Evening Edition: Senate Passes Trump Endorsed Spending Bill
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Tuesday, July 1st, 2025. I'm John Saucier. Big movement in the Senate on a big bill. They've been working on an already house-passed spending package that President Trump wants on his desk by Friday. The Senate able to narrowly pass this thing, but don't call the big beautiful bill anymore. Now it's just called the act.

It's a little bit of a tit-for-tat. Republicans stripped the name of what was called the Inflation Reduction Act during President Biden's term. That was his big reconciliation package, listeners may recall. So a little bit of gamesmanship. This is a Fox News Rundown, Evening Edition. ♪

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The Senate's passed President Trump's tax cut and spending bill. The president was asked about House Republicans who say they oppose the bill because of the Senate's changes and what his message is to those holdouts. It's a great bill. There is something for everyone. And I think it's going to go very nicely in the House. Actually, I think it will be easier in the House than it was in the Senate. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer criticizing Republicans for supporting this legislation. This is not a beautiful bill.

Anyone who loses their health insurance doesn't think it's beautiful. Any worker in clean energy industry who loses their job does not think it's beautiful. Any mom who can't feed her kid on $5 a day doesn't think it's beautiful.

Republicans needed some help to get this through. Vice President Vance brought in to break a 50-50 tie. Three Republicans joined with Democrats in voting against the bill. It'll now go back to the House of Representatives for a final vote. He'll probably still call it the one big beautiful bill, but it's notable because sometimes this happens at the very end of what are called voteramas. We're talking today with Fox News radio correspondent Jared Halpern based in Washington, D.C.,

That is the process that the Senate has to take for these budget reconciliation packages. It's an unlimited amendment vote process. And one of the final amendments that was put forward by Democratic leader Chuck Schumer was to eliminate the name One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which is what this legislation was actually called. Now it's just called The Act. It

It's a little bit of a tit for tat. Republicans stripped the name of what was called the Inflation Reduction Act during President Biden's term. That was his big reconciliation package, listeners may recall. So a little bit of gamesmanship.

I don't think the name's going to matter as much as what it does. And I imagine President Trump is still happy to call it his one big, beautiful bill. Jared, let's talk about the Senate vote here because it didn't go right down party lines. We had a couple of Republicans who voted no on this thing, but the vice president, J.D. Vance, was able to step in and get it over the finish line. I mean, and it's extraordinary because it shows the margins, right? You're right. Vice President J.D. Vance spent most of the day in the Senate. He was partly there to help

you know, negotiate and get this thing over the finish line. But he was there really because this came down to a 50-50 vote. And in baseball, ties go to the runner. In the Senate, ties go to the nays. You can't pass something with a 50-50 vote in the Senate. You need an outright majority. The vice president serves as the president of the Senate. They have that tie-breaking ability.

And so President Trump's main legislative package here, remember, this is a bill that extends and makes permanent tax cuts. It creates no tax on tips, no tax on overtime. It has changes to Medicaid spending. It has increased funding for border enforcement. So much of what President Trump wants to accomplish in his term is wrapped up in this bill. And it took

a tie-breaking vote from his vice president to get that over the finish line in the U.S. Senate. And we should point out, it's not there yet. This is going to go back to the House of Representatives. There was already some hand-wringing, especially from fiscal conservatives. And Vice President Vance does not get to play a role in the House if it comes down to

to a margin of one. But this timeline is looking pretty good for House Speaker Mike Johnson and President Trump, who wanted to do the bill signing on Friday, July 4th. Today is July 1st, obviously. So do you see them as ahead of schedule or are they going to be right there on the 4th by the time this thing gets to the president's desk? It's going to depend on the numbers, right? So the saying in Washington is always when you have the votes, you vote. Vote.

The Senate today was in a holding pattern for many, many hours. They had this voterama, as I said, and then it kind of just stopped. And there was very little action overnight and into the early morning hours. And they didn't start voting again in the Senate until Lisa Murkowski, the Republican from Alaska who had been a no vote, got enough concessions on the Medicaid provisions to switch her vote to yes.

She was locked in. They had 50 votes. They went ahead and moved forward and voted. That will be the process in the House as well. There are ways that Republican leadership can really speed this process up starting tomorrow in the House. And there are ways that Republican leadership can slow this down a little bit if they need to continue lobbying members, twisting arms, negotiating provisions. So

What I will be looking for is this test vote that they're going to have, we think, on Wednesday in the House. It is a vote essentially on the rule. It is a procedural vote. But sometimes that can be very instructive on where that support is. Does that vote get delayed because they are still bringing members together? So will they meet that deadline? It's absolutely possible. Things can move very quickly in the House of Representatives.

but they're not going to vote if they don't have the votes. And they're going to need to do counting probably once, twice, and triple-check their math to make sure before they put it on the House floor this week. Jared, you mentioned Medicaid. I feel like that has been a big sticking point in the negotiations and the back and forth, maybe the biggest thing in this piece of legislation. Now, Democrats have argued millions of Americans would lose health care coverage.

Under this, many Republicans have argued that even the White House yesterday saying the bill protects Medicaid for those who truly deserve the program. It would kick some able-bodied adults and undocumented migrants from being on those Medicaid rolls. Can you just give me some of the chatter about the Medicaid provisions in this? Yeah, so these are Medicaid cuts, but it sort of...

Depends on what's your definition of a cut, because what the White House has said, what President Trump has said, what most Republicans have said is that what this is doing is rooting out waste, fraud and abuse that ultimately will save the program. Yes, there will be less spending on Medicaid, but it won't take anybody who deserves Medicaid or.

Off of those insurance rolls, there have been studies done by the Congressional Budget Office, by other types of nonpartisan accounting firms that have suggested, no, this could take as many as 11 million people or more off of the voting rolls. President Trump was asked about that.

Today, he said he does not believe the number is that high. He said certainly there will be people who come off of it that shouldn't be on it, but he doesn't think it's anywhere near 11 million. But, you know, those provisions and kind of how much funding states get in the Medicaid system, which is really what this is about.

is why you had opposition from Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, and from Tom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina. It was the main source of frustration for Lisa Murkowski. She was able to negotiate...

additional funding for rural hospitals. Obviously, Alaska has a lot of rural hospitals, a large rural population. That is the case in Maine as well. And what they were able to do is double the amount of money that would be set up in a fund for hospitals

rural hospitals that so that way they are not impacted as greatly by some of these Medicaid changes. The other provision in this is we kind of talk about entitlement spending is SNAP, which is kind of the food, the federal food stamp program as well. Changes to that. There are some modifications for, again, a couple of states that have a larger percentage of their population unregulated.

on these nutrition programs and that will be a test in the house a lot of fiscal conservatives in the house don't like that these accounts were plussed up they don't like that there are some carve-outs for some states and not for others and so as we look forward now to the next couple of days look for some of those medicaid changes that happened in the senate see if they can pass muster if they can pass scrutiny um in the house this was

carefully negotiated in the House when this was passed last month because they needed to get the fiscal conservatives, those Freedom Caucus folks on board, as well as the more moderate Republicans that have to get reelected in swingier districts. Think about Republicans that represent districts in downstate New York, represent the Central Valley and parts of those areas of

California. Those are Republicans that were also concerned by some of these changes. And so we're getting in the weeds here. We're getting into the nuance. But that nuance is going to matter a lot when you're trying to get to 218 votes in the House of Representatives. The president's spending package has now passed the Senate and is on the way back to the House to try and line up so they can eventually be signed into law. The tax cutted spending bills face some major hurdles, though, including for many Republicans.

Fox News radio correspondent Jaron Halpert is with us today from Washington, D.C. And ahead, he'll have some insight on why billionaire Elon Musk has been a big part of the conversation about this legislation. More with Jared is yours next.

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Jared, you mentioned the fiscal hawks in the Senate who didn't like this package very much. And that reminds me of another person who didn't like it very much, Elon Musk, who was at one point very close. We're back to that feud, aren't we? Well, I don't know if it's quite as feudy this time, but Elon Musk is pretty strong in his opposition to this legislation, as have some Republican lawmakers. I think, of course, of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul. They're worried about increasing the debt ceiling. Can you just give me that part of it?

So let's break those two up because there are a little bit of differences between the concerns that Elon Musk has and the concerns, to your point, of Rand Paul. Rand Paul was always going to be a hard no on this bill because what it does is it extends or increases the debt limit. That is something that has to be done, by the way. There is a ticking clock.

The U.S. has to have an additional line of credit to avoid going into default. President Trump, like many of his predecessors, wants that off the table. It is something that the opposition parties have always been able to use as a cudgel to get concessions on something else. President Trump would prefer that to be off the table. And so this is a pretty large extension. The.

One big, beautiful bill that made it through both the House and now the Senate going back to the House would raise the debt limit by five trillion dollars. That's the largest single increase ever for the debt limit. And again, it is something that Republicans are going along with.

because it's something President Trump wants. He wants to take this issue away from Democrats, especially going into a midterm election year. He doesn't want it to be used to undermine other negotiations with Congress that might happen. But that is a figure that is so high. Rand Paul was never going to go for that. And so that is Rand Paul's key objection. It is an objection of some House conservatives, too, although they seem to have...

become a little bit more comfortable with it than Rand Paul. It is certainly something that you hear from Elon Musk, but he also insists that this doesn't go nearly far enough, this bill, in cutting the type of discretionary spending that he was after in DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency. Now, part of that is because you can't do that in a reconciliation bill. There are some limits in kind of how and where you can cut spending there.

But he says that he is troubled by some of these changes that he says will increase the deficit long term by a considerable amount of money. President Trump has kind of downplayed this. He said, listen, Elon Musk is upset because we're getting rid of all of these EV subsidies. We're getting rid of all of these EV credits, the EV mandates, and that's going to be bad for Elon's business. And that's why he's upset. And, you know, this is kind of...

renewed this feud. Certainly, he left the White House on pretty bad terms with President Trump. President Trump was asked about the idea of deporting Elon Musk. He kind of said, well, I guess we can look into it. But a more serious threat that President Trump

put forward on Elon Musk has to do with a lot of the government contracts that Tesla and SpaceX and some of these other companies that Elon Musk owns. He has huge contracts with the government. And what President Trump said was, you know what Doge is? Doge is the monster that might have to come back and eat Elon. He is very serious now about having Doge look into some of these contracts of Musk contracts.

companies to see if there are savings that can be found there. That is kind of where we are now in this Trump-Musk feud. Musk has talked about helping finance challengers to Republicans that vote for this. He has talked about starting a new political party in the United States. And listen, I think President Trump holds a lot more sway over the Republican base, certainly than Elon Musk. But what Elon Musk has is an awful lot of wealth.

a very big platform and somebody who is probably not going away after this vote happens at some point this week. Jared Halpern, busy week in Washington. It seems like it's only going to get busier. We appreciate your perspective and, of course, your reporting. And thanks for taking the time to join us on the Fox News Rundown Evening Edition podcast. Thank you.

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