Now, Senate Republicans are preparing to put it through a buzzsaw.
“They cobbled together a very delicate balance over there … but, you know, the Senate will have its imprint on it,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said of House Republicans.
With an informal July 4 deadline fast looming, here are seven features of the House bill some GOP senators want to change.
“They have cliffs and some shorter-term … time frames when it comes to some of the tax policies,” said Thune of House Republicans.
The tactic, known as current policy baseline, would go a long way in helping Senate Republicans make Trump’s tax cuts permanent.
President Donald Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill” was finally passed by the House early Thursday morning after weeks of arduous negotiations. Republicans in the Senate are now getting ready to put it through a buzzsaw.
Despite Speaker Mike Johnson’s insistence that senators make as few changes as possible to the House’s product in order to increase the likelihood that it will pass the House a second time, Senate GOP leaders have made it apparent that their members have different ideas.
House Republicans “cobbled together a very delicate balance over there … but, you know, the Senate will have its imprint on it,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune remarked. We must do what we can get 51 for, and they must do what they can get 218 for. “.”.
Republicans in both houses have been quietly trying to get the House bill closer to the Senate’s druthers, including on defense funding, in order to prevent a nasty confrontation. They think there will be a lot of overlap. To avoid a confrontation with the lawmaker, initial discussions have also been held to review proposals for adherence to Senate regulations.
However, Senate Republicans have also made it apparent that they are unhappy with a number of the policy decisions made by their House counterparts in order to pass the bill. With the informal deadline of July 4 rapidly approaching, these are seven aspects of the House bill that some Republican senators would like to alter.
1. . Weak spending cuts — Senate Republicans are aiming for a $2 trillion ceiling on spending cuts, which is more than the House’s $1.05 trillion. According to Thune’s interview, he wants his chamber to reach the upper end of that range and has been pushing the House to raise its own deficit reduction goals.
The reason for this is that, like the speaker, Thune is up against a group of fiscal hawks who want to cut spending much more drastically. Sen. Ron Johnson is a driving force behind this initiative, advocating for a roughly $6 trillion reduction in spending to return to pre-pandemic levels. In an interview, the Wisconsin Republican stated that while he is aware that the megabill will not save that much, he still wants to address a portion through budget reconciliation and then appoint a bicameral commission to look “line by line” for the remaining savings.
By pointing to Republican senators, Johnson also thinks he has the votes to thwart a bill that doesn’t take deficit reduction seriously. His concerns were shared by Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky, Rick Scott of Florida, and Mike Lee of Utah. However, Rep. Massie, Thomas (R-Ky. ), one of the two Republicans who voted against the House bill on Thursday, stated that he has “no” faith that Paul and Johnson will make any progress: “It’s not going to get better over there.”. “”.
2. . House Republicans steered clear of some of the most contentious adjustments to the federal government’s treatment of states that have increased Medicaid offerings under the Affordable Care Act. However, Republican senators may abandon even some of their more modest provisions out of concern for political fallout from any policy that would seem to be removing vulnerable Americans from their health insurance plans.
Republicans in the Senate. Susan Collins from Maine, Lisa Murkowski from Alaska, and Josh Hawley from Missouri have all issued warnings that they have red lines they will not cross regarding Medicaid and that they think the House bill goes beyond “waste, fraud, and abuse.”. The alignment between moderates like Murkowski and Collins and conservatives like Hawley highlights how hesitancy about changes to the health safety-net program is resonating across the ideological spectrum.
Early on, Senate Republicans will have to contend with the House’s provider tax freeze and the new Medicaid co-payment requirements. Hawley called the proposed co-pay system a “sick tax” and stated, “I think tinkering with the provider tax is a real risk to rural hospitals.”. “.”.
However, those Republicans will have to contend with some colleagues who favor the House’s changes to the provider tax or who favor states paying a larger share of Medicaid expansion enrollees’ costs.
3. House Republicans decided to keep costs down in their party-line package by restoring some business tax cuts for a maximum of four or five years. Senate Republicans, on the other hand, want to make those provisions permanent.
“When it comes to some of the tax policies, they have cliffs and some shorter-term … time frames,” House Republicans’ Thune stated. Permanence is the path to economic certainty, in our opinion. “.”.
In particular, Senate Republicans are considering permanently extending tax breaks for R&D and “bonus depreciation,” which is the write-off of business assets. However, doing so would probably raise the bill’s red ink by hundreds of billions of dollars, making it more difficult to placate deficit hawks.
4. . GOP senators intend to fully eliminate the cost of extending $3.08 trillion in expiring tax cuts by employing a new and contentious accounting strategy. Senate Republicans would greatly benefit from the current policy baseline strategy, which would help ensure that Trump’s tax cuts are permanent. This is due to the fact that, under normal budgetary regulations, Republicans would have to partially offset the long-term deficit impact of their tax breaks.
A number of Republicans in the House have expressed their opposition to the accounting method; Rep. Arizona’s David Schweikert referred to it as an “intellectual fraud.”. The move, according to budget experts, amounts to a “nuclear option” that would undermine long-standing budgetary regulations that only permit specific kinds of legislation to pass the Senate with a simple majority.
5. One of the most contentious clauses in the House bill is already causing a lot of resentment in the Senate: it requires states to pay a share of federal food assistance expenses for the first time.
The House bill would require all states to pay at least 5% of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program’s costs, but if a state has a high rate of payment errors, it may have to pay much more. States with Republican senators, such as Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott of South Carolina and Murkowski and Dan Sullivan of Alaska, would be especially hard hit by that.
Chair of Agriculture John Boozman (R-Ark. According to an interview, Senate Republicans are worried about this House proposal and should consider “how much of an unfunded mandate” it would create for states for “when our governors call us.”. “”.
6. Significant reductions in clean-energy incentives — Senate Republicans have been alerting the public for weeks that there is resistance to eliminating the clean-energy tax credits established by the Democrats’ climate law of 2022. In order to placate hardliners who were ranting about the “green new scam,” House Republicans instead decided to expedite the sunset dates for a number of credits. “”.
Senate GOP leaders now have to deal with internal Republican concerns that cutting off the tax credits would undercut investments and potentially result in job losses in their states.
In a recent letter to leadership, four Republican senators warned of these possible repercussions, and other senators have since joined them in stating that the House language will need to be revised.
Sen. Tillis, Thom (R-N). C. one of the letter signers), further stated that Congress must “consider it from the perspective of a businessperson” because the House’s proposal would have a “chilling effect” on future investments. “”.
7. . Raising the state-and-local tax deduction cap from $10,000 to $40,000, with a phase-out for taxpayers earning over $500,000, is the red line in House Republicans’ bill.
However, there are no Republican senators actively advocating for the higher SALT deduction in the Senate, and many others believe there is no justification for it. Ron Johnson bluntly stated, “Eliminate it,” when asked to preview his strategy for SALT. “”.
Sen said, “I sincerely hope that we will change that extremely generous SALT cap.”. When asked if he would be prepared to use the House’s number to increase the likelihood that the bill would pass both chambers, Kevin Cramer, a Republican from North Dakota, gave in.
“The most important number is 218,” he stated, “based on how many we can get to sleep.”. “.”.
This report was written by Ben Leonard and Lisa Kashinsky.
