income people and some people with disabilities is run as a state-federal partnership.

Since Hawaii is represented in Congress by a Democratic delegation, the Republican benefit would largely have applied to Alaska’s two GOP senators.

Senate Republicans did receive some good news from the parliamentarian in her latest ruling, which cleared language that will steadily lower the maximum percent states can set for Medicaid provider tax rates from the current 6% to 3.5% in 2032.

The in-the-weeds policy has caused considerable frustration among GOP senators across the political spectrum, who argued a prior version would likely cause financial strain for rural hospitals by beginning the process one year sooner.

Planned Parenthood

The parliamentarian is still reviewing several other policy changes in the bill, including whether Republicans can prevent Medicaid funding from going to Planned Parenthood for one year, effectively blocking beneficiaries from receiving care there at all.

Federal law already bars federal taxpayer dollars from going toward abortions with limited exceptions for rape, incest, or the life of the pregnant patient. So this change would prevent Medicaid patients, who may have few other options, from using Planned Parenthood for other types of health care, like annual physicals, contraception and cancer screenings.

A prior version of the bill blocked federal funding from going to Planned Parenthood for the next decade.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, did not immediately respond to a request from States Newsroom about how the rulings might impact the bill going forward.

Senate Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., wrote in a statement the latest rulings show “that Republican attempts to give away goodies that benefit certain states will not pass muster under Senate rules.”

“Senate Democrats have also successfully challenged a giveaway to Big Pharma, as well as policies that make it harder for seniors and kids to get affordable health care through Medicaid,” Wyden wrote. “Republicans wanted to bring back the health care tactics of yesteryear, like waiting periods, lock-outs and annual limits on care, but Democrats have wrestled these out of the bill. I am disappointed that the Republican rewrite of the provider tax changes will remain in the bill: this policy will force states into devastating cuts to health care that seniors, kids and Americans with disabilities depend on. We will continue to fight any attempt to sneak through harmful health care policies in this morally bankrupt legislation.”

Amendment fights ahead

Republicans hope to pass the entire package before the Fourth of July, though they have several hurdles to jump over before they can meet that goal.

Senate floor debate can last up to 20 hours. After that, senators will begin a marathon amendment voting session where members of each political party can propose changing or removing certain pieces of the legislation.

GOP leaders generally like to avoid public disputes within the party but the rules of reconciliation don’t really allow that and several Republican senators are expected to offer amendments.

There is no time limit or cap on the number of amendments that can be offered during vote-a-rama, so that can last hours or even days in theory.

Whenever Democrats and Republicans decide they’ve debated their last amendment, they’ll move on to voting to approve the Senate’s version of the “big, beautiful bill.”

At least 50 Republicans need to vote to approve the measure, with Vice President JD Vance’s tie-breaking vote. More than four GOP senators objecting to the overall bill means it cannot pass as it’s written.

Thom Tillis, Rand Paul

Republican Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Rand Paul of Kentucky voted against moving forward with debate so it’s likely they will vote against final passage as well. Two more senators deciding not to back the bill would halt its momentum, at least until GOP leaders could make changes to get their votes.

Tillis on Sunday announced he would not run for reelection, after being attacked by Trump for voting against advancing the legislation.

Senate approval of the bill would send it back to the House for a final vote, though centrist and far-right members of the Republican Conference in that chamber have voiced concerns about changes made in the upper chamber.

Johnson, R-La., will need to keep nearly every one of the 220 House GOP lawmakers supportive if that chamber is to send the legislation to  Trump for his signature before Friday. 

U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., left, listens as Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, speaks to reporters outside of the West Wing of the White House on June 4, 2025 in Washington, D.C.  after a meeting with President Donald Trump. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

This report has been updated.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Thursday told his supporters to call members of Congress and lobby them to support the “big, beautiful bill,” a crucial push with just days to go before a self-imposed Fourth of July deadline.

Trump’s plea follows several tumultuous days on Capitol Hill as GOP leaders struggled to find consensus on multiple policy disagreements, especially after the parliamentarian ruled core elements of the package don’t meet the complex rules for moving a budget reconciliation bill.

Trump during an event in the White House’s East Room that was attended by several GOP lawmakers also cautioned Republicans against voting down the tax and spending cut package.

“We don’t want to have grandstanders,” Trump said. “Not good people. They know who I’m talking about. I call them out. But we don’t need grandstanders. We have to get our country back and bring it back strong.”

Some Republican senators remain optimistic they can work through the weekend and that the House votes will come together next week, despite growing opposition from members in that chamber.

Sen. Eric Schmitt said he doesn’t think the parliamentarian’s rulings will delay the votes “outside the weekend window, which has been the goal all the time.”

“We’re probably voting into the weekend, though. That’s probably my guess — Saturday and I suppose even Sunday — but, that’s the goal, I don’t think that materially changes too much,” the Missouri Republican said.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., however, appeared a bit less definite, telling reporters in the afternoon that he didn’t know when the chamber would take the procedural vote that kicks off floor consideration.

“I’ll get back to you on that,” he said.

Medicaid provisions tossed

Earlier Thursday, Senate Republicans suffered a significant setback when the parliamentarian ruled several changes to Medicaid in the bill don’t comply with the rules, which means billions of dollars in savings are no longer available for the GOP to offset the cost of tax cuts.

Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo. R-Idaho, must rework or completely eliminate nine changes the committee proposed to the health care programs, though more of the panel’s proposals are still under review.

Republicans can no longer reduce the amount of federal matching funds for state governments that use their own tax dollars to provide Medicaid coverage for immigrants in the country without proper documentation.

The GOP bill cannot bar gender-affirming care for Medicaid patients.

And Republicans need to change or scrap a proposal to reduce states’ Medicaid provider tax credits, an issue that is relatively in the weeds of health care policy but has sharply divided the GOP and drawn fierce opposition from states.

The changes or eliminations will have a major impact on how much in savings the GOP tax and spending cut bill will generate during the next decade and will likely make the overall package’s deficit impact higher than before. The legislation is intended to extend the 2017 tax cuts and make spending reductions.

The ruling might make it more difficult for Trump and GOP leaders in Congress to get the votes needed to pass the bill at all, let alone before their self-imposed Fourth of July timeline. Senate GOP leaders had said they wanted to begin procedural votes as soon as Friday.

The measure already had been stuck on Wednesday amid growing disputes over how Medicaid changes will impact rural hospitals and far more.

Democrats to continue scrutinizing bill

Senate Budget Committee ranking member Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., who released the parliamentarian’s rulings, wrote in a statement that Democrats will continue to advocate for removing dozens of proposals from the bill that they believe don’t meet reconciliation rules.

“Republicans are scrambling to rewrite parts of this bill to continue advancing their families lose, and billionaires win agenda, but Democrats stand ready to fully scrutinize any changes and ensure the Byrd Rule is enforced,” Merkley wrote.

A staffer, who was granted anonymity to discuss the chairman’s plans, said the Finance Committee will “rework certain provisions to address the Byrd guidance and be compliant with reconciliation.”

The Byrd rule, named for former West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd, includes several guardrails for reconciliation bills.

Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., wrote in a statement that the parliamentarian’s ruling will lead to “more than $250 billion in health care cuts removed from the Republicans’ big bad bill.

“Democrats fought and won, striking health care cuts from this bill that would hurt Americans’ walking on an economic tightrope. This bill is rotten to its core, and I’ll keep fighting the cuts in this morally bankrupt bill until the end.”

The parliamentarian is still deciding whether several health provisions meet reconciliation rules, including language that would block all Medicaid funding from going to Planned Parenthood, effectively blocking Medicaid patients from visiting the organization for routine health services.

Federal law already bars funding for abortions with exceptions for rape, incest, or the life of the pregnant patient.

The parliamentarian will also decide later whether Republicans’ bill can block the Department of Health and Human Services from implementing a Biden-era rule that would require nursing homes to have a nurse working 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Higher ed provisions axed

The parliamentarian also struck down several attempts from congressional Republicans to overhaul the higher education system.

GOP lawmakers cannot streamline student loan repayment options for current borrowers to just a standard repayment plan or an income-driven repayment plan, making such restrictions apply to only new borrowers.

Republicans have to nix a proposal that opened up the Pell Grant — a government subsidy that helps low-income students pay for college — to institutions that are for-profit and not accredited.

The parliamentarian scrapped a proposal that would have barred payments made by students enrolled in a medical or dental internship or residency program from counting toward Public Service Loan Forgiveness.

The federal program eliminates remaining debt for borrowers when meeting certain requirements, including working for a qualified employer within the government or nonprofit sector.

The parliamentarian rejected GOP lawmakers’ proposal to end federal student aid eligibility for certain immigrants who are not U.S. citizens.

‘Too many Medicaid cuts’

Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley said the parliamentarian’s ruling on the Medicaid provider tax rate will give lawmakers “a chance to get it right.”

“This is a chance for the Senate to fix a problem that they created and not defund rural hospitals,” Hawley said, later adding he supports the House language that would freeze the rate at 6% instead of decreasing it to 3.5% over several years. 

Hawley said hours before Trump’s event that he expects the president to get more involved in negotiations now that he’s back from a NATO conference in Europe and said Trump was in a “terrific mood” during a recent phone call.

“I think he wants this done. But he wants it done well. And he does not want this to be a Medicaid cuts bill,” Hawley said. “He made that very clear to me. He said this is a tax cut bill, it’s not a Medicaid cuts bill. I think he’s tired of hearing about all these Medicaid cuts, you know. As am I. It’s because there are too many Medicaid cuts.”

Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy early Thursday night called on leaders to put the House’s language regarding Medicaid back into the bill, wiping out changes made by the Finance Committee.

“My position is that cuts, and especially drastic cuts, to Medicaid have to be avoided. The Senate bill cuts Medicaid too much,” the influential chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee wrote in a social media post. “I agree with President Trump, the House version is better.”

SNAP cuts

The Agriculture Committee also is reworking parts of its bill, some being closely watched by states, to meet the rules that govern reconciliation.

Committee Chairman John Boozman, R-Ark., said he expects to hear from the parliamentarian before the end of Thursday about whether a revised state cost share provision for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that’s based on error rate payments will be in the final bill.

“It was thrown out the first time, so we actually gave her revised text. If she rules the revised text is fine, then we’ll release it,” Boozman said.

The committee released a statement later in the day announcing the parliamentarian had cleared the revised state cost share for SNAP that’s based on a state’s error payment rate.

States that have SNAP error payment rates higher than 6% will have to contribute some of the cost of the program. The updated proposal will give states the option of choosing between fiscal 2025 and fiscal 2026 to determine their match, which will begin during fiscal 2028. After that, a state’s match will be determined by its error payment rate for the last three fiscal years. 

State and local tax, ‘revenge tax’

Senate Republicans also remained stuck on finding a deduction level for state and local tax, or SALT, that passes muster with House Republicans who represent high-tax blue states.

The House version would allow taxpayers making under $500,000 to deduct up to $40,000 in SALT from their federal tax bill. Both the $40,000 cap and the $500,000 income threshold will increase annually at 1% until hitting a ceiling of $44,000 and $552,000. The deduction cap phases down for higher earners.

Senate Republicans and the White House sought to lower the income threshold but were shot down Thursday by House Republicans, according to multiple reports.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, the lead negotiator on SALT for Senate Republicans, said he remained optimistic.

“We’re gonna be in a good spot. We’re gonna find a landing spot,” Mullin said.

A Senate Finance Committee spokesperson declined to comment on current negotiations, including any proposed income level changes.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also weighed in on another tax provision: the so-called “revenge tax” on investments from countries whose trade policies the president views as unfair to U.S. businesses.

Bessent asked lawmakers to remove the up to 20% tax from the mega-bill following an agreement made with G7 partners, he wrote on social media.

“This understanding with our G7 partners provides greater certainty and stability for the global economy and will enhance growth and investment in the United States and beyond,” Bessent said.

The retaliation tax would have raised roughly $116 billion over 10 years, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Timing on votes

Republican lawmakers don’t have much time left to rework all of the ineligible provisions, clear them with the parliamentarian, read through final bill text, slog through a marathon amendment voting session in the Senate and then move the bill through the House before their self-imposed deadline.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a briefing before Trump’s event that the president is “adamant” Congress must pass the “big, beautiful bill” within the next week, despite the latest ruling.  

“We expect that bill to be on the president’s desk for signature by July Fourth. I know there was a ruling by the Senate parliamentarian this morning,” Leavitt said. “Look, this is part of the process, this is part of the inner workings of the United States Senate. But the president is adamant about seeing this bill on his desk here at the White House by Independence Day.” 

House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana speaks to reporters about the Republican budget reconciliation package at a weekly press conference on Tuesday, June 24, 2025, at the U.S. Capitol. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

This report has been updated.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Republicans were scrambling Tuesday to restructure several proposals in the “big, beautiful bill” that don’t meet their chamber’s strict rules for passing a reconciliation package, while GOP lawmakers on the other side of the Capitol warned those changes may doom its passage in the House.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said he and several others are working on a way to bolster rural hospitals, which could experience financial strain as a result of the various changes to Medicaid and other health care programs in the package.

“We are working on a solution for rural hospitals and that’s something that’s been in the works now for several days in response to a number of concerns that our colleagues have mentioned in ensuring that the impact on rural hospitals be lessened, be mitigated,” Thune said. “And I think we’re making good headway on that solution.”

Thune said GOP lawmakers shouldn’t let the “perfect be the enemy of the good,” though he predicted there “could be” two or three Republicans who vote against the package.

“We’ve got a lot of very independent-thinking senators who have reasons and things that they’d like to have in this bill that, in their view, would make it stronger,” Thune said. “But at the end of the day this is a process whereby not everybody is going to get what they want. And we have to get to 51 in the United States Senate.”

More objections to Medicaid cuts

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, who has been vocal about Medicaid changes and rural hospitals, said he had “no details whatsoever” about the rural hospital fund or how it would work if it’s added to the bill.

But he said he’s not going to support a bill that takes away working people’s health care.

“We’ve got 1.3 million people on Medicaid in Missouri, hundreds of thousands of kids. That’s 21% of my population. Most of these people are working people. They’re on Medicaid, not because they’re sitting around at home; they’re on Medicaid because they don’t have a job that gives them health care and they cannot afford to buy it on the exchange,” Hawley said. “They don’t want to be, but it’s their only option. And I just think it’s wrong to take away health care coverage from those folks. Now if they’re not working, then sure, they should be.”

Senate Republican Policy Committee Chair Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., said she had a “lengthy discussion” with her home state’s hospital association earlier in the day.

“This has a lot of impacts and we want to make sure we have a lot of rural hospitals. That’s why this rural hospital fund idea is developing,” Capito said. “I don’t think anything is set yet but that is an issue. I think Medicaid, we need to preserve it for the people it’s intended for and get rid of the people who don’t deserve it and don’t qualify and are bilking the system.”

Capito said she hadn’t yet formed an opinion on the rural hospital fund since there isn’t yet a formal proposal written down.

Public lands

In one major development, the Senate parliamentarian ruled Monday that a controversial provision championed by Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Mike Lee to mandate the sale of at least 2 million acres of public lands in 11 Western states did not comply with the chamber’s rules for reconciliation.

Lee, a Utah Republican, has said the provision would free up land to build new housing. But Democrats and some Republicans from the affected states strongly opposed it.

Lee said on social media Monday evening that he was working to rewrite the proposal to comply with reconciliation rules. A spokesperson for his office did not return a message seeking comment Tuesday morning.

SNAP cost-sharing under debate

In another turn of events, Senate Agriculture Chairman John Boozman, R-Ark., earlier Tuesday had announced the panel successfully reworked a provision that would transfer some of the cost of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to state governments.

But a spokesperson for the panel said later that the parliamentarian actually has not yet made a ruling. The spokesperson said “we’ve gotten some clarification from leadership and it’s steering in the direction it would be compliant but not official.”

Boozman earlier had said his proposal would improve SNAP. “Our commonsense approach encourages states to adopt better practices, reduce error rates, be better stewards of taxpayer dollars, and prioritize the resources for those who truly need it,” Boozman wrote in a statement.

The new language, if accepted, would give states the option of selecting fiscal year 2025 or 2026 as the year that the federal government uses to determine its payment error rate for SNAP, which will then impact how much of the cost the state has to cover starting in fiscal year 2028. Afterward, a state’s payment error rate will be calculated using the last three fiscal years.

Any state with an error rate higher than 6% will have to cover a certain percentage of the cost of the nutrition program for lower income households.

Rushing toward deadline

The internal debates among lawmakers about how to rewrite major pieces of the tax and spending cuts package have led to a rushed feeling among Republican leaders, who have repeatedly promised to approve the final bill before the Fourth of July — an exceedingly tight timeline.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said during a press conference shortly after a closed-door House GOP conference meeting Tuesday that he’s hopeful the final bill that comes out of the Senate won’t make too many changes to what the House approved earlier this year.

“I remain very optimistic that there’s not going to be a wide chasm between the two products — what the Senate produces and what we produce,” Johnson said. “We all know what the touchpoints are and the areas of greatest concern.”

Republicans, he said, know they need to focus on preserving a fragile compromise on the state and local tax deduction, or SALT, that helps offset the cost of living in some higher-tax states like California, New Jersey and New York.

A deal Johnson brokered with GOP lawmakers in the SALT Caucus has been significantly rewritten in the Senate, but is expected to move back toward the House version, though not entirely.

Johnson also mentioned GOP efforts to roll back certain clean-energy provisions that Democrats approved and President Joe Biden signed into law in their signature climate change, health care and tax package, called the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, in 2022.

“We’ve got to get the SALT negotiation number right. We’ve got to make sure the IRA subsidies are handled in an appropriate manner,” Johnson said. “Look, you’ve got a number of provisions.”

Johnson said he expects the Senate to vote on its final bill by Friday or Saturday and that he’s told House lawmakers to “keep your schedules flexible” on being in Washington, D.C., for a final House vote. 

Trump goads Republicans

President Donald Trump sought to spur quick approval of a final bill, posting on social media that GOP lawmakers should get the package to him as soon as possible.

“To my friends in the Senate, lock yourself in a room if you must, don’t go home, and GET THE DEAL DONE THIS WEEK. Work with the House so they can pick it up, and pass it, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump wrote Tuesday. “NO ONE GOES ON VACATION UNTIL IT’S DONE. Everyone, most importantly the American People, will be much better off thanks to our work together. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin said there are concerns among his fellow Republicans about all of the provisions that must be removed or significantly reworked to meet the complex rules for moving a reconciliation bill through that chamber.

“Every time something comes out that we’re using as a pay for, it takes the deficit reduction down. And they’ve taken out nearly $300 billion so far. We’ve got to make that up,” Mullin said after leaving the closed-door House GOP meeting. “The Senate can’t come in below the House version as far as deficit reduction. So that makes it difficult.”

Mullin, who has been acting as his chamber’s top negotiator with SALT Republicans in the House, told reporters he expects the deduction for state and local taxes to remain at the $40,000 level negotiated in the House. But said the Senate will likely rewrite the $500,000 income ceiling to qualify for the tax deduction.

“I think 40 is a number we’re going to land on,” Mullin said. “It’s the income threshold that’s in negotiations.”

Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota said “most of us would like to make it zero.”

“I hate the idea of $40,000 but if that’s what it takes to pass the bill, I probably could do it. I would like to maybe find some other tweaks to it, somehow, like changing the income levels,” he said.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters he expects a resolution on SALT in the next 24 to 48 hours.

“I had a very successful lunch meeting with the senators. I think that we are on track,” Bessent said.

The ‘red line’ in the House

New York Republican Rep. Mike Lawler told reporters following the closed-door meeting that Senate leaders shouldn’t assume whatever they pass will be accepted by the House.

“I’ve been very clear about where my red line is. So, you know, we’ll let this process play out,” Lawler said. “I think the Senate should recognize the only number that matters is 218, and 50 plus 1. That’s it. And how do you get there?”

Republicans hold 53 seats in the Senate, so leadership cannot lose more than four votes and still approve the package, given that Democrats are universally opposed.

In the House, GOP leaders have 220 seats and need nearly every one of their members to support whatever the Senate sends back across the Capitol for it to make it to the president’s desk before their self-imposed deadline.

In addition to the SALT tax compromise, Lawler said he has concerns about how the Senate has changed other provisions, including those addressing Medicaid, the state-federal health program for lower income people.

“Yeah, there are a number of concerns about decisions that they’re making,” Lawler said. “And obviously, the bill on their side is not final, so we’ll see where it goes.”

Missouri Republican Rep. Jason Smith, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee that crafted the tax provisions in the reconciliation bill, stood by the House’s version of the Opportunity Zone Tax Incentives. The House version extends the incentive from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act for a year, while the Senate’s version makes it permanent.

The Opportunity Zone Tax Incentive was pushed by South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott during the first Trump administration, which aimed to create tax cuts for businesses and real estate to invest in low-income communities, but it had mixed results.

“The tax bill that we’re going to deliver is gonna deliver for working families, small businesses and farmers,” Smith said.

Thumbs down from one House Republican

House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris, R-Md., posted on social media that he doesn’t support how the Senate has changed the bill and that he would seek to block it from becoming law. 

“The currently proposed Senate version of the One Big Beautiful Bill weakens key House priorities—it doesn’t do enough to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicaid, it backtracks on Green New Scam elimination included in the House bill, and it greatly increases the deficit – taking us even further from a balanced budget.

“If the Senate tries to jam the House with this version, I won’t vote ‘present.’ I’ll vote NO.”

Rattlesnakes and the Senate

West Virginia Republican Sen. Jim Justice told reporters that it’s important for the Senate to take its time in its changes to the reconciliation package and that GOP lawmakers need to be patient.

“If you’re walking through the woods and you look right over there at that wall and there’s a rattlesnake all curled up there and everything, what do you do?” Justice asked. “Most people just jump and take off runnin’, well … rattlesnakes run in pairs and if you just jump left or right or behind, that one can hurt you right there.”

Rattlesnakes are typically solitary creatures, but new research has shown that rattlesnakes are more social than previously thought.

Justice said the best course of action when dealing with a rattlesnake, or two, is to stand still for a moment.

“Look to the left, look to the right, look behind you, and then decide which way you’re going,” he said. “That’s what I think we need to do (in the Senate).”

U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, participates in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on May 13, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

U.S. Sen. Mike Lee says he will revamp his controversial proposal to require the sales of vast acres of federal lands in the West so it can be included in Senate Republicans’ sweeping tax and spending cut package.

Lee will be seeking approval for his revised plan from the Senate parliamentarian, who will decide if the provision complies with the chamber’s strict rules for the fast-track procedure Republicans are using to pass their bill. An earlier version of Lee’s plan was dropped from the measure.

Lee, a Utah Republican who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, wrote on X on Monday night that he would alter the proposal to include only Bureau of Land Management land within 5 miles of a population center and exempt U.S. Forest Service lands altogether.

The amended version would also create “freedom zones” and protect “our farmers, ranchers, and recreational users,” Lee said.

It was not immediately clear what either point would mean and legislative text of the proposal was not publicly available Tuesday. A spokesperson for the committee Lee leads did not return a message seeking comment Tuesday morning.

The original version of the proposal would have mandated the sale of at least 2 million acres of BLM and Forest Service land in 11 Western states. The Senate parliamentarian ruled that language did not comply with the Senate’s rules for budget reconciliation, according to Senate Budget Committee ranking Democrat Jeff Merkley of Oregon.

Budget reconciliation is the procedure Republicans are using to pass the package that contains most of President Donald Trump’s domestic policy priorities, including extension of the 2017 tax cuts.

The process allows passage with only a simple majority in the Senate instead of the usual 60 votes but comes with strict rules that every provision has a substantial impact on the federal deficit and relates to spending and taxes.

Polarizing provision

Lee’s social media post emphasized his goal was to expand housing supply by making public lands available for new construction.

“Housing prices are crushing families and keeping young Americans from living where they grew up,” Lee wrote. “We need to change that.”

Democrats and some Republicans from the affected states — Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming — strongly opposed the measure, seeing it as a one-time sell-off of public lands used by hunters, hikers, ranchers and other users of public lands.

The provision “would have gutted America’s public lands and auctioned them off to the highest bidder, in yet another bid to benefit the wealthy,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday.

“Republicans tried to rip away hundreds of millions of acres of public land—not to help families, not to solve real problems—but to hand yet another gift to the wealthy and well-connected,” he added. “It was outrageous, it was shameless, and it would have forever changed the character of the country. Senate Democrats fought tooth and nail to keep public lands in public hands because these lands belong to everyone—not just the privileged few.”

A similar provision was removed from the House’s version of the reconciliation bill in the face of heated opposition from Western Republicans led by Montana U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke.

The former Interior secretary said last week he remained firmly opposed to the Senate version of the bill that included Lee’s proposal.

“I have said from day one I would not support a bill that sells public lands,” he wrote on X. “I am still a no on the senate reconciliation bill that sells public lands. We did our job in the House. Let’s get it finished.”

Other energy provisions stripped

Merkley reported the Senate parliamentarian also ruled several other provisions of the Energy Committee’s section of the package to be out of compliance with the “Byrd Rule,” which governs what can be included in a reconciliation bill.

Among the provisions the parliamentarian removed were items that would have waived environmental review requirements for offshore oil and gas development, mandated approval of a controversial mining road in Alaska, required annual lease sales for geothermal energy lease sales while changing how geothermal royalties are calculated and allowed natural gas exporters to pay a fee to have projects exempted from environmental requirements.

Other provisions in the committee’s reconciliation instructions were still under review Tuesday, Merkley said.

In a statement, Merkley said he would continue to lead Democrats’ campaign to strip provisions from the GOP bill.

“Democrats will not stand idly by while Republicans attempt to circumvent the rules of reconciliation in order to sell off public lands to fund tax breaks for billionaires,” he said. “We will make sure the Byrd Rule is followed and review any changes Republicans attempt to make to the bill.”

At a farm market in St. Petersburg, Florida, on April 14, 2012, SNAP recipients were able to use their Electronic Benefits Transfer cards for food. (Photo by Lance Cheung/USDA).

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Democrats have succeeded in eliminating more than a dozen policy changes from Republicans’ “big, beautiful bill” after successfully arguing before the chamber’s parliamentarian that the elements didn’t comply with the strict rules that go along with writing a budget reconciliation bill.

Removed is language that would have transferred some of the cost of running the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to state governments, potentially leaving states on the hook for billions in added spending on the food aid program for lower-income people.

Democrats also fended off a proposal to eliminate funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which fields complaints on banking and other financial institutions, and another that sought to bar federal district court judges from issuing nationwide injunctions. 

Among the contested items that remained, Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley announced in a social media post that his years-long effort to reauthorize the Radiation Exposure Compensation Fund, or RECA, passed what’s known on Capitol Hill as the “Byrd bath” test.

“Terrific news for Missouri, radiation survivors, and MAHA: RECA has passed the ‘Byrd bath’ – Democrats did not strip it – and will be in the final bill,” Hawley wrote, referring to the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again slogan. “Huge step forward #MAHA.”

Democrats to continue challenges

Budget Committee ranking member Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., has cheered many of the parliamentarian’s rulings, though Republican committee chairs say they’ll look for ways to rewrite the various proposals.

“Today, we were advised by the Senate Parliamentarian that several more provisions in this Big Beautiful Betrayal of a bill will be subject to the Byrd Rule — and Democrats plan to challenge every part of this bill that hurts working families and violates this process,” Merkley wrote in a statement released Saturday night. “Republicans’ relentless attack on middle class families in order to fund tax breaks for billionaires is a slap in the face to working families everywhere, and Democrats are fighting back.”  

The changes could create several issues for Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and eventually for Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who need nearly every GOP lawmaker in Congress to vote for the sweeping tax and spending cuts package in order for it to become law.

The House voted 215-214 to approve its version of the bill in May, but since the Senate is making substantial changes, the House will have to vote on the measure again before it can go to President Donald Trump for his signature. GOP leaders hope to complete all that before the Fourth of July.

Republicans are using reconciliation, instead of moving the bill through the regular legislative process, to avoid needing Democratic votes to get past the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster.

But the lower threshold for passing a reconciliation bill comes with several requirements, including that all of the proposals in the package have an impact on spending or revenues that’s not “merely incidental.”

The Senate parliamentarian, the chamber’s official scorekeeper who holds a detailed understanding of the rules and procedures, examines each of those policies and hears from both Republicans and Democrats before issuing the rulings.

The Byrd bath began last week behind closed doors and will continue for at least several more days. Once it concludes, Senate GOP leaders can move the bill to the floor, where members of both parties can call for votes on as many amendments as they want.

SNAP program

Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee Chairman John Boozman, R-Ark., released a written statement defending his committee’s bill after the parliamentarian ruled several provisions must go to comply with the rules.

“To rein in federal spending and protect taxpayer dollars the committee is pursuing meaningful reforms to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to improve efficiency, accountability and integrity,” Boozman wrote. “We are continuing to examine options that comply with Senate rules to achieve savings through budget reconciliation to ensure SNAP serves those who truly need it while being responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars.”

The parliamentarian ruled the committee erred in including language that would have shifted some of the cost of the SNAP program to state governments if they didn’t meet an efficiency benchmark before 2028.

A proposal to eliminate SNAP eligibility for “immigrants who are not citizens or lawful permanent residents, with certain exceptions,” was also determined not to comply with the rules, according to a press release from Merkley.

Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar, ranking member on the committee, wrote the parliamentarian’s ruling “made clear that Senate Republicans cannot use their partisan budget to shift major nutrition assistance costs to the states that would have inevitably led to major cuts.

“While Republicans’ proposed cuts to SNAP will still be devastating to families, farmers, and independent grocers across the country, we will keep fighting to protect families in need. Instead of a rushed partisan process, Republicans should work with us to lower costs for Americans and pass a bipartisan Farm Bill that works for all farmers and rural America.”

Consumer financial agency victory for Dems

The Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee’s proposal to eliminate funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which Congress established in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, also doesn’t comply with the rules, under the parliamentarian’s ruling.

Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, ranking member on the panel, wrote in a statement that the GOP’s proposal for the CFPB represented “a reckless, dangerous attack on consumers and would lead to more Americans being tricked and trapped by giant financial institutions and put the stability of our entire financial system at risk–all to hand out tax breaks to billionaires.”

But committee Chairman Tim Scott, R-S.C., wrote in a separate statement that he remains “committed to advancing legislation that cuts waste and duplication in our federal government and saves taxpayer dollars.”

Scott listed provisions that he said will remain.

“As it stands now, the Banking Committee’s reconciliation provisions will delay the implementation of Section 1071 of Dodd-Frank, which reduces CFPB spending and protects the privacy and data of small business owners; rescind unused funds earmarked for green initiatives to give HUD discretion in funding critical housing programs; and save taxpayer dollars by eliminating an unnecessary reserve fund at the SEC,” Scott wrote. “My colleagues and I remain committed to cutting wasteful spending at the CFPB and will continue working with the Senate parliamentarian on the Committee’s provisions.”

Judges and injunctions

The parliamentarian told lawmakers that various elements of the Judiciary Committee’s bill don’t comply with the rules, including an attempt to block federal district court judges from issuing nationwide preliminary injunctions or temporary restraining orders.

The issue has become a thorn in Trump’s side during the past few months as he’s watched the courts block several of his executive orders and other unilateral administration actions.

The Judiciary Committee’s reconciliation bill cannot block the Department of Justice from awarding Byrne JAG and COPS grants to “sanctuary cities.” The bill also can’t send funding to local and state governments for the purpose of “apprehending aliens who are unlawfully present in the United States.”

Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, did not respond to a request for comment, but a committee spokesperson wrote in an email to States Newsroom that “Democrats are clinging to their radical open borders legacy by fighting to keep criminal migrants in the United States.

“Republicans are committed to enforcing the rule of law, and will continue using all available avenues to secure our borders, clean up the mess left by the Biden-Harris administration’s disastrous policies and ensure courts operate according to lawful and constitutional standards.”

Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, ranking member on the committee, issued a statement calling the bill’s policies “an attempted power grab by our Republican colleagues that we would not stand for.”

“Here’s what Senate Republicans attempted to sneak into their so-called Big, Beautiful Bill: a provision intended to limit the ability of individuals and organizations to challenge lawless Trump Administration executive actions by putting those potential plaintiffs on the hook for millions of dollars; and a provision conditioning grant eligibility on a state or locality’s compliance with federal immigration policies,” Durbin wrote.

Artificial intelligence and states

The parliamentarian didn’t, however, remove all of the proposals contested by Democrats.

Language that would prevent local and state governments from regulating artificial intelligence for the next decade if those jurisdictions want to receive money from a $500 million fund does meet the reconciliation requirements and can remain in the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation’s bill.

But that doesn’t mean the provision will stay in the bill moving forward, since several GOP lawmakers have expressed concern about potentially tying the hands of local and state governments when it comes to AI.

Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote in a social media post after she voted for the House’s bill that she had no idea about the AI provision. That chamber’s package barred state and local AI regulation for a decade without tying it to any funding stream.

“We have no idea what AI will be capable of in the next 10 years and giving it free rein and tying states hands is potentially dangerous,” Greene wrote. “This needs to be stripped out in the Senate.

“When the OBBB comes back to the House for approval after Senate changes, I will not vote for it with this in it.”

Kristen Crowell, executive director of Fair Share America, speaks Saturday in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., the first stop for Fair Share America's bus campaign to oppose the Republican budget reconciliation bill currently in the U.S. Senate. (Photo courtesy of Fair Share America)

Over the next three weeks, a band of advocates in a bright green bus is traveling across the U.S. with a message aimed at members of Congress — and at the voters who live in their districts.

To the voters, the message is that they will be hurt by the Republican mega-bill taking shape in Washington — a bill that would extend tax cuts enacted in 2017 that primarily benefit the wealthy and pay for them by slashing Medicaid and other federal programs that critics of the measure argue broadly benefit the public.

To U.S. senators and representatives, the message is: Vote against the measure, or face the wrath of voters in 2026.

The bus trip was launched by  Fair Share America, a coalition of groups focused on  beating back attempts to extend the 2017 tax cuts, one of the signature pieces of legislation from President Donald Trump’s first term. The organization is made up of unions, organizations favoring progressive taxation, and progressive social justice and policy groups.

Fair Share America’s executive director is Kristen Crowell, who lives in Cedarburg, Wisconsin. In 2022 she helped lead a campaign in Massachusetts when voters approved a constitutional amendment that created a 4% surtax on earned income over $1 million.

“That increase is now generating $3 billion annually that is dedicated for education and transportation,” Crowell told the Wisconsin Examiner.

The Boston Globe reported that the campaign to pass the Massachusetts “millionaires’ tax” raised $27 million, nearly twice as much as the $14 million raised by business-backed opponents of the measure. Crowell said the campaign succeeded by appealing to voters on the issue of fairness.

“We know that when we ask the wealthy to pay a little bit more, to pay their fair share, we can fund the investments that our neighbors and families and communities deserve — and really importantly, right now in this moment, they need in order to to get ahead,” Crowell said in an interview.

Opposition group launched in 2024

The 2017 tax cuts expire at the end of this year. With that date on the calendar, Fair Share America launched in September 2024 to oppose renewing them.

“We started organizing before we knew the outcome of the election and were handed a different reality than we might have hoped for,” Crowell said.

Since then, the organization has helped “lead the pushback at the state level to make sure that constituents and the public understand what’s happening behind closed doors in Washington, D.C., and to really bring the fight to key districts and geographies across the country where lawmakers, in particular the GOP members of Congress, have shut out their constituents,” she said.

The bus trip started on Saturday in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., stopped in Philadelphia on Sunday and will hit four more cities across Pennsylvania on Monday. Stops in Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Iowa follow. After that, the bus will double back on its route for three Wisconsin stops, in Racine and Oshkosh on Monday, June 30, and La Crosse on July 1.

The schedule will continue through the middle of July, stopping in Minnesota, Missouri, Colorado, Arizona and Nevada before concluding in Bakersfield, California on July 14.

The tour isn’t the start of the organization’s campaign. Fair Share America and its partners with other advocacy groups have been holding town hall meetings in 33 states across the country, Crowell said — including one in Racine in April that featured former Social Security commissioner Martin O’Malley.

Crowell was at the Racine event, to which the local member of Congress, U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Janesville) was invited but didn’t show up. “Over 200 people came [from] across the political spectrum.” Crowell said.

At that town hall and other such events across the country, she’s seen energetic opposition to the new Trump administration as well as the priorities of the current Congress, she said.

“Fair Share America’s not speaking to one side of the aisle vs. the other,” Crowell said. “This is a populist moment.”

Public opposition to budget bill

A poll on behalf of three of the coalition’s member groups found that even before they were given information about details of the GOP budget reconciliation bill, the American voters surveyed had a negative opinion of it.

According to the pollsters 38% of those surveyed said they support the bill, 46% said they oppose it and 16% said they don’t know enough to have an opinion.

Fewer than one-third of voters surveyed — 30% — have heard a lot about the bill. Another 40% have heard “just some” about it, and the remaining 30% said they’ve heard little or nothing about the measure.

The more people heard, however, the less they liked it, according to the report from the polling firm, Hart Research. Opposition increased among all groups after pollsters told people about various details — its changes to Medicaid and to SNAP federal nutrition aid, for example.

“By being in the rooms and town halls and knocking on doors here in Wisconsin, that is what we are hearing and seeing,” Crowell said.

With its slogan, “Stop the billionaire giveaway,” Fair Share America’s bus tour aims to amplify the bill’s cuts to programs that benefit the public and to center the message that its tax cuts favor the wealthy.

Congressional Republicans “have not engaged with their constituents” in Wisconsin and elsewhere about the reconciliation bill, Crowell said. Fair Share America’s goal is to break down the details in terms that people will understand and respond to.

“When you tell them what’s at stake, what’s coming down, they are furious and they want to know how to get in the fight,” Crowell said. “They want to know how to organize their three or four neighbors. So it is incumbent on all of us to shed light on the horrors of this reconciliation bill and do everything it takes to get the word out.”

Funding values and priorities

In Wisconsin, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson has said he opposes the bill and has threatened to vote against it, criticizing it for not making deeper federal spending cuts. 

While that’s the opposite of Fair Share America’s agenda, “voting ‘No’ is voting ‘No’ at the end of the day,” Crowell said.

She is skeptical that Johnson will follow through on his threat, however.

“When push comes to shove, I don’t think Sen. Johnson is going to cross the White House or cross GOP leadership. I expect him to fall in line,” she said. “But we’re here to push back and say, ‘Absolutely not. We will hold you to that No vote and we do want you to understand what the stakes are for your constituents.’”

While the campaign’s goal is to stop the bill, there’s a second message regardless of the outcome, Crowell said.

“We are building a movement that is strong and durable and it crosses partisan lines,” she said. “If they in fact do go ahead and pass this, there will be hell to pay for those members who abandoned  and threw their constituents and their communities under the bus.”

Crowell said her more than two decades of activism started when, as a working mother, she opposed Milwaukee public school budget cuts. Her daughter, who was in kindergarten then, is now 29.

She went on to organize with “We Are Wisconsin,” the grass-roots coalition that sprang up in reaction to Act 10 — the 2011 law stripping most collective bargaining rights from most public employees, introduced and signed by Scott Walker in his first term as governor.

Act 10 was billed as a “budget repair bill.” Crowell said that working against it she saw clearly the connection between government budgets and policy.

“If progressives want to really win … and fund the things that we care about, we have to compete for what happens in the budget process,” Crowell said. “We have to compete for a fair and just tax code. We have to compete for the revenue that funds all of the issues that we care about, whether that’s health care or climate or education or child care.”

A budget “can be used either to fund our priorities and reflect our values or attack the things that we deeply care about,” Crowell said. With the federal budget reconciliation bill, “we’re watching the GOP members of Congress do exactly that — looking to further harm our communities through advancing this budget.”

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Joint Finance Co-Chair Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) said at a press conference ahead of the meeting that he would tell advocates who wanted the 60% rate that the state budget has to be “right-sized” and “affordable.” (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

After many delays, the Wisconsin Joint Finance Committee met Thursday evening to approve its plan for K-12 education spending that included a 5% increase to special education funding for schools and its $1.3 billion tax plan that targets retirees and middle-income earners. 

Lawmakers on the powerful budget-writing committee went back and forth for nearly three hours about the plans with Republicans saying they made significant investments in education and would help Wisconsinites while Democrats argued the state should do more for schools. 

Over $220 million for special education, no additional general aid for schools

The committee approved a total of about $336 million total in new general purpose revenue for Wisconsin’s K-12 schools — only about 10% of Gov. Tony Evers’ proposed $3.1 billion in new spending.

Special education costs will receive the majority of the allocation with an additional $220 million that will be split between the general special education reimbursement and a subset of high-cost special education services. 

The special education reimbursement funding includes $77.2 million in the first year of the budget, which will bring the rate at which the state reimburses school districts to an estimated 35%, and $151 million in the second year bringing the rate to an estimated 37.5%. It’s well below the $1.13 billion or 60% reimbursement for special education that Evers had proposed and that advocates had said was essential to place school districts back on a sustainable funding path. 

Education advocates spent the last week lobbying for the additional funding — and warning lawmakers about the financial strain on districts and the resources the students could lose. Ahead of the meeting Thursday, Democrats and a coalition of Wisconsin parents of students with disabilities spoke to the urgent need for additional investment in the state’s general special education reimbursement rate. 

“Everywhere we’ve gone in the state of Wisconsin, whether it’s rural school districts, urban school districts, whether it’s school districts that have passed referendums and those that haven’t, they all say the same thing — 60% primary special education funding is absolutely necessary for our schools to succeed,” Rep. Tip McGuire (D-Kenosha) said at the press conference.  “You can see that we have had a cycle of referendum throughout Wisconsin, and that cycle has to end.”

The special education reimbursement peaked at 70% in 1973, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum. After falling to a low of 24.9% in 2015-16, the state’s share of special education costs has been incrementally increasing with some fluctuations. 

The Republican proposal represents, at maximum, about a 5% increase to the current rate by the second year. According to budget papers prepared by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, the investment lawmakers made last session was meant to bring the rate to 33.3%, but because it is a sum certain rate — meaning there was only a set amount of money set aside, regardless of expanding costs  — the actual rates have been 32.4% in 2023-24 and an estimated 32.1% for 2024-25.

Joint Finance Co-Chair Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) said at a press conference ahead of the meeting that he would tell advocates who wanted the 60% rate that the state budget has to be “right-sized” and “affordable.”

“The governor’s budget has always [had] reckless spending that the state can’t afford, and so we’re choosing to make key investments and priorities, and these investments today will be some of … the largest investments you’ll see in the budget,” Born said. 

The committee also added $54.5 million to bring the additional reimbursement rate for a small number of high-cost special education services to 50% in the first year of the budget and 90% in the second year. The high-cost special education program provides additional aid when costs exceed $30,000 for a single student in one year. According to DPI, in 2025 only 3% of students with disabilities fell in the high-cost special education category.

In 2024-25, the program only received $14.5 million from the state. Evers had proposed the state invest an additional $18.5 million. 

Republicans on the committee insisted that they were trying to compromise and making a significant investment in schools — noting that education likely will continue being the state’s top expenditure in the budget. Meanwhile, Democrats spoke extensively about the need for higher rates of investment, read messages from superintendents and students in their districts and said Republicans were not doing what people asked for. 

“High needs special education funding only reaches about 3% of Wisconsin’s special education students,” Rep. Deb Andraca said. “You’re getting a couple good talking points, but you’re not going to get the kinds of public schools that Wisconsin kids deserve.” 

During the committee meeting, Sen. Julian Bradley (R-New Berlin) criticized Democrats for saying they would vote against the proposals. He said Democrats would vote against any proposal if it isn’t what they want. 

“If we all voted no, we would return to base funding, which was good enough by the way for the governor last budget because he signed it,” Bradley said. “There would be no increases, but instead we’ve introduced a motion which will increase funding.”

McGuire responded by saying he wouldn’t vote for a proposal that is “condemning the state to continuing the cycle of referendum,” which he said Republicans are doing by minimally increasing the special education reimbursement rate and not investing any additional money in general aid. 

“Wisconsinites across the state are having to choose between raising their own property taxes” and the schools, McGuire said. 

The Kenosha School District, which is in McGuire’s legislative district, recently failed to pass referendum to help reduce a budget deficit. School leaders had said a significant increase in the special education reimbursement would prevent the district from having to seek a referendum again.

“They had a $19 million budget gap, and if this state went to 60% special education funding, you know roughly where we promised we would be, that would’ve gone down to $6 million,” McGuire said, “…$13 million of those dollars are our responsibility. That’s been our failing, and we should live up to that.”

“What are we arguing about? We’re putting more money in,” Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point) said.“I would think that when this gets to his desk, Evers would sign this because it is a bigger increase than any of what he proposed while he was state superintendent.”

McGuire said the investment in the high-cost special education is also good, but only applies to a small number of schools and students. 

“You know, what would benefit all school districts in the state and will benefit all students who need special education? The primary special education reimbursement rate, which you put at 37.5[%], but everyone says should be at 60[%].” McGuire said. “I don’t think this is your intention, but I don’t believe that we should be exchanging children who need our assistance for other children who need our assistance. Why can’t we just help all of the kids who need our help?”

Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) said that the increase for high-cost special education will have a significant impact on some schools, especially smaller ones, and students, even if it’s not many of them.

“To get 90% for them is huge for any of our rural districts. One child, which deserves an education, can break the bank for our small districts,” Kurtz said. “Is it perfect? No, it’s not perfect, but we have to stay within our means.” 

Committee co-chair Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) echoed Kurtz’s comments saying that there will be “a lot of districts that are going to be awful happy about that.” 

“They’ve been worried about sometimes, a student moves into the district, and it’s of incredibly high, high needs,” Marklein said.

The committee also declined to include additional general aid for school districts. Republicans on the committee said  there was already a $325 per pupil increase to districts’ revenue limits built into the budget from last session due to Evers’ partial veto. The increase gives districts the option to raise property taxes, though it doesn’t require them to, and does not include state funding for the increase.

Sen. Romaine Quinn (R-Birchwood) told lawmakers not to forget about the increase, saying the “insulting part about that is that everyone gets it.

There are schools that don’t need that,” Quinn said. “72% of my districts spend less than [the schools of] my Democratic colleagues on this panel.” 

School Administrators Alliance Executive Director Dee Pettack, Wisconsin Association of School Boards Executive Director Dan Rossmiller, Southeast Wisconsin School Alliance Executive Director Cathy Olig and Wisconsin Rural Schools Alliance Executive Director Jeff Eide said in a joint letter reacting to the proposal that lawmakers failed to hear the voices school leaders, parents and community and business leaders.

“While the $325 revenue limit authority exists, it is not funded by the state. Instead, it is entirely borne by local property taxpayers. In addition, school districts will not see the requested support in special education,” the leaders stated. “Because of the lack of state support in these two critical areas, school districts will be left with no choice but to ask their local taxpayers to step up and shoulder the costs locally, regardless of their ability to pay.” 

The leaders said the state was investing minimally and school districts will continue to struggle to fund mandated primary special education programs.

State Superintendent Jill Underly called the Republicans’ proposal “irresponsible” in a statement Friday and said it “puts politics ahead of kids and disregards educators and public schools when they need support the most.”

“Our public schools desperately need and deserve funding that is flexible, spendable and predictable,” Underly said. “This budget fails to deliver on all three. Once again, those in power had an opportunity to do right by Wisconsin’s children — and once again, they turned their backs on them.” 

The committee also approved $30 million for the state’s choice school programs, $20 million for mental health services in school, $250,000 for robotics league grants, $750,000 for a single school, the Lakeland STAR Academy (a provision that Evers vetoed last session), $100,000 for Special Olympics Wisconsin, $3 million for public library system aid, $500,000 for recovery high schools and $500,000 for Wisconsin Reading Corps. 

Over $1 billion in tax cuts 

Republican lawmakers also approved tax cuts of about $1.3 billion for the budget Thursday evening after 8 p.m., including changes to the income tax brackets and a cut for retirees in Wisconsin.

Born and Marklein said the cuts would help retirees and other Wisconsinites afford to stay in the state.

“These are average, hard-working people in our state that will benefit from our tax cut,” Marklein said. 

The income tax change will allow more people to qualify for the second tax bracket with a rate of 4.4% by raising the qualifying maximum income to $50,480 for single filers, $67,300 for joint filers and $33,650 for married-separate filers. This will reduce the state’s revenues by $323 million in 2025-26 and $320 million in 2026-27. 

People currently eligible for the second tax bracket include: single filers making between $14,680 and $29,370, joint filers making between $19,580 and $39,150 and married separate filers making between $9,790 and $19,580.

Wisconsin Republicans have been seeking another significant tax cut since the last budget cycle when Evers vetoed their proposals. After the rejection, Republicans started to narrow their tax cuts proposals to focus on retirees and a couple of other groups with the hope of getting Evers’ approval. When negotiations on this year’s budget reached an impasse, Evers had said he was willing to support Republicans’ tax goals, but he wanted agreements from them, too. 

The proposal also includes an exclusion from income taxes for retirees that would reduce the state’s revenues by $395 million in 2025-26 and $300 million in 2026-27.

“This isn’t a high-income oriented kind of thing,” Marklein said during the meeting. “It just helps a lot of average people in the state of Wisconsin, so it’s very good tax policy.” 

Democrats appeared unimpressed with the tax proposal. 

The Legislative Fiscal Bureau told lawmakers that the income tax change would lead to about a maximum impact of $253 annually for married joint filers, $190 annually for single filers and $127 for married separate filers. 

“So roughly $5 a week for a married couple,” McGuire said. 

McGuire said that Democrats just have the perspective that Wisconsin could invest more in the priorities that residents have been expressing. 

“We heard from a lot of people about what they need,” McGuire said in reference to school districts. “We also know that as they’ve been attempting to get those funds they’ve had to go to referendums across the state, and… we think that’s harming communities and making it more difficult for people. As a perspective, we believe that that’s a good place to invest in dollars.” 

Tech colleges

The committee also voted to provide additional funding for the Wisconsin technical colleges, though it is, again, significantly less than what was requested by Evers and by the system.

The proposal will provide an additional $13 million to the system. This includes $7 million in general aid for the system of 16 technical colleges, $2 million in aid meant for grants for artificial intelligence, $3 million for grants for textbooks and nearly $30,000 to support the operations of the system. 

Evers had proposed the state provide the system with $45 million in general aid

Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee) said the differences between Evers’ proposals and what Republicans offered were stark. 

“We hear my GOP colleagues talk about worker training all the time and this is their opportunity to make sure that our technical colleges have the resources that they need to make sure that we are training an adequate workforce,” Johnson said, noting that the state could be short by 1,000 nurses (many of whom start their education in technical colleges) by 2030. “I’ve never had an employer complain about having an educated workforce, not once, but I have heard employers say that Wisconsin lacks the skill sets and educational skills they need. It seems my Republican colleagues are more concerned with starving our institutions of higher education, rather than making sure they have the resources they need.” 

Testin said the proposal was not a cut and that Republicans were investing in technical colleges. 

“We see there’s value in our technical colleges because they are working with the business community … getting students through the door quicker with less debt,” Testin said. “Any conversations that this is a cut is just unrealistic. These are critical investments in the technical system.” 

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A worker installs a solar panel on a roof. (Getty Images)

WASHINGTON —  Clean energy manufacturers and advocates say they’re perplexed how the repeal of tax credits in President Donald Trump’s “one big beautiful bill” will keep their domestic production lines humming across the United States, particularly in states that elected him to the Oval Office.

While some Republicans have labeled the billions in tax credits a “green new scam,” statistics reviewed by States Newsroom show the jobs and benefits would boost predominantly GOP-leaning states and congressional districts. Now the industry is already slowing amid Trump’s back-and-forth tariff policy and mixed messaging on energy and manufacturing.

Trump vowed in early April that he would “supercharge our domestic industrial base.”

“Jobs and factories will come roaring back to our country, and you see it happening already,” he told a crowd in the White House Rose Garden while unveiling his new trade policy.

But as a way to pay for the $3.9 trillion price tag of extending and expanding the 2017 corporate and individual tax cuts, U.S. House Republicans found billions of dollars in savings by slashing over a dozen clean energy tax credits enacted in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act under President Joe Biden.

Critics say the mega-bill, which passed the GOP-led House on May 22 in a 215-214 vote, would effectively strip away the Advanced Manufacturing and Production Credit and other incentives.

They have bolstered the production of batteries and solar components in numerous states — top among them North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, South Carolina, Indiana, Tennessee, Texas, Nevada, Illinois and Oklahoma, according to the Clean Investment Monitor, a joint project by the Rhodium Group and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research.

U.S. senators are now negotiating the massive budget reconciliation legislation.

Kevin Doffling, CEO and founder of Project Vanguard, an organization that connects veterans to clean energy jobs, warned pulling the plug on the clean energy tax credits will stifle progress the U.S. has made against other countries, namely China.

“We’re just going to see a huge pullback from investments inside of advanced manufacturing here in the U.S., and then we’ll go source it from other places, instead of doing it here,” Doffling said on a May 28 press call pressing for senators to protect the tax credits.

Doffling’s organization works in several states, including Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, Minnesota, Washington and Utah.

Moving away from fossil fuels

The suite of tax credits enacted under the IRA incentivized homeowners, car buyers, energy producers and manufacturers to invest in types of energy beyond fossil fuels, with the aim of a reduction in the effects of climate change.

For example, the IRA’s Advanced Manufacturing and Production Credit is awarded per unit produced and sold, and in some cases the capacity of energy output. 

Battery cell manufacturers can earn up to $35 per battery cell multiplied by potential kilowatt hours. In the case of solar, the credit offers producers 7 cents per solar module multiplied by wattage output. For mining operations extracting critical minerals, such as lithium, companies can receive a 10% tax break on the costs of production.

Most credits phase out by 2032 under the Biden-era law, except those for critical mineral mining, which continue.

A group of House Republicans, who have dubbed the tax credits the “green new scam” — echoing Trump’s rhetoric — pushed to accelerate the expiration in the final version of the mega-bill, even for critical mineral mining and production. The federal government classifies critical minerals as crucial to national security.

The House-passed bill also severely tightens language around foreign components, titled “foreign entities of concern,” making the credit practically unusable as many parts of the clean energy manufacturing supply chain are global, industry professionals say.

The legislation also repeals “transferability,” which allows companies with little or no tax liability to sell the credits.

For example, a critical mineral mining company would not turn a profit during an initial phase and could sell the credits to offset the cost of operations.

Schneider Electric, a global corporation with a U.S. base in Massachusetts, has facilitated 18 transfer deals worth $1.7 billion in tax credits for U.S. companies since 2023. In a statement, Schneider said the deals “reflect growing market interest in flexible financing mechanisms that directly fund renewable projects.”

Silfab Solar, which recently built a solar cell manufacturing and module assembly plant in Fort Mill, South Carolina, announced in mid-May the sale of $110 million in Advanced Manufacturing and Production Credits to help fund its expansion. The company already runs a solar manufacturing site in Burlington, Washington.

Investment soared

Spurred by the Advanced Manufacturing and Production Credit, known as 45X, actual investment in clean energy manufacturing since August 2022 reached $115 billion in April, up from $21 billion over the same length of time prior to the IRA, the Clean Investment Monitor found.

Of the 380 clean technology production facilities announced since the third quarter of 2022, 161 are now operational, according to CIM data.

The credit spurred a “sea change” in U.S. clean energy manufacturing, said Mike Williams, senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress and former deputy director of the BlueGreen Alliance, which advocates for the joining of labor and environmental organizations.

Despite solar technology’s roots in the U.S., the nation “didn’t even have a toe” in solar manufacturing, Williams said. Other countries, most notably Germany and then China, have dominated the industry.

“But after the Inflation Reduction Act passed, all of a sudden we see panel manufacturing, we see parts and components manufacturing, absolutely exploding. Plants have announced and started construction in Georgia, in Oklahoma,” Williams said in an interview with States Newsroom.

Active manufacturing of solar components, advanced batteries and wind turbines and vessels is concentrated in rural areas. Most are located in states that went red in the 2024 presidential election, according to the Clean Power America Association’s May 2025 State of Clean Energy Manufacturing in America report.

The renewable energy policy group estimated the industry supports 122,000 full-time manufacturing jobs across the U.S.

Active solar manufacturing sites and expansions are clustered in Texas, Ohio and Alabama, according to data from the association. Should major project announcements in Georgia pull through, the state would surpass Alabama for third place.

Advanced battery manufacturing spans 38 states, with the largest concentrations in California, Michigan and North Carolina.

But various parts of the battery production process stretch throughout the country — for example, battery cell production in Nevada and Tennessee and module production in Utah. Other supporting hardware is made in South Carolina, Arizona and Texas.

Lithium, a critical mineral for battery production, is currently mined in Nevada and California. And investors are eyeing other spots in the U.S., namely Alaska, to mine and produce graphite, another critical mineral.

China largely dominates the world’s critical mineral supply chain, according to U.S. Geological Survey data for 2024.

When accounting for the full suite of clean energy tax credits that were enacted in 2022 — including residential, electric vehicles and clean electricity credits — just over 312,900 new jobs are linked to the industry, the bulk in Republican-led congressional districts, according to the advocacy group Climate Power’s 2024 report on clean energy employment.

Troy Van Beek, CEO and founder of the Iowa-based solar company Ideal Energy, said his business weathered the pandemic and has been able to add jobs, but is now facing uncertainty again.

“​​We’re getting our feet under us and really starting to operate. I went from 20-some jobs to over 60 jobs, and those are good-paying jobs for people and their families. So we need that stability in the industry,” said Van Beek, who spoke on the call with Doffling.

“What troubles me is the rocking of the boat to such a degree that we can’t get anything done, and that’s been very difficult to deal with,” he said.

Industry slowdown

The industry has seen a pullback since January and the beginning of the Trump presidency.

Six announced projects representing $6.9 billion in investment were canceled in the first quarter of 2025, according to the Clean Investment Monitor’s latest State of U.S. Clean Energy Supply Chains report. While investment in clean energy overall continues to grow, the beginning of 2025 shows a slowdown from where the industry was a year ago.

Van Beek, whose solar company provides construction and installation among others services, said recent talks to strike a deal with a solar manufacturer collapsed after threats to the tax credits.

“We had worked an entire year on putting together (a deal) with one of the leading manufacturers in the world that has U.S. manufacturing to actually have joint ventures and work with them on projects,” Van Beek said. “And when this came up, that deal came to a screeching halt.”

Van Beek did not name the company on the call and did not respond to a request for a follow-up interview.

Several companies declined States Newsroom’s requests for comment while senators negotiate the bill.

Spencer Pederson of the National Electrical Manufacturers Association said the unpredictability is interrupting how operators are planning for the coming years.

“Whether large or small, just the business certainty and the ability to plan out your business is disrupted when you have any type of tax mechanism that is abruptly halted when you’re doing business planning at five- or 10-year intervals,” said Pederson, the association’s senior vice president of public affairs.

Too expensive, Republicans say

Some House Republicans, led by Rep. Jen Kiggans of Virginia, urged party colleagues to protect the clean energy tax credits — for example by removing the “overly prescriptive” restrictions on foreign entities of concern and keeping in place transferability of tax credits.

Kiggans wrote to House Republican tax writers in mid-May that “the last thing any of us want is to provoke an energy crisis or cause higher energy bills for working families.”

Her co-signers included Don Bacon of Nebraska, Mark Amodei of Nevada, Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania, Juan Ciscomani of Arizona, Gabe Evans and Jeff Hurd of Colorado, Dave Joyce of Ohio and Dan Newhouse of Washington, who all eventually voted for the final bill.

Far-right House members won on not only shortening the lifespan of the credits, but also on keeping the restrictive foreign entity language and on repealing a company’s ability to transfer credits.

The right-leaning National Taxpayers Union hailed the “commonsense changes” championed by the far-right House Freedom Caucus, under the leadership of Maryland Rep. Andy Harris.

The organization, which favors cutting government spending and lowering taxes, pointed to the cost. According to the Penn Wharton Budget Model, the credits as of 2022 were valued at roughly $384.9 billion over ten years.

“The longer these subsidies remain in law, the more expensive they will become and the harder it will be for Congress to remove them. Now it’s up to the Senate to support the Green New Deal Rollbacks,” Thomas Aiello, NTU’s senior director of government affairs, wrote in the days following the House vote.

Hope in the Senate?

But representatives from multinational corporations to mid-size businesses and sizable trade associations are now looking to the U.S. Senate to restore measures that they say created a boom time for investment, production and new energy on the grid.

Jeannie Salo, chief public policy officer at Schneider Electric, said in a statement to States Newsroom that “The Senate should restore and extend the timelines for key energy and manufacturing credits and their transferability to ensure the nation continues to attract key investments and projects that will power the U.S. economy and help make energy more affordable.”

Pederson said the restrictions on foreign components and company ties are “particularly restrictive coming out of the House.”

“So we’re hoping to work with the Senate Finance Committee and some of the members of the Senate who have indicated some willingness to make the foreign entity of concern language a little bit more workable,” Pederson said.

Doffling believes senators have a “longer term vision” of the nation’s energy strategy than House members who face reelection every two years.

“They see what’s happening not just in their district, but in the entire state that they represent,” Doffling said.

The House bill just sets the U.S. “further behind,” he added. “This bill is all about going backwards in time and hoping for the best.”

“I wish they could look at the numbers and understand the economic impacts it’s gonna have. … But somehow we’re talking about the fact of hamstringing a whole entire industry itself over verbiage of the word ‘clean.’”

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., left, listens as Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, center, speaks to reporters outside of the West Wing of the White House on June4, 2025 in Washington, D.C.  (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Republican Leader John Thune will spend a crucial next few weeks working behind the scenes with other top GOP senators to reshape the party’s “big beautiful bill” — a balancing test accompanied in recent days by incendiary exchanges between President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk over whether the current proposals are so bad that Congress should just go back to the drawing board.

South Dakota’s Thune will need to gain support from deficit hawks, who want to see the mega-bill cut at least $2 trillion in spending, and moderates, who are closely monitoring how less federal funding for safety net programs like Medicaid and food assistance could harm their constituents and home-state institutions like rural hospitals.

Interviews by States Newsroom with Republican senators in early June showed many major elements of the package could change, including provisions that would put states on the hook for unanticipated costs. Arkansas Sen. John Boozman, for example, indicated the Senate may rewrite a proposal in the House-passed bill that would shift some of the cost of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides food aid to low-income people, to state governments.

“We can do whatever we want to do,” the Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee chairman said when asked by States Newsroom about amending that policy.

The final deal — intended to extend the 2017 tax cuts — cannot lose more than three GOP senators and still make it back across the Capitol to the House for final approval, since all Democrats are expected to oppose the bill. Thune only needs a majority vote in the Senate for the special process being used by Republicans.

Internal debates about just how to rework the Trump-backed tax and spending cuts measure began in the first week of June during meetings on Capitol Hill and at the White House, as GOP senators began critiquing the House-passed package line-by-line to ensure it complies with their strict rules for the complex reconciliation process and their policy goals.

Republicans said during interviews that several provisions in the House version likely won’t comply with the chamber’s Byrd rule, which could force lawmakers to toss out some provisions.

Complicating all of it was the very public back-and-forth between not just Trump but GOP leaders and former White House adviser Musk over the bill, which Musk on social media labeled “a disgusting abomination” and a “big, ugly spending bill” for its effect on the deficit and debt limit. “KILL the BILL,” Musk said on X, the platform he owns. Senate leaders so far have dismissed Musk’s criticisms.

Fragile House coalition

The talks, and whatever the legislation looks like after a marathon amendment voting session expected in late June, have already raised deep concerns among House GOP lawmakers, who will have to vote on the bill again in order to send it to Trump.

The extremely narrow majorities mean House Republican leaders cannot lose more than four of their own members if all the lawmakers in that chamber vote on the party-line bill.

Any changes the Senate makes could unbalance the fragile coalition of votes Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., cobbled together last month for a 215-214 vote. But GOP senators are adamant they will amend the legislation.

Complicating matters is a new report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that shows the proposed changes to tax law, Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and higher education aid wouldn’t actually help to reduce deficits during the next decade but raise them by more than $2.4 trillion.

The numbers are the exact opposite for what Republicans hoped their sweeping tax and spending cuts package would accomplish.

Scrutiny begins

The first stop for the House-passed reconciliation package in the Senate appears to be the parliamentarian’s office, where staff have begun evaluating whether each provision in the current version of the bill complies with the upper chamber’s strict rules.

Boozman said staff on his panel have already begun meeting with the parliamentarian to go over the House provisions within its jurisdiction.

He expects that section of the package will have to change to comply with the strict rules that govern the reconciliation process in the Senate and to better fit that chamber’s policy goals.

“We can’t really decide exactly what we want to use in the House version until we know what’s eligible,” Boozman said. “We’ve got some other ideas too that we asked them about. But we need to know, of the ideas that we have, what would be viable options as far as being Byrd eligible.”

The Byrd rule, which is actually a law, requires reconciliation bills to address federal revenue, spending, or the debt limit. This generally bars lawmakers from using the special budget process to change policies that don’t have a significant impact on those three areas.

Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who is campaigning to become his home state’s next governor, said pushing some of the cost of the nutrition program to states may be problematic.

“We’re trying to send more costs to the states. Most states can’t afford that, so we want to take care of people, but we need people to go back to work,” Tuberville said. “It’s not a forever entitlement. It’s for part-time, you know, take care of yourself until you get a job, go back to work and let people that need it really, really get it.”

Rural hospitals on edge

Senate GOP leaders will have to navigate how best to reduce federal spending on Medicaid, the state-federal health program for lower-income people and some with disabilities, that is relied on by tens of millions of Americans, many of whom are loyal Republican voters.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that 7.8 million people would lose access to Medicaid during the next decade if the House’s policy changes are implemented as written.

There are also concerns among GOP lawmakers about how losing the revenue that comes with treating Medicaid patients would impact rural health care access and hospitals.

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley said under no circumstances would he vote for a bill that cuts benefits to Medicaid recipients and is worried about how provisions in the House package would affect rural hospitals.

“They’re very concerned about it, rightly so,” Hawley said, referring to conversations he’s had with health care systems in his home state.

“This is something that we need to work on. I don’t know why we would penalize rural hospitals,” he added. “If you want to reduce health care spending, then cap the price of prescription drugs. I mean, that’s the way to do it. If you want to get major savings in the health care sector, don’t close rural hospitals, don’t take away benefits from working people. Cap the costs, cap the price that (the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) is going to pay for prescription drugs.”

West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said she’s not yet come to a decision about whether to keep, amend, or completely scrap some of the House changes to Medicaid.

“I talked to a lot of our hospitals when I was home to see what the impacts would be, because we have a very high Medicaid population,” Capito said. “I want to see it work and be preserved, but I want it to be there for future generations. And it’s just getting way out of control on the spend side. So right now, we’re looking at everything.”

Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy — chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee — said he doesn’t expect all of the health care provisions in the House bill make it through the “Byrd bath” with the parliamentarian. But he declined to go into detail.

“Some of it is more regulatory, that’s all I can say,” Cassidy said.

West Virginia’s Sen. Jim Justice said he is in favor of requiring some Medicaid enrollees to work, participate in community service, or attend an educational program at least 80 hours a month to stay on the program, a sentiment shared by many of his GOP colleagues.

“I’m good with every bit of that,” he said. 

But Justice expects the Senate will make its own changes to the package and that it will be “proud of their own pond.”

“Any frog that’s not proud of your own pond’s not much of a frog,” Justice said.

He did not go into detail on what those changes would entail.

SALT shakers

The state and local tax deduction, or SALT, represents another tightrope  for Thune, who is no fan of the changes made in the House. But he has said repeatedly this week he understands altering that language too much could mean a Senate-amended version of the bill never makes it back through the House to actually become law.

Thune said outside the White House following a June 4 meeting with Trump and others that there will very likely be changes to SALT.

“There isn’t a single Republican senator who cares much about the SALT issue,” Thune said. “It’s just not an issue that plays.” States that are most affected generally don’t elect Republicans to the Senate.

The House tax-writing panel originally proposed raising the SALT cap from $10,000 to $30,000, but Johnson had to raise that to $40,000 in order to secure votes from House Republicans who represent higher tax states like California, New Jersey and New York. The revised cap would benefit more high-income taxpayers in their states.

“In 2017, that was one of the best reforms we had in the bill,” Thune said. “But we understand it’s about 51 and 218. So we will work with our House counterparts and with the White House to try to get that issue in a place where we can deliver the votes and get the bill across the finish line.”

Republicans hold 53 seats in the Senate, but can rely on Vice President J.D. Vance to break a tied vote if necessary.

At least 218 House lawmakers must vote to pass bills when all 435 seats are filled. But with three vacancies at the moment, legislation can move through that chamber with 216 votes. The GOP has 220 seats at the moment, meaning Johnson can afford four defections on party-line bills.

North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven told reporters this week that he’d like to see GOP senators rework the SALT section of the bill, even if that causes challenges for Speaker Johnson’s ability to pass a final version.

“Let’s talk about SALT, for example. The House has a very large SALT number. The Senate is probably going to take a look at that,” Hoeven said. “There’ll be a lot of areas we can look at. There’ll be other things we’re going to look at. We’d like to get to $2 trillion in savings.”

Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno joined in putting his House colleagues on notice that they likely won’t get the agreement they struck with the speaker in the final version of the bill.

“I think we’re going to make common-sense changes. For example, the SALT cap, by the way, something that definitely helps very wealthy people in blue states,” Moreno said. “I think that cap, the 400% increase, is too much, so we’re going to work on tweaking that.”

Hawley, of Missouri, speaking more generally about the tax provisions, said he would like the Senate to make sure middle-class Americans benefit from the tax changes, just as much as companies.

“I want to be clear, I’m in favor of additional tax relief for working people. So my view is this corporate tax rate, which they lowered in 2017, they made that permanent back then. I know some workers that would like permanent tax relief,” Hawley said. “So I think it’s imperative that we do some addition to tax relief for workers. So I think that’s important.”

A new $4 trillion debt limit

Deficit hawks in the Senate have also voiced objections to raising the nation’s debt limit by $4 trillion, arguing that GOP leaders haven’t done enough to assuage their concerns about the nation’s fiscal trajectory.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul argued that the debt limit increase is more about next year’s midterm elections than good governance.

“​​This is really about avoiding having to talk about the debt during election times because people like to go home and talk to the Rotary or the Lions Club and tell them how they’re fiscally conservative and they’re against debt,” Paul said. “It’s embarrassing to them to have to vote to keep raising the debt. But they’re unwilling to have the courage to actually look at all spending.”

Paul suggested that House Republicans created problems by inflating some of the spending levels in their package, including to continue construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Paul is chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

“The $46.5 billion for the wall is eight times higher than the current cost of the wall. If you’re going to do 1,000 miles, you can actually do it for $6.5 billion. They want $46.5 billion,” Paul said. “We can’t be fiscally conservative until it comes to the border, and then we’re no longer fiscally conservative.”

The border wall has been a constant focus for Trump, who made it a central part of his 2016 presidential campaign, when he said repeatedly that the United States would build it and Mexico would pay for it.

South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Budget Committee, hinted during a brief interview that Congress can only cut so much spending without going near programs like Social Security, which accounted for $1.5 trillion in expenditures last year, or Medicare, which spent $865 billion. Both are normally considered untouchable.

“I think we’re going to make some changes to try to find more spending reductions. I think that’s a fair criticism of the bill, but you can’t do Social Security by law,” Graham said, referring to one of the many rules that govern the reconciliation process. “Nobody’s proposed anything in the Medicare area.”

Graham added that “trying to make the bill more fiscally responsible is a good thing, but we need to pass it.”