Thune declared at one point they were in the “homestretch” as he dashed through the halls at the Capitol, only to backtrack a short time later, suggesting any progress was “elusive.”
In a midnight social media post urging them on, Trump called the bill “perhaps the greatest and most important of its kind.” Vice President JD Vance summed up his own series of posts, simply imploring senators to “Pass the bill.”
Attention quickly turned to key senators, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, who have also raised concerns about health care cuts, but also a loose coalition of four conservative GOP senators pushing for even steeper reductions.
And on social media, billionaire Elon Musk was again lashing out at Republicans as “the PORKY PIG PARTY!!” for including a provision that would raise the nation’s debt limit by $5 trillion, which is needed to allow continued borrowing to pay the bills.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said his side was working to show “how awful this is.”
“Republicans are in shambles because they know the bill is so unpopular,” Schumer said as he walked the halls.
Few Republicans appear fully satisfied as the final package emerges, in either the House or Senate.
Tillis said it is a betrayal of the president’s promises not to kick people off health care, especially if rural hospitals close.
Collins had proposed bolstering the $25 billion proposed rural hospital fund to $50 billion, but her amendment failed. And Murkowski was trying to secure provisions to spare people in her state from some health care and food stamp cuts while also working to beef up federal reimbursements to Alaska’s hospitals. They have not said how they would vote for the final package.
“Radio silence,” Murkowski said when asked.
At the same time, conservative Senate Republicans proposing steeper health care cuts, including Rick Scott of Florida, Mike Lee of Utah, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, filed into Thune’s office for a near-midnight meeting.
Sen. Mike Crapo, the GOP chairman of the Finance Committee, dismissed the dire predictions of health care cuts as Democrats trafficking in what he called the “politics of fear.”
Unable to stop the march toward passage, the Democrats as the minority party in Congress are using the tools at their disposal to delay and drag out the process.
Democrats forced a full reading of the text, which took 16 hours, and they have a stream of amendments.
Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, raised particular concern at the start of debate late Sunday about the accounting method being used by the Republicans, which says the tax breaks from Trump’s first term are now “current policy” and the cost of extending them should not be counted toward deficits.
She said that kind of “magic math” won’t fly with Americans trying to balance their own household books.
