The Senate GOP will reconvene Monday with plans to unveil tweaks to the House’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB) as the clock is running on President Donald Trump’s self-imposed July 4 deadline to finalize his signature tax-cut legislation.
The Senate GOP will be briefed on the latest Monday afternoon before a potential release of text later in the day, Bloomberg News reported.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has a slim 53-47 margin between Republicans and the 45 Democrats and two independents that caucus with him. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has already vowed that no Democrat will vote for the budget bill.
The Senate Finance Committee will have its say, according to Politico, on tax cut extensions from Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and potential Medicaid cuts based on rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse – while not cutting healthcare benefits for those who actually qualify for it.
Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, will brief the GOP caucus on his panel’s text.
Two staunch Trump Republican allies are key holdouts in Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and Rand Paul, R-Ky., who are two fiscal hawks who say there is too much spending including in Trump’s OBBB.
The Senate GOP just needs 50 votes to pass its version of the OBBB under the budget reconciliation provision in the Senate rules, so it could afford just three holdouts.
One of the other key sticking points is the House GOP’s hiking of the State and Local Tax (SALT) maximum from $10,000 to $40,000, which Republicans rebuke as a bailout for Democrat-run state’s high-tax policies. Vulnerable Republicans in those states say they cannot win in 2026 midterms if SALT deductions are not raised.
Paul said Sunday he would vote for the bill if the $5 trillion debt ceiling hike was parsed out of it.
“I talked to the president last evening after the parade, and we’re trying to get to a better place in our conversations,” Paul told NBC News’ “Meet the Press.” “And I’ve let him know that I’m not an absolute no. I can be a yes.
“I like the tax cuts. I actually agree with [economist] Art Laffer and supply-siders that a lot of times when we cut rates, we actually get more revenue. So I don’t have as much trouble with the tax cuts. I think there should be more spending cuts.”
Still, Paul is not going to back down on what actually made him a no in the first place.
“But if they want my vote, they’ll have to negotiate, because I don’t want to vote to raise the debt ceiling $5 trillion,” the famed fiscal conservative told NBC.
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