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Senate takes up Trump’s policy bill, as GOP scrounges for votes to pass it

U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., arrives for a meeting with Senate Republicans in the U.S. Capitol on Saturday in Washington, D.C. After a long night, Senate leaders voted to begin debating a domestic policy package that outlines the agenda put forth by President Donald Trump. (Getty Images)
By Catie Edmondson, Brad Plumer, Andrew Duehren and Margot Sanger-Katz New York Times

WASHINGTON – The Senate on Saturday narrowly voted to begin debate on the sprawling domestic policy package carrying President Donald Trump’s agenda, clearing a key procedural hurdle after Republican leaders cut a series of deals with holdouts in hopes of winning the votes to pass it.

The vote to take up the bill was 51-49, after party leaders held the vote open for more than three hours in a suspenseful scene while they haggled with holdouts, both on the Senate floor and behind closed doors, to secure their support.

Two Republicans, Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Rand Paul of Kentucky, voted with Democrats to block consideration of the measure.

Even as the vote unfolded Saturday night, a clutch of hard-right Republicans, including Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Mike Lee of Utah, Rick Scott of Florida and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, were demanding that GOP leaders insert even deeper spending cuts into the bill in exchange for their support. Ultimately, they all voted in favor.

It was still not clear whether GOP leaders had enough support to pass the measure and send it to the House for final approval in time to meet the Friday deadline Trump has set. Democrats demanded a line-by-line reading of the bill, a procedural protest that was expected to take more than 12 hours and likely push any final action in the Senate into Monday at the earliest.

But the test vote Saturday night put the measure on track, even as it reflected the considerable angst among Republicans about their party’s signature bill.

A 940-page version of the legislation that Republicans released just after midnight Saturday contained key changes aimed at winning over Republican skeptics. They included the creation of a $25 billion fund to help rural hospitals expected to be hit hard by the Medicaid cuts the legislation would impose, a faster phaseout of tax credits for wind and solar projects, and an increase in the cap on the state and local tax deduction demanded by lawmakers in the House.

White House officials ratcheted up pressure on Republicans to fall in line behind the measure, issuing an official policy statement saying that failure to do so by Independence Day “would be the ultimate betrayal.” Trump spent part of his day golfing with Republican senators and meeting with holdouts.

This article originally appeared in the New York Times.