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Senate Republicans are struggling to get the Trump tax cuts bill to the Senate floor. Republicans had hoped to have a 4 PM vote (ET) on a motion to proceed, so that debate could begin on final passage.
While they have been negotiating, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) announced that unless Republicans change the language about Medicaid cuts, he is no vote on both the motion to proceed and final passage.
Here is the Tillis statement:
Everything that Tillis said about the impact of the Senate Medicaid cuts was correct. The cuts in the Senate bill are worse than the ones in the House version, but the House bill isn’t much better.
The big picture for Democrats is that unless Senate Republican leadership makes major changes to the legislation, Democrats will need just two more no votes in the Senate to kill final passage of the bill, because Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has already announced that he is a no vote.
There is a group of Republican Senators who continue to waver back and forth on final passage, which means that none of this is a done deal.
If Senate Republicans refuse to change the Medicaid language, there are a dozen moderate House Republicans who are willing to vote no on final passage.
All of this seems shaky because it is.
Republicans may skate by and get this legislation through Congress by the skin of their teeth, but the political costs of getting saddled with such unpopular legislation could cost many of them their seats.
Democrats and the overwhelming majority of Americans who want this bill to fail are close to victory.
Sen. Tillis could flip his vote to yes, if Senate Republicans weaken their cuts to Medicaid, but there is no indication that will happen, so it looks like there remains a chance to put Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill into the trash bin of history.
