Trump bill live: JD Vance casts tie-breaking vote as Senate passes ‘big, beautiful’ bill

The Senate version of the “Big, Beautiful Bill” contains a $5 trillion debt ceiling increase — $1 trillion more than the House’s bill — but failure to pass some version would present lawmakers with a serious deadline later this summer, when the Treasury Department could come close to exhausting its borrowing authority and thus risk a devastating default.

The debt limit increase has caused Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky to come out in opposition to the bill, joining fellow GOP lawmaker Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who decried its cuts to Medicaid and clean energy initiatives.

Millions of Americans face the prospect of losing their health insurance coverage, according to a new analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and further research by Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee – Minority. Proposed cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act (ACA), alongside a new amendment, could strip coverage from nearly 30 million people.

The CBO’s analysis, released on June 27, found that cuts to Medicaid and the ACA initiated by Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans would result in 17 million individuals losing their health insurance by 2034.

Further exacerbating this potential crisis, Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) has introduced an amendment that appears to dismantle Medicaid Expansion in nine states. These states have automatic “trigger laws” that are designed to immediately terminate the program if the federal matching percentage is reduced. The Joint Economic Committee – Minority has preliminarily concluded that, due to these trigger laws, Senator Scott’s amendment would lead to millions more losing coverage in these specific states. In total, nearly 20 million people across the country could lose their health insurance under the amended budget bill.

The deep cuts mandated by Senator Scott’s amendment could also compel other states to end their Medicaid Expansion programmes. Should all states currently operating statutory Medicaid Expansion cease their programmes due to the Scott amendment and other proposed Medicaid cuts in the Senate bill, a staggering 29 million people nationwide could be left without health insurance.

As a final Senate vote looms on Donald Trump’s spending bill, Republican senators have systematically rejected Democratic amendments designed to protect funding for crucial social programs.

The rejected proposals included measures to prevent cuts to rural hospitals, which would force them to limit services, and to stop the shifting of food stamp costs to states. Democrats also sought to strike any provision that would reduce Medicaid funding.

Despite the largely party-line votes, two Republican senators broke ranks. Senator Susan Collins of Maine joined Democrats in an attempt to remove language that would compel rural hospitals to restrict their services. Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska also sided with Democrats on the rural hospital amendment, and on a separate motion to prevent states from bearing increased food stamp costs.

The rejections underscore the deep partisan divide ahead of the impending final vote on the bill, which includes significant tax and spending cuts.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt says of the Trump-backed tax cut and spending bill seemingly about to clear Congress: “Republicans need to stay tough and unified during the home stretch, and we are counting on them to get the job done.”

Leavitt told reporters during her briefing that Senate Majority Leader John Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson were at the White House on Monday to discuss passing what Trump calls the “big, beautiful bill.”

Leavitt also said Trump was confident the bill would be passed and would be signed by the president at the White House by July 4, an informal deadline the president has been pushing for weeks.