Senate Republicans are racing to pass a budget bill that is pivotal to President Donald Trump’s second-term agenda ahead of a self-imposed 4 July deadline.
Party leadership have been twisting arms for an initial vote on the “Big Beautiful Bill” on Saturday, following the release of its latest version – all 940 pages – shortly after midnight.
Rank-and-file Republicans have been divided over how much to cut from welfare programmes in order to cover the cost of extending some $3.8tn (£2.8tn) in Trump tax breaks.
The sprawling tax and spending measure passed the House of Representatives by a single vote last month.
In a memo sent on Saturday to Senate offices, the White House endorsed the latest revisions to the bill and called for its passage.
The memo reportedly warned that failure to approve the budget “would be the ultimate betrayal”.
But Senate Majority Leader John Thune called plans for a Saturday vote “aspirational”.
A Republican senator from Wisconsin, Ron Johnson, told the Fox & Friends programme on Saturday he will be voting “no”, saying he still needed time to read it.
“We just got the bill,” Johnson said. “I got my first copy at about 01:23 in the morning.”
Two other Republican senators are holding out.
Thom Tillis of North Carolina raised objections to the legislation on Saturday, a day after Rand Paul of Kentucky said no.
All eyes are now on centrist Republican senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine.
Collins has indicated she may support a vote to advance the bill to the debate stage, but that she remains undecided on whether she will vote “yes” to passing it.
The bill needs a simple majority to clear the Senate. With Republicans holding 53 seats out of 100, plus a tiebreaker from Vice-President JD Vance, the party can only afford three defections.
The latest version was designed to appease some backbench Republican holdouts.
Other amendments incorporate input from the Senate parliamentarian, an official who reviews bills to ensure they comply with the chamber’s procedures.
It includes an increase in funding for rural hospitals, after some party moderates argued the original proposal would harm their constituents.
Another tweak was made to State and Local Taxes (Salt) – a bone of contention for representatives from high-tax states such as New York.
There is currently a $10,000 cap on how much taxpayers can deduct from the amount they owe in federal taxes.
In the new bill, Senate Republicans have raised the Salt limit to $40,000 for married couples with incomes up to $500,000 – in line with what the House of Representatives approved.
But the latest Senate version ends the $40,000 cap after five years – when it would drop back to $10,000.
There are also changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), which provides food benefits to low-income Americans.
Under the latest bill, Alaska and Hawaii would be temporarily exempt from a proposed requirement for some states to start footing the bill for the programme, which is currently fully funded by the federal government.
The revision comes after Alaska’s two Republican senators pushed for an exemption.
The legislation still contains some of its core components, including extending tax cuts passed by Republicans in 2017, as well as the addition of new cuts that Trump campaigned on, such as a tax deduction on Social Security benefits and the elimination of taxes on overtime work and tips.
More contentious measures are also still in place, including restrictions and requirements on Medicaid – a healthcare programme used by millions of elderly, disabled and low-income Americans.
Democrats have heavily criticised this piece of the bill, saying it will limit access to affordable healthcare for millions of Americans.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 7.8 million people would become uninsured due to such Medicaid cuts.
Senator Patty Murray, a Washington state Democrat, took to social media on Saturday to argue the bill contains “the largest healthcare cuts in history”.
Another critic of the bill is Elon Musk, who wrote on X on Saturday that the latest iteration of the bill “will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harms to our country”.
Musk took issue with taxes the bill proposes on solar and wind energy projects.
Senate Republicans are pushing a procedural vote for the latest version of the bill on Saturday. If the vote is successful, the bill can move to the Senate floor to be debated, where it can be revised further.
If it successfully passes a final vote in the Senate, it will then make its way back to the House of Representatives, which will consider all the changes made and vote again before sending it to Trump’s desk for final approval.
