Illustration: Shoshana Gordon/Axios
Republicans pushed their version of the reconciliation bill through a bitterly divided Senate Tuesday, giving a fragile but decisive victory to a package of Medicaid cuts, phased-out energy tax credits and a reauthorization of the FCC's spectrum auction authority.
The big picture: The passage puts the legislation on track to reach President Trump's desk by July 4, if the House can swallow the Senate's numerous changes — a path that will be perilously narrow given all of the GOP divisions that were on display in the Senate.
- The vote was 51-50, with Vice President JD Vance breaking the tie and Republicans Rand Paul, Thom Tillis and Susan Collins voting with Democrats against the package.
- GOP leaders spent hours overnight and Tuesday morning trying to nail down enough votes to get the bill across the finish line.
- We've told you about the projected impact on the uninsured from the Senate's deeper Medicaid cuts, the harsher cutoff of energy tax credits and the road to an AI compromise that fell apart at the last minute.
Driving the news: The final text doubled the size of the rural hospital fund to $50 billion, while keeping the stricter provider tax crackdown.
- The Senate also defeated an effort to strip out language that would effectively defund Planned Parenthood.
- A provision banning Medicaid funding for gender-affirming care was removed, though.
What we're watching: There will be a lot of complaints from House Republicans, especially on the impact of the Senate's version of the Medicaid cuts. But it's hard to see the House defeating a bill this late in the process when Trump wants it so badly.
- So we're watching to see if any other policy promises are made to win enough votes to clear the bill by the end of the week.
Read more on Axios.com.
