‘BEAUTIFUL BILL’: If passed in the Senate, the bill would go back to the US House of Representatives for approval, but Republicans can only afford to lose a handful of votes
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AFP, WASHINGTON
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US senators on Sunday were inching toward a vote on US President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful” spending bill, a hugely divisive proposal that would deliver key parts of the US president’s domestic agenda, while making massive cuts to social welfare programs.
Trump is hoping the “One Big Beautiful Bill” would help seal his legacy, extending his expiring first-term tax cuts at a cost of US$4.5 trillion and beefing up border security.
However, Republicans eyeing midterm congressional elections next year are divided over the package, which would strip health care from millions of the poorest Americans and add more than US$3 trillion to the country’s debt.
US Senate Majority Leader John Thune walks to his office at the US Capitol in Washington on Sunday.
Photo: Bloomberg
The US Senate formally opened debate on the bill late on Saturday, after Republican holdouts delayed what should have been a procedural vote.
Senators narrowly passed the motion to begin debate, with two Republicans joining 47 Democrats in voting against it — drawing sharp rebukes from Trump.
The US president has pushed his party to get the bill passed and on his desk for him to sign into law by July 4, the US’ Independence Day.
However, on Sunday, he seemed to cast doubt on that timeline, and said the opposition Democrats were delaying proceedings for political reasons.
“There are a lot of bad people in the Democrat Party,” he told Fox News in an interview aired on Sunday.
Earlier, Trump’s tone had been even sharper.
“Republicans must remember that they are fighting against a very evil, corrupt and, in many ways, incompetent (Policywise!) group of people, who would rather see our Country ‘go down in flames’ than do the right thing,” he wrote on social media.
Democrats are bitterly opposed to the legislation and Trump’s agenda, and have vowed to hold up the debate. They began by insisting that the entirety of the about 1,000-page bill be read aloud to the chamber before the debate commenced.
If passed in the Senate, the bill would go back to the House of Representatives for approval, where Republicans can only afford to lose a handful of votes — and are facing stiff opposition from within their own ranks.
On Sunday, Republican Senator Thom Tillis, who opposes the bill, said he would not seek re-election next year, US media reported, after Trump excoriated him for his opposition to the spending plan.
Republicans are scrambling to offset the US$4.5 trillion cost of Trump’s tax relief, with many of the proposed cuts to come from decimating funding for Medicaid, the health insurance program for low-income Americans.
Republicans are split on the Medicaid cuts, which would threaten scores of rural hospitals and lead to an estimated 8.6 million Americans being deprived of health care.
The spending plan would also roll back many of the tax incentives for renewable energy that were put in place during then-US president Joe Biden’s administration.
On Saturday, former Trump advisor Elon Musk — with whom the president had a public falling out this month over his criticism of the bill — called the current proposal “utterly insane and destructive.”
“It gives handouts to industries of the past, while severely damaging industries of the future,” he said.
Independent analysis has shown that the bill would pave the way for a historic redistribution of wealth from the poorest 10 percent of Americans to the richest.
Although the House has already passed its own version, both chambers have to agree on the same text before it can be signed into law.
