senate parliamentarian

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s megabill encompassing his domestic agenda on Monday inched closer to becoming law as Republican senators sifted through familiar procedural hurdles toward a final vote on legislation that would dramatically transform the tax code and Medicaid.

Throughout a day of marathon voting, senators offered amendments to the bill that could ultimately decide whether it secures passage through Congress. If the Senate approves the legislation — as it is expected to do by a slim, simple majority and with bipartisan opposition — then the House will have to vote for a second time on the final text before it goes to the president’s desk for his signature.

Anticipating Senate passage, the House Rules Committee has already scheduled a hearing on reconciling the two bills for Tuesday. The White House previously set July 4 as a goal to get the package, called the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” passed by both chambers.

But several Republicans are still criticizing the bill, including Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who announced he will not seek reelection in 2026 over the weekend before ripping into the legislation as a “betrayal” to voters.

Although the legislation has hundreds of provisions, its most sweeping would make tax breaks passed in 2017 during Trump’s first term permanent — an expensive proposition — before they are set to expire at the end of this year, while attempting to offset some of those costs with historic cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, social welfare programs that for decades had been seen as a political third rail.

Polling shows that Americans broadly support extending the 2017 tax cuts. Other expensive programs in the bill — including additional funding for border security and defense — also enjoy public support. But polls indicate that the public disapproves of the bill overall by a double-digit margin due to its cuts to core government programs.

“What do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years, when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding’s not there anymore?” Tillis said in a speech from the Senate floor. “The people in the White House advising the president are not telling him that the effect of this bill is to break a promise.”

Both Paul and Tillis voted against advancing the bill to a floor vote and have indicated they will vote “no” on its final passage.

“Republicans are about to make a mistake on healthcare, and betraying a promise,” Tillis continued. “It is inescapable that this bill in its current form will betray the very promise that Donald J. Trump made in the Oval Office, or in the Cabinet room, when I was there with Finance [Committee members] where he said, ‘We can go after waste, fraud and abuse on any programs.’”

Tillis and a handful of his colleagues, including Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, have expressed concern with elements of the bill that restrict state taxes on healthcare providers, known as the “provider tax,” an essential tool for many states in their efforts to supplement Medicaid funding.

The Senate parliamentarian has already determined that the provision, among others, fails to follow the rules of the chamber and must be removed or modified. Another passage crucial to the bill, which introduces a structure for work requirements for Medicaid, was halted by the parliamentarian.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) speaks to reporters outside the chamber on June 30, 2025.

(Manuel Balce Ceneta / Associated Press)

Republicans efforts to prohibit the use of Medicaid funds on gender transition care, to cancel regulations that require a minimum staffing ratio at nursing homes and to limit Medicaid access to immigrants were also cut by the parliamentarian, who continued to review amendments to the bill as they were introduced Monday.

The parliamentarian’s moves eat into the stated cost savings of a bill that is already slated to add trillions of dollars to the debt over the next decade — a problem for fiscal hawks in both chambers whose votes will be crucial for passage.

They also gutted key provisions that were top priorities for Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the focus of an intense lobbying campaign by Senate Republican leadership after expressing skepticism over several provisions of the legislation. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who is up for reelection next cycle, has also expressed concern over its cuts to Medicaid.

“This is an ongoing process — the president continues to be very much engaged with the leadership in both the Senate and the House,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told reporters in a briefing Monday. “He understands that legislators want to protect jobs in the communities and their districts.”

Democrats in the Senate have been united in their opposition to the bill, with Mark Kelly, of Arizona, warning Republicans of electoral repercussions.

“If they lose their health insurance,” he told MSNBC in an interview, “sure, they’re going to remember.”

But the potential political windfall for Democrats isn’t stopping the party from attempting to improve the legislation, he said, noting a number of amendments proposed by Democratic senators Monday that would roll back cuts to Medicaid and SNAP.

If the bill does ultimately clear the Senate, Republicans will have only a handful of votes in the House to spare in a final vote. And several are already suggesting they will vote against it, including Rep. David Valadao of California, whose constituents rely heavily on Medicaid.

“I’m not a ‘yes’ necessarily,” said Rep. Don Bacon, a Republican from Nebraska who has announced his retirement. Bacon added that he believes the Senate version has gone too far in gutting healthcare programs. “I think we’ll have a hard time passing.”

An intraparty fight has also broken out among Republicans over the fate of green energy tax credits, which several GOP senators — including Murkowski, as well as Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst of Iowa — sought to preserve for several more years. A group of House Republicans had successfully lobbied in their version of the bill to speed up the termination of those credits.

Elon Musk, a co-founder of Tesla, and Trump’s close advisor and benefactor before the two men fell out this month, renewed his attacks on the legislation Monday, calling it “utterly insane and destructive” for its price tag.

“It is obvious with the insane spending of this bill, which increases the debt ceiling by a record FIVE TRILLION DOLLARS that we live in a one-party country — the PORKY PIG PARTY!!” Musk wrote.

“Time for a new political party,” he added, “that actually cares about the people.”

WASHINGTON — A plan to sell more than 3,200 square miles of federal lands has been ruled out of Republicans’ big tax and spending cut bill after the Senate parliamentarian determined the proposal by Senate Energy Chairman Mike Lee would violate the chamber’s rules.

Lee, a Utah Republican, has proposed selling millions of acres of public lands in the West to states or other entities for use as housing or infrastructure. The plan would revive a longtime ambition of Western conservatives to cede lands to local control after a similar proposal failed in the House earlier this year.

The proposal received a mixed reception Monday from the governors of Western states. New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, called it problematic in her state because of the close relationship residents have with public lands.

Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, a Republican, voiced qualified support.

“On a piece-by-piece basis where states have the opportunity to craft policies that make sense … we can actually allow for some responsible growth in areas with communities that are landlocked at this point,” he said at a news conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where the Western Governors’ Association was meeting.

Lee, in a post on X Monday night, said he would keep trying.

“Housing prices are crushing families and keeping young Americans from living where they grew up. We need to change that,’’ he wrote, adding that a revised plan would remove all U.S. Forest Service land from possible sale. Sales of sites controlled by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management would be significantly reduced, Lee said, so that only land within 5 miles of population centers could be sold.

Environmental advocates celebrated the ruling late Monday by Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, but cautioned that Lee’s proposal was far from dead.

“This is a victory for the American public, who were loud and clear: Public lands belong in public hands, for current and future generations alike,’’ said Tracy Stone-Manning, president of The Wilderness Society. “Our public lands are not for sale.”

Carrie Besnette Hauser, president and CEO of the nonprofit Trust for Public Land, called the procedural ruling in the Senate “an important victory in the fight to protect America’s public lands from short-sighted proposals that would have undermined decades of bipartisan work to protect, steward and expand access to the places we all share.”

“But make no mistake: this threat is far from over,” Hauser added. “Efforts to dismantle our public lands continue, and we must remain vigilant as proposals now under consideration,” including plans to roll back the bipartisan Great American Outdoors Act and cut funding for land and water conservation, make their way through Congress, she said.

MacDonough, the Senate parliamentarian, also ruled out a host of other Republican-led provisions Monday night, including construction of a mining road in Alaska and changes to speed permitting of oil and gas leases on federal lands.

While the parliamentarian’s rulings are advisory, they are rarely, if ever, ignored. Lawmakers are using a budget reconciliation process to bypass the Senate filibuster to pass President Trump’s tax-cut package by a self-imposed July Fourth deadline.

Lee’s plan revealed sharp disagreement among Republicans who support wholesale transfers of federal property to spur development and generate revenue, and other lawmakers who are staunchly opposed.

Land in 11 Western states from Alaska to New Mexico would be eligible for sale. Montana was carved out of the proposal after lawmakers there objected. In states such as Utah and Nevada, the government controls the vast majority of lands, protecting them from potential exploitation but hindering growth.

“Washington has proven time and again it can’t manage this land. This bill puts it in better hands,” Lee said in announcing the plan.

Housing advocates have cautioned that federal land is not universally suitable for affordable housing. Some of the parcels up for sale in Utah and Nevada under a House proposal were far from developed areas.

New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich, the ranking Democrat on the energy committee, said Lee’s plan would exclude Americans from places where they fish, hunt and camp.

“I don’t think it’s clear that we would even get substantial housing as a result of this,” Heinrich said earlier this month. “What I know would happen is people would lose access to places they know and care about and that drive our Western economies.”

Daly writes for the Associated Press.