Senate Republicans released updated text for President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act late Friday as leaders raced to hold their first vote as soon as Saturday.
Shortly before midnight, the Senate Budget Committee unveiled 940 pages that account for the latest revisions to the sweeping bill, a hodgepodge of tax, border, and energy priorities. Republicans are still awaiting final rulings from the parliamentarian on the tax portion of the bill, but the text brings them one step closer to complying with the intricate rules of reconciliation, a filibuster-skirting budget process.
The text also incorporates changes meant to win over holdouts in both the House and Senate, including a more generous state and local tax deduction and a delay to some Medicaid reforms.
Senate Republicans telegraphed those changes as they left a Friday lunch meant to nail down the SALT language. Under the latest proposal, the cap would stay at $40,000 for five years, as negotiated in the House, before snapping back to $10,000, the current limit.
The updated legislation also delays new limits on the Medicaid provider tax, which helps states pay for their share of the entitlement, by a year. Many conservatives criticize the use of the taxes as a way to inflate the federal government’s share of costs.
The text revealed new compromises as well, including a $25 billion stabilization fund meant to blunt the impact of Medicaid changes on rural hospitals. The Senate Finance Committee floated a $15 billion fund on Wednesday that was swiftly rejected by centrist members of the conference.
Those changes may not be enough to secure passage of the bill. With or without a rural hospital fund, Republicans were threatening to withhold their vote unless Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) reverted to the House language on the Medicaid provider tax. The Senate phases in a cap of 3.5% for expansion states, while the House passed a more modest freeze.
The updated legislation does include deal-sweeteners that could help win over individual senators, however. States like Alaska, represented by holdout Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), could be exempt from language that shifts the cost of food stamps onto states under a new two-year waiver authority added to the bill.
Those states could receive temporary waivers for the program’s new work requirements as well, a decision that is up to the discretion of the agriculture secretary.
Some language cuts the other way and could stiffen centrist resistance in the Senate. In particular, the new text includes faster phase-outs of wind and solar tax credits enacted via the Democrats’ 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.
The earlier Senate bill had a longer timeline than the House version for ending subsidies for investment in and production of clean energy. The updated text would end such credits, called “tech-neutral” since they would flow to zero-emission energy whatever its source, for any solar and wind projects brought into service after 2027.
The new Senate bill, though, does give a longer runway to subsidies for the production of clean hydrogen. Rather than ending the subsidies at the end of the year, it extends them through the end of 2027.
On Friday afternoon, Thune conceded that he may not yet have the 50 votes needed to advance the megabill, but the text’s release allows him to stay on track for a Saturday test vote. If he is successful, the Senate would then debate the measure for at least 10 hours before a marathon voting session on amendments that would likely finish on Sunday.
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Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), a bill holdout with concerns over Medicaid, told the Washington Examiner that she plans to offer amendments on the floor depending on where the final text lands. Other Republicans have indicated the same, teeing up what could be a series of tough votes for leadership to keep their delicate compromise intact.
Until then, Thune and his committee chairs are attempting to minimize disruption on the Senate floor, with rolling negotiations on the remaining sticking points. On Friday night, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), the chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, released an updated proposal to sell off public lands after complaints from the Montana delegation.
