Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told Senate Republicans to expect to see the legislative text of the budget reconciliation package on Friday evening and then to vote at noon Saturday to begin debate on President Trump’s tax and spending bill.
Thune gave GOP senators the updated schedule after they met with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to discuss a tentative deal between the White House and House Republicans from New York, New Jersey and California to raise the cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions from $10,000 to $40,000 for a period of five years.
But Thune acknowledged after the meeting that the schedule could slip, calling the Saturday vote “aspirational.”
“All of it depends on we got a few things we’re waiting on, outcomes from the parliamentarian. If we can get some of those questions, issues landed then my expectation is at some point, yeah, tomorrow we’ll be ready to go,” Thune told reporters.
“I said, again, aspirationally, that we’d try to do it at some point in the middle of the day,” he said of the plan to vote Saturday to proceed to the bill.
Senate Republicans control a 53-seat majority and can afford three GOP defections on the bill and still pass it with a tiebreaking vote from Vice President Vance.
Several GOP senators, however, refused to say whether they would vote to proceed to the bill, including Sens. Bill Cassidy (La.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Ron Johnson (Wis.).
“I don’t know what we’re voting on,” Cassidy told reporters when asked whether he would vote for the motion to proceed to the bill.
Murkowski said, “We have not seen text. I don’t have anything more to say other than that.”
Hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to Medicare spending are a major problem for several Republican senators, including Murkowski and Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Josh Hawley (Mo.) and Jerry Moran (Kan.).
Johnson appeared angry over the decision to forge ahead with a vote, despite his pleas to spend more time on finding additional spending cuts.
“We’ll see,” he said when asked about whether he would vote to move forward.
He said before the lunch meeting that the Senate is “not ready” to begin voting on the bill this weekend.
“We’re just not ready for it, I hope that they don’t do that,” he said.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) told reporters after the lunch that he’s not ready to vote to move forward on the bill unless he sees substantial changes to it.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) says he’s a hard “no” on the legislation because it includes a provision to raise the debt limit by $5 trillion.
“Some people want to spend more money, some people want to spend less money. And so they’re pulling. I don’t know if it rips. If they keep going in the current direction, they could rip it apart,” he said. “I think it eventually is going to be much more of a spending bill than a bill that rectifies the debt problem.”
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