Trump's Big Beautiful Bill continues to divide Senate Republicans

Senate Republicans are choking on their own bill. With less than a month left before their self-imposed July 4 deadline, they still can’t get on the same page about President Trump’s massive tax-and-spending proposal—his so-called “big, beautiful bill.”

According to The Wall Street Journal, Majority Leader John Thune is scrambling to release a new version this week, but nothing’s moving fast, and the internal battles are stacking up like unpaid bills.

Trump wants this multitrillion-dollar package done. The House barely passed its version in May by one vote. But now it’s stuck in the Senate, where Republicans are fighting over how to balance the extra debt and the deep spending cuts that would supposedly pay for tax relief, border security, and military upgrades.

Some senators want to protect their states from slashed federal programs. Others are pissed the bill doesn’t cut enough.

“We are not, I think, resolved as a conference as to what that bill looks like,” said Lisa Murkowski, Republican senator from Alaska. “Everyone is just pulling this Gumby in lots of different directions.”

Senators argue over Medicaid, food aid, and tax breaks

The revised version hasn’t even dropped yet, and it’s already a battlefield. Republicans hold just a 53–47 lead in the Senate, and the House has a slim 220–212 margin. That means even a handful of holdouts—whether they band together or act alone—can kill the entire thing. And they’re making threats loud and clear.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates the House bill would add $2.4 trillion to the deficit over ten years. That’s on top of the already projected $21.4 trillion.

To limit the damage, the bill slashes federal spending on healthcare, food programs, and education. Trump still wants his 2017 tax cuts extended, and his new idea of “no tax on tips” included, which means the cuts had to come from somewhere.

Tommy Tuberville, Republican from Alabama and a 2026 gubernatorial hopeful, is pissed that states would now have to chip in 5% of the cost of food benefits for poor families. “You can’t overload the states with what’s supposed to be federally funded—we can’t afford it,” he said.

Medicaid is another point of chaos. The House version adds stricter eligibility checks and work requirements for low-income adults, starting in 2026. The CBO says those changes would kick 4.8 million people off insurance by 2034. Some Republicans are okay with that. Others aren’t.

Susan Collins, Republican senator from Maine, said she’s fine with work rules for those “truly able to work.” But she’s alarmed by the limit on how much states can tax hospitals and other Medicaid providers to pull in matching federal funds. In her words:

“I am looking at the way the provider tax would work, and what the impact would be on rural hospitals, which are teetering in my state.”

Then there’s the Florida senator, Rick Scott, who doesn’t think the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act was fair in the first place. He said:

“This idea that we pay more money for an able-bodied adult than we do for a poor kid, from the federal government, makes no sense. I believe we’re going to change it.”

Florida never expanded Medicaid, and he wants the match rate adjusted.

Budget hawks dig in while business demands grow

Scott isn’t the only one trying to cut deeper. Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, met with Trump last week and still won’t commit to voting yes. “I want to see him succeed; I really don’t want to make his life, his job, more difficult,” he told reporters. “I don’t want to be a negative influence.”

Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy is trying to get support for targeting Medicare Advantage insurers who game the system by tacking on fake diagnoses to get bigger payouts. It’s got some backing from Democrats too, but nobody’s sure Republicans want to touch anything related to seniors during an election cycle.

Steve Daines, Republican from Montana, drew a hard line: make the tax deduction for business equipment permanent, or he walks. The current House version only allows it through 2029. “It’s a red line for me—I’ll vote against the bill if it’s not made permanent,” he said.

Utah’s John Curtis said the House went too far, too fast by slashing clean energy tax credits from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. That cut threatens companies like Fervo Energy, which is building what it claims is the biggest geothermal energy project in the world—right in Utah.

His colleague Mike Lee, also from Utah, and several others are furious about a change to the state and local tax (SALT) cap. The House bill bumps it up to $40,000, from the current $10,000. That mostly helps people in blue states like New York and California. If the Senate tries to gut it, things will explode when the bill returns to the House.

Nick LaLota, Republican rep from New York, said flat out, “To disrupt the $40,000 negotiated compromise in the House is to put the entire bill in jeopardy.”

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