Republicans search for votes to open debate in Senate on policy bill

Washington: The Senate on Sunday opened debate on the embattled Republican tax cuts and domestic policy bill, as GOP leaders toiled to build enough support in their own ranks to push it through before a Fourth of July deadline set by President Donald Trump.

The bitter floor fight began in earnest after Senate clerks devoted almost 16 consecutive hours to reading aloud the 940-page bill because Democrats, who are unified against the measure, insisted on the reading as a protest and to delay the final showdown, pushing decisive votes to Monday.

Republicans hailed the legislation, which extends a broad array of tax cuts enacted in 2017 during the first Trump administration and boosts spending on the military and border security, while making steep cuts to Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance to pay for them.

“It’s a big, beautiful bill if you believe in cutting people’s taxes, securing the border, having a strong military and controlling government spending,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., chair of the Budget Committee, said, using the name bestowed upon the legislation by Trump.

Democrats assailed the bill, which also increases the federal debt limit by $5 trillion, noting that it is projected to significantly increase the federal deficit and deny essential safety-net programs to millions of Americans to provide tax benefits mainly to the wealthiest.

“This is a recipe for disaster,” said Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., who characterized the legislation as reckless and unconscionable.

In a stark display of the political peril for Republicans around the bill, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., one of the party’s most vulnerable incumbents, suddenly announced Sunday that he would not run for reelection next year after voting against bringing the bill to the floor. His opposition had drawn a harsh political rebuke from Trump, who threatened to recruit a primary opponent to challenge him.

As the debate began, Republicans used an accounting gimmick to upend long-standing budget rules and unilaterally declare that extending the tax cuts, estimated to cost roughly $3.8 trillion over a decade, would add nothing to the federal deficit. The move amounted to a substantial blow to the filibuster, effectively allowing Republicans to ignore budgeting rules meant to prevent adding to the deficit while still availing themselves of a special process that allows them to move their bill through on a majority vote.

Democrats called the maneuver a trick that would pave the way for disastrous policies.

“Rather than be honest with the American people about the true costs of their billionaire giveaways, Republicans are doing something the Senate has never, never done before, deploying fake math and accounting gimmicks to hide the true cost of their bill,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the minority leader.

But Republicans said they were within their rights and were prepared to roll over the Democratic objections.

Even as the endgame drew nearer for the legislation, it continued to change as several Republicans remained unsatisfied with it.

The Senate official who enforces the chamber’s rules determined that two last-minute provisions — added Saturday to benefit Alaska and Hawaii and help secure the vote of Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska — violated Senate rules and would likely need to be dropped from the bill, according to an aide.

Those provisions had been seen as crucial to winning the support of Murkowski on the initial procedural vote that narrowly passed late Saturday on a 51-49 vote, with two Republicans and all Democrats opposed. It was uncertain whether she would still back the legislation if those sweeteners were dropped.

The ruling by the chamber official, the Senate parliamentarian, involved a special boost to the states’ Medicaid payment rates and one to the prices Medicare pays hospitals in those states for some medical services.

Adding to the uncertainty around the measure were new estimates by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which showed that it would pile at least $3.3 trillion on the already-bulging national debt over a decade, nearly $1 trillion more than the House-passed version. That could pose big problems for the measure in the House, which must give it final approval and where fiscal hawks have warned that the price tag of the measure must not rise.

The CBO also reported that the Senate measure would result in deeper cuts to federal support for health insurance and more Americans losing coverage than the House measure, underscoring the political risks for Republicans.

The analysis found that the legislation would leave 11.8 million more Americans uninsured by 2034. Federal spending on Medicaid, Medicare and “Obamacare” (former President Barack Obama’s health care law) would be reduced by more than $1.1 trillion over that period — with more than $1 trillion of those cuts coming from Medicaid alone.

Once the clerks finished their reading, the clock started on 20 hours of debate on the legislation, evenly split between the two parties, though Republicans were not expected to use all of their time. At the end of the debate, members of both parties would have the opportunity to offer more changes and force floor votes on those amendments in an hourslong process known as a vote-a-rama.

The resolution of those amendments could be crucial to determining the fate of the bill when senators cast their final votes.

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For instance, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, wants to offer an amendment to revert the tax rate for the most affluent Americans to the level before the 2017 tax cuts were enacted, generating new revenue. Collins voted to open the debate Saturday but told Republican leaders that her vote did not represent a commitment to support the final bill.

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A group of hard-right conservatives who held out four hours Saturday night before agreeing to begin debate also want to win changes to produce greater savings in Medicaid, a proposal that could weaken support from other senators worried about health care cuts in their states.

Democrats are dug in against the proposal.

On CNN’s “State of the Union,” Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., warned on Sunday that 16 million Americans could lose their health care coverage under the bill. The cuts could make health care more expensive and have a “ripple effect to all of us who have traditional health care as well,” he added, setting the total number of uninsured back to “where we were before Obamacare.”

But Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., appearing on the same program, dismissed recent polls showing a lack of support for the bill. She maintained that Americans would greatly benefit and said she was excited about the bill’s potential.

“I think when the American people actually get to see this in fruition, they absolutely are going to be, too,” Britt said.