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President Donald Trump is betting on his own strong-arming skills to jam his tax-cuts bill through by his self-assigned July 4 deadline, even as many GOP senators privately say it’s time to slow down.
Trump pulled off the same sort of whipping blitz in the House a month ago, so it’s no wonder he’s running the same maneuver. But this time there are more challenges — which keep piling up — and time is short.
The “big, beautiful bill” is not only short of sufficient support right now, it’s also boasting a hefty amount of blank space for now. That’s because Republicans are still hustling to win approval for provisions that their nonpartisan rules referee deemed ineligible for protection from a Democratic filibuster.
Given the fluidity of Trump’s marquee legislation in the upper chamber, it’s difficult to estimate the costs or effects of passage anymore. Which is one reason why, behind the scenes, senators are trying to slow the rush to finish a bill that will affect almost every American in some way.
Trump has no interest in waiting. As lawmakers prepared to scrap their weekend and recess plans, he invited some Republicans to a Thursday event that amounted to what one called a “mass arm-twisting.”
“I like the president, I respect him, I certainly respect how difficult his job is. I don’t want to make it more difficult. But we can’t keep mortgaging our kids’ future. And he understands that about me,” said Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis.
Making things harder for Trump, Johnson is currently against the bill and has banded with two fellow conservative senators as a bloc: “We all have to be a yes before any of us are a yes.”
Publicly, most Republicans are putting on a sunny face that the bill can still get through the Senate over the weekend, but the amount of unfinished work is daunting.
And Trump is getting increasingly involved after navigating the war between Iran and Israel. As he flew back from the Netherlands on Wednesday night, Trump began speaking to senators about the fate of his megabill, which cuts taxes and some Medicaid benefits — as well as a host of other provisions.
Shortly after he urged senators to pare back its Medicaid cuts to look more like the House-passed bill, Republicans got bad news. Their initial bid to rein in a funding mechanism for Medicaid, as well as a signature proposal to bar undocumented immigrants from the program, were both proved ineligible.
Republicans offered varying assessments of whether they can meet Trump’s deadline, which is mostly arbitrary but still creating a harried sense of urgency in the Capitol.
“We want to get it right and we want to be on time. Getting it right is more important than timing,” said Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., calling Trump a “negotiator” who “knows how those procedures go.”
One person close to the White House said the quiet part out loud: Trump may need to give the Senate – and himself – some wiggle room.
“He has to shift the deadline, or it all falls apart,” the person said. “Procedurally, how would it get on his desk by July 4? They don’t have the votes and a bunch of it the parliamentarian gutted.”
On top of all the unresolved disputes and provisions that need rewriting, senators have July 4 political events and congressional delegations leaving the capital soon as well. And they will essentially run out of things to vote on after dispensing with a Democratic challenge to Trump’s war powers on Friday.
Trump and his deadlines are the only things standing in the way of a delay.
“I’ve said, ‘If we care to continue down this path, I didn’t think we’d have a vote this weekend.’ Looks like it’s proven to be true,” said Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C. “We got to keep working till we’re done.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., spoke to White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller on Wednesday evening. The upshot: “We’re plowing ahead.”
Know More
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump is “adamant about seeing this bill on his desk here at the White House by Independence Day” and that he’s directly speaking with lawmakers.
“He was on Air Force One when I talked to him on the way home,” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., told Semafor after speaking with Trump on Wednesday. “He’s re-engaging.”
It will require a rapid-fire series of deals to get there. The Senate’s become consumed with a debate over the arcane provider tax, a mechanism health care providers use to get more federal dollars for Medicaid.
And Trump has disliked what he’s heard about a proposal that senators like Hawley and Tillis say will cost their states dearly. Republicans also aren’t sure how they can bar undocumented immigrants from Medicaid benefits under the rules.
Republicans are discussing delaying the effects of the provider tax, but privately some think it might end up being dropped from the bill altogether. They’re also exploring forcing a vote on the undocumented immigrant provisions at a 60-vote threshold as a potential workaround.
Tillis said the Senate’s Medicaid cuts have “issues with the House. We’ve heard that Speaker Johnson says that he’s got too many members against it.”
Dropping or watering down the language, though, will incense conservatives like Ron Johnson.
“There’s universal agreement that we need to reform it: The question is how much, and what timeframe,” said Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio.
Over at the White House, it’s been all hands on deck as they try to keep Congress on the president’s deadline. Vice President JD Vance’s team is getting involved, in addition to a group of senior legislative affairs advisers.
A White House official noted that they’re currently focused on “getting as many provisions of the bill as possible and reworking the language,” maintaining that Trump’s timeline is still doable.
Burgess and Shelby’s View
Trump has a unique ability to cajole members of his party and get what he wants, but this is a challenge even for him.
And while the White House is insistent there’s no room for negotiating on the timeline, we’ve seen the president slide deadlines before. This one is entirely created by the administration.
If it becomes clear July 4 is an impossible deadline, don’t be surprised to see Trump concede, though perhaps grudgingly, and set a new date.
There are plenty of scapegoats: The Senate’s arcane rules, or members who want to go on recess. The real deadline remains the debt ceiling, which is at least a few weeks away from being breached.
Room for Disagreement
Optimists argue the whirlwind of complaints and procedural wrenches are par for the course and part of ultimately landing the bill.
A similar drama played out in the House, after all.
“As we saw, the bill passed through the House, despite many people believing it could not,” Leavitt noted on Thursday. “So the House is ready to receive this bill back from the Senate so they can pass it and bring it to the President’s desk.”
Notable
- Sen. Susan Collins wants to see changes in Trump’s bill, including upping the stabilization fund for rural hospitals to $100 billion, she told Semafor this week.
- Rep. Nick LaLota isn’t accepting the Senate and White House’s latest reduced proposal on the SALT cap, he told The Hill.