5 Issues That Might Decide Fate Of Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful’ Bill In Senate

After the House passed President Donald Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill” by a single vote on Thursday, the Senate is considering a host of changes to the massive tax and spending package, which contains many of the president’s legislative priorities.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune can only afford to lose three GOP votes to pass the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act — as several senators from different wings of the chamber’s Republican Conference are calling for alterations to be made to the package. A deadline to send the bill to Trump’s desk has been set for July 4, but the process could last well into the summer.

“We’re looking at what the House did and we’ve had a lot of conversations with our members, including one yesterday with the members in the Senate Finance Committee, to examine all the potential options there and see what we think is a workable path to get to 51 ,” Thune told reporters Thursday. “We want to do things that are meaningful in terms of reforming programs, strengthening programs without affecting beneficiaries. So it’s still a very active discussion.”

Medicaid

Medicaid is proving to be a key obstacle with attracting the support of some Republican senators, especially Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, who have all expressed concerns over potential cuts to the program.

Hawley, widelyregarded as a populist, has been surprisingly outspoken about his stance on preserving Medicaid benefits, even going so far as to speak with President Donald Trump about his concerns on the issue.

“ told me the House will NOT cut Medicaid benefits and the Senate will NOT cut Medicaid benefits and he won’t sign any benefit cuts,” Hawley wrote in an April 3 post to X. “I hope congressional leadership will get the message.”

Missouri’s total Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) enrollment is 1.3 million, and the state approved Medicaid expansion in 2020, broadening coverage to eligible adults aged 19-64. There are currently 340,000 Missourians waiting for benefits through the expansion.

“It is wrong to cut healthcare for the working poor and that’s what we’re talking about with Medicaid. My state is a medicaid expansion state, over 20% of Missourians including hundreds of thousands of children are on Medicaid. They’re not on Medicaid because they want to be, they’re on Medicaid because they can’t afford health insurance in the private market,” Hawley said on CNN on May 14. “These are working people and their children who need healthcare. And it’s just wrong to go and cut their healthcare when they’re trying to make ends meet, trying to help their kids, trying to make sure they’re able to provide for their families.”

Collins and Murkowski are seen asmoderate Republicans, and both have also taken issues with the bill’s potential changes to Medicaid. Collins has said she’s open to work requirements being enforced for able-bodied individuals as long as they are “carefully drafted.”

“I have said and made clear that I do not want to take away Medicaid benefits,” Collins said.

Murkowski has made it well known that the bill’s policies on Medicaid could make it increasingly difficult for the Senate to pass it.

“There are provisions in there that are very, very, very challenging, if not impossible, for us to implement,” Murkowski told reporters.

Energy Credits 

Furthermore, GOP Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, John Curtis of Utah, Jerry Moran of Kansas and Murkowski have expressed concerns over the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) green energy subsidies, which many congressional Republicans seek to gut in the bill.

Curtis, who previously chaired the House Conservative Climate Caucus, wrote a letter alongside Murkowski calling on Republican leadership to preserve the IRA’s tax credits on low carbon energy such as solar, wind and battery storage. Tillis and Moran signed the letter as well.

“We have a lot of work that we need to do on the timeline and scope of the production and investment tax credits,” said Tillis, a member of the Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over the credits. “Undoubtedly, there’s going to be changes.”

Moran told reporters he has “always been a supporter” of phasing out credits for wind and solar, but said he’ll need to thoroughly evaluate the one big, beautiful bill “to see how acceptable or if that is too damaging.”

However, Republican North Dakota Sen. Kevin Cramer has also had issues with the tax credit rollbacks, claiming technologies like geothermal or nuclear reactors not yet ready to be constructed at large scale would be kneecapped by the policy.

“They definitely need more time than that,” Cramer said. “It’s too short for truly new technologies. We’ll have to change that. I don’t think it’s fair to treat an emerging technology the same as a 30-year-old technology.”

North Dakota’s other senator, Republican Sen. John Hoeven as well as Republican West Virginia Sen. Shelly Moore Capito have both agreed that there will be changes made to the energy credits. Hoeven called the House GOP’s bill a “starting point” for Senate negotiations.

Spending and Debt Ceiling  

GOP Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rand Paul of Kentucky are among the fiscal hawks in the Senate driving the conversation over spending deficits. Johnson has also listed Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Rick Scott of Florida as senators looking for further spending cuts in the package.

Johnson is pushing for the government to return to pre-pandemic spending levels— a nearly $6 trillion cut— and refers to the bill as “completely unacceptable.”

“They just kept talking about $1.5 trillion. They set the bar way too low,” Johnson said. “The goal of the House effort has been to pass one big, beautiful bill. It’s rhetoric. It’s false advertising. The goal should have been reduce average annual deficits, so we have to focus on spending.”

While House Republicans were pressured to comply with the bill due to the upcoming midterm elections, many Senators are not feeling the same pressure to pass the bill as it is.

“In the House, President Trump can threaten a primary, and those guys want to keep their seats. I understand the pressure. Can’t pressure me that way,” Johnson told reporters on Thursday. “I’m not going to vote for it with minor tweaks. I think everybody’s kind of happy talking and ‘get together and pull together and gotta do this’ and that crap. That’s the way they’re going to try to make it go.”

As soon as the bill passed the House, Paul told Senate GOP leadership that he opposed the bill due to the language that will raise the debt limit by $4 trillion over the next two years — something Trump has demanded.

“I’ve told them if they’ll take the debt ceiling off of it, I’ll consider voting for it,” Paul told reporters on Thursday. “We’ve never, ever voted to raise the debt ceiling this much. It’ll be a historic increase. I think it’s not good for conservatives to be on record supporting a $4 (trillion) or $5 trillion increase in the debt ceiling.”

“If they were to take the debt ceiling off of it and have the tax reductions and spending reductions, I’d probably vote for that,” Paul added. “The spending reductions are imperfect, and I think wimpy, but I’d still vote for the package if I didn’t have to vote to raise the debt ceiling.”

SALT 

Unlike the in the House, capping state and local tax (SALT) deductions does not seem to be a primary concern for the Senate. North Dakota Sen. Kevin Cramer told reporters, “There’s not one Republican in the United States Senate who gives a shit about SALT.”

“I would expect — and certainly hope — that we would modify that very generous SALT cap to a more modest number that recognizes we need moderate Republican votes in the House to pass the final bill,” Cramer continued. “But maybe this is a little bit too far for most of our taxpayers to subsidize bad tax policy in other states.”

The House is home to many blue state moderate Republicans, such as New York Reps. Mike Lawler and Nick LaLota, who felt tied to SALT caps because blue states with wealthier taxpayers are the primary users of the deductions.

The Senate Republican caucus simply does not have that problem. Aside from Collins, every currently serving Republican senator represents a state Trump carried in the 2024 presidential election.

Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso of Wyoming expressed a similar sentiment recognizing that senators are not feeling the same pressure House Republicans felt over issues like SALT.

“There’s not a single senator who is impacted by SALT,” Barrasso said on Wednesday. “That’s an area where we understand their situation, but we don’t have that same pressure or problem. We have other issues with other members that we’ve got to focus on.”

“It comes down to costs. It’s probably going to get entangled . I hate the SALT policy,” Republican North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis told reporters on Thursday. Tillis, much like Cramer, admitted he understands Speaker Johnson’s situation and that the cap has to remain in the bill in some form throughout negotiations in order to get the bill finalized.

Timing

Johnson reiterated the Senate’s dire need for more time to go through the bill “line by line,” on Fox News Friday, but the Senate might not have enough time to dissect the bill in such a way. Congress’s Memorial Day recess kicks off on Monday and extends until June 2, leaving only four weeks until the projected July 4 deadline.

Republican Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, said the Senate would need to make a move on the bill by at least “late July.”

“There is a debt ceiling in there. Secretary Bessent indicated we need to do something by late July, at least. I’m not saying that’s how late we should wait,” Crapo told reporters on Thursday. “I’m going to try and get this done as soon as I can.”

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