Senate advances GOP bill that costs more, cuts more

What happened

Senate Republicans advanced President Donald Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill" late Saturday on a 51-49 vote. Democrats and the two Republicans who voted against moving forward with the legislation, Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.) and Thom Tillis (N.C.), denounced the bill during hours of debate Sunday. Earlier in the day, Tillis had said he would not seek re-election next year.

Who said what

The Congressional Budget Office estimated Sunday that the Senate bill would add $3.3 trillion to the deficit by 2034, versus $2.4 trillion for the House version, to extend $3.8 trillion in tax breaks, add about $200 billion in new breaks and allocate $150 billion more for immigration enforcement and another $157 billion for the military. To partially offset these costs, it would cut $1.2 trillion, primarily from Medicaid and food stamps, leaving 11.8 million fewer people with health coverage, compared with 10.9 million in the House bill.

Tillis said on the Senate floor that the Medicaid cuts "will betray the promise Donald Trump made" and "hurt people who are eligible and qualified for Medicaid." Trump and other GOP leaders say only "fraudsters, illegal immigrants" and ineligible people would lose coverage, The New York Times said. But "that claim rests on a maneuver embedded throughout the sprawling legislation: Instead of explicitly reducing benefits, Republicans would make them harder to get and to keep," turning mounds of new "paperwork" into "hundreds of billions of dollars in savings." Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said it would leave Americans "mummified in new red tape."

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Republicans, "who have long voiced concern about growing U.S. deficits and debt, have rejected the CBO's longstanding methodology to calculate the cost of legislation," Reuters said, and the Senate GOP is using an accounting maneuver to project deficit reduction. But Paul said on the Senate floor that the GOP bill's $5 trillion debt limit hike was an "admission that they know they aren't controlling the deficit" but rather adding "trillions more."

What next?

The Senate plans to start 20 hours of voting on amendments Monday morning. Republicans are facing a Trump-imposed deadline to get the bill to his desk by Friday, which would require the House to approve any Senate version that passes out of the upper chamber.