U.S. Senate begins vote to open debate on Trump’s spending bill — with support still unclear

The U.S. Capitol building is seen on the day of a meeting of US Senators, as Republican lawmakers struggle to pass President Donald Trump’s sweeping spending and tax bill, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on Saturday, June 28. Ken Cedeno/Reuters via CNN Newsource

The U.S. Senate has begun voting Saturday evening on a motion to proceed with debate on President Donald Trump’s giant tax cuts and spending bill.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune and his team have been fiercely lobbying their members to get in line behind the measure, with Trump and White House officials also leaning heavily on the remaining GOP holdouts.

Senate GOP leaders believe they have the votes to pass it, but narrowly. If the vote does pass, Senate Democrats are planning a major delay tactic to slow the chamber’s passage of Trump’s agenda, forcing clerks to spend an estimated 10 to 15 hours reading aloud the entire bill. Then there would be debate on the bill, followed by a “vote-a-rama” before a vote on final passage.

Trump met with key holdouts — Sens. Rick Scott of Florida and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin — on Saturday, just hours before GOP leaders hoped to hold the vote, according to those two senators’ close colleague, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah. Trump has also spoken to other critical votes, like Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, who earlier Saturday declared his support for the bill. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, another critic of the bill, golfed with the president on Saturday morning, according to South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham.

But it’s not yet clear whether Thune will be able to limit defections on that procedural vote, with centrists like Sen. Thom Tillis and a small group of GOP hardliners — Lee, Scott and Johnson — still pushing for changes to the bill. But GOP leadership believe they will ultimately succeed, thanks, in part, to immense pressure from Trump.

In one sign of the uncertainty, the Senate GOP’s plans to hold that first vote at 4 p.m. has already slipped by several hours as party leaders attempt to coordinate with members about which amendments could come up for a vote this weekend.

“The most recent information that we have is that we have a commitment for the votes, but in order to get to that commitment, there are some amendments that some people want to make sure that they can offer,” Rounds said on CNN.

“They’re trying to make sure that the scores on their amendments are appropriate and that they’ll fit within the confines that the bill calls for,” Rounds said.

“We will have the vote here before long that will answer all that,” Thune told reporters when asked about the current opposition to moving ahead with the bill.

His deputy, Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, was defiant as he declared the Senate would vote in the coming hours regardless of the whip count.

“We are going to be voting on the motion to proceed at 4 p.m.,” Barrasso said when pressed on whether Republicans will have the votes.

Thune can afford to lose only three GOP votes on the floor. And three Republicans, Tillis, Johnson and Paul, have already said they would block the bill from moving ahead. (A fourth, Sen. Tim Sheehy of Montana, briefly said he’d oppose it over concerns with a public land sale provision, but he later said the issue would be worked out and he would vote yes on the bill.)

It all amounts to an intense Saturday scramble for Trump and GOP leaders, who are intent on passing the president’s agenda as quickly as possible. Trump has told GOP leaders he wants to sign the bill at the White House on July 4 – and that still requires approval from the narrowly divided GOP House, which is also no guarantee.

House Republicans, meanwhile, held a brief 15-minute call on Saturday, during which Speaker Mike Johnson sought to rally his troops behind the bill and tamp down on any public consternation from his own members. A frustrated Johnson urged his members to keep their powder dry and refrain from weighing in publicly on the Senate’s version of the bill, as so much of it is in flux — which means no posts on X, three sources said.

At least one Republican, Rep. David Valadao of California, posted publicly that he opposed the Senate bill because of changes to Medicaid. And another Republican who is closely watching the Medicaid provisions, Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, told CNN: “I don’t like it. We had hit a sweet spot with our bill.”

Once the Senate is able to clear the first procedural hurdle on the bill, Thune will face an entirely different headache.

Senators will then move onto a marathon session known as a vote-a-rama, which is an open-ended hourslong series of votes on amendments — some political, some substantive — offered mostly by Democrats trying to poison the bill and put Republicans on the spot. The votes will provide fodder for campaign ads down the line.

But this vote-a-rama could be more than just politically painful for Republicans: At least one Republican holdout has signaled she will offer her own amendments to the bill in an unusual move for a GOP bill.

Key Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said she wants changes to the bill made through the amendment process or she might vote against it in the end. Her negotiations throughout the session will be critical.

It may be many hours until that final vote takes place, however. Democrats are planning a procedural maneuver that they believe will delay the process by 10 to 15 hours.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer informed his caucus on Saturday to prepare for their party to do a “force a full reading” of the Senate GOP bill, according to a person familiar with the plans. The tactic was last deployed by Republican Sen. Johnson, who forced the Senate to read aloud then-President Joe Biden’s 628-page pandemic relief bill in 2021.