Major pieces of President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” have been reshaped over the past week and many of the edits appear to have at least one thing in common: They are putting upward pressure on the bill’s price tag.
A complete accounting won’t be available for days, but recent changes have signaled that the question may not be whether the projected $3 trillion-plus price tag will move upwards, but by how much.
The changes are coming from a variety of directions and for different reasons, from Senate parliamentarian advisements on the rules to last-minute inducements for intransigent lawmakers to changes at the behest of the Trump administration.
One major stumbling block appeared to be resolved Friday — but in a way that could add new costs. Republicans announced a tentative deal on state and local tax (SALT) deductions, with Senator John Hoeven telling reporters that the agreement will raise the limit to $40,000 a year for five years — from a level of $10,000 in the prior Senate version.
Another major change came Thursday morning when the Senate’s parliamentarian said that provisions around Medicaid provider taxes, which are projected to save hundreds of billions of dollars if enacted, couldn’t be included in the bill.
Also on Thursday, congressional Republicans removed another potential $100 billion-plus revenue source by striking a so-called revenge tax provision following a request from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
The changes add more challenges to the goal of getting legislation to Trump’s desk by July 4, especially as these changes are already getting noticed by fiscal conservatives even before everything is tallied up.
Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Trump are applying maximum political pressure to finalize the bill with the president posting Friday that Senators would be “working all weekend.” The first votes could also begin this weekend.
On Friday morning, President Trump acknowledged that the back and forth was having an effect, saying “the parliamentarian has been a little difficult” and adding that he disagrees on some of the decisions but that it will be fine in the end.
The president also said that meeting his current July 4 deadline for finishing the bill could slip, saying it’s important to him to finish the bill by then “but not the end-all.”
“Several things are getting knocked out of the bill, which makes the budget math even harder and which makes the negotiations with the House even harder,” Erica York of the Tax Foundation said in a recent interview.
“Certainly, there are a lot of challenges to overcome if this is gonna get done” by the current July 4 deadline, she added.
Thursday’s developments came after another key cost savings — a “pay for,” in Washington parlance — was called into question earlier this week by another parliamentarian ruling that found Republicans won’t be able to make certain cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) with the bill as written.
An array of changes
But perhaps the central question when it comes to the final price tag will be the final shape of proposed Medicaid cuts.
This portion of the bill has long been the biggest cost saver, with the Congressional Budget Office previously estimating that the healthcare provisions in the House version would cut spending by over $1 trillion over 10 years.
Those complex provisions are currently under debate, with the Senate offering more stringent ideas in some cases, but with the Senate parliamentarian advising this week that some of those changes around provider taxes don’t pass muster with the Senate’s reconciliation rules process.
There’s also talk of a new $15 billion stabilization fund for rural hospitals impacted by the Medicaid cuts to offer an inducement for GOP lawmakers balking at the cuts — a change that could eat into the cost savings.
It’s also the latest key “pay for” to be called into question after the Senate parliamentarian advised earlier this week that some of the cuts to the SNAP program around state matching funds needed to change.
These provisions were previously estimated to save roughly $128 billion.
Both the Medicaid and SNAP pieces of the bill appear to be in the process of being rewritten in an attempt to add them back into the final package.
Meanwhile, the White House shifted course on another projected $100 billion-plus revenue raiser with the removal of the so-called revenge tax after many companies raised concerns that new taxes there could dampen investment in the US.
Republicans are even going back and forth on a fourth key cost saver in the bill: the rollback of green energy credits.
The Senate version offered a slower timeline for the phaseout of these credits, which would likely save less money, but House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told PunchBowl News on Thursday that the idea is “going to need to get reversed” and that “liberalizing it is not the direction to go.”
This story has been updated with additional developments.
Ben Werschkul is a Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.
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