Senate Passes Trump Tax Cut, Spending Bill
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Do you enjoy your chief residency year, though? I guess it depends on your residency. Well, congrats. That's a milestone. That is really exciting. Very well done. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House. I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And today on the show, the Senate has passed President Trump's tax cuts and spending bill. Now, the details of this bill are still being sorted out. But Deirdre, I want to start with you because

The Senate narrowly approved this bill this afternoon after being in session all night, which means you were up pretty much all night. Vice President J.D. Vance cast that tie-breaking 51st vote to get it passed. So start us off with this. What is in this bill?

Yeah, it's been a busy few days here at the Capitol, a lot of tired senators. So this bill really represents President Trump's domestic agenda. At its heart, it's a tax bill. The bill renews the 2017 tax cuts that were passed in President Trump's first term, makes them permanent. It adds some temporary new tax breaks that he campaigned on in 2024. No tax on tips, no tax on overtime.

It also includes more money for border enforcement, for the military. But to pay for those tax cuts, the bill has a lot of spending cuts to offset some of the costs of the tax cuts. It rolls back some green energy tax cuts that were passed during President Biden's presidency. It makes changes to nutrition programs, makes cuts in those. But the biggest

chunk of spending cuts, almost a trillion dollars worth, come from cuts to the Medicaid program. That is essentially the joint federal-state partnership that provides health care coverage for low-income, elderly, disabled people. And the changes to that program include adding new work requirements for people enrolled in the program so they can qualify to get coverage.

changing the way states pay for their Medicaid programs. And that sort of comes into play in terms of how much federal money they will get, meaning a lot of the costs for this are going to end up being shifted to the states.

So this was just a massive package, a big victory for President Trump and for Senate Republicans, because this was a squeaker. As you noted, the vice president had to come up to the Hill to break the tide to even get on the bill and then to pass the bill. And this was one of those life or death kind of bills where President Trump's entire legislative agenda is kind of packed into this one vehicle.

A lot of it, yeah. And as you mentioned, Deirdre, the debate over this bill wasn't exactly straightforward. What were some of the controversial parts of this bill that made this process so drawn out? I mean, the bill touched, you know, sort of all parts of the domestic agenda. I mean, and senators really tried to get in all kinds of issues together.

And that tested the process because the process they used to pass the bill called reconciliation really limits the kinds of things that can be in the package. For example, Ted Cruz wanted to pass a moratorium on all states passing any regulations for AI for a decade. That was also part of the House passed version of this bill. That ended up getting voted out, actually, by a vote of 99 to 1.

But far and away, the most controversial issue was the debate and the split inside the Republican Party about Medicaid. We saw that split in the House. We saw it again in the Senate. It ended up coming down to changes to Medicaid to get Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, who ended up being the deciding vote on this issue, to get her to yes. They made additional tweaks.

OK, so speaking of Murkowski, I mean, she was pretty against this bill at first. They made some of these tweaks. But, you know, what was the thing that sort of tipped her over that changed her mind? Well, we're still reading the details of the bill because they were literally handwriting the changes up until the final hours of the votes today. One thing that they did add was this rural fund for hospitals. This is something that Maine Republican Susan Collins said.

who ended up being one of the no votes, was pushing. This was money to help rural hospitals offset the shift in costs to the states that these cuts are going to have. A lot of Senate Republicans, Senate Republicans who voted yes on this bill too, warned that these Medicaid changes would mean that rural hospitals in their states would close. And that would impact not only people on Medicaid, but anyone who needed any kind of medical treatment who wanted to

get to a rural hospital, in some cases worried that they would just go out of business.

That's one big tweak that we know that Lisa Murkowski got. And Mara, I want to bring you in here because, you know, Lisa Murkowski tipped in favor of this bill. But there were three Republicans who voted with Democrats on this, including North Carolina's Tom Tillis. He announced this weekend that he would not support the bill. But in addition to that, he would also leave Congress altogether when his term is up in 2027. What does that say about, you know, if you're going to be a Republican who opposes Donald Trump, do you still have a job in Congress? Yeah.

No, you really don't. I think Republicans oppose Donald Trump at their political peril. He said the other day in a post that he considered a vote against this bill to be a betrayal. Very, very personal. And I don't think we've ever seen a modern president with as firm a grip on his party as Donald Trump has on the Republicans. There is only one Republican senator up for reelection next year, Susan Collins, who voted no on this bill.

The other Republican who voted no was Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. He has a very, very distinct personal brand. He didn't like a lot of things in this bill, including the fact that it adds to the deficit by trillions of dollars. There are a lot of Republicans who are worried about what happens to this bill when it becomes a political issue. Right now, it's a test of your loyalty to Trump. But then, if it passes the House, which we assume it will, they're going to have to sell it to voters.

And the issue of Medicaid is huge for Republicans because Trump made a lot of gains with blue-collar voters. Many people who voted for him are now on Medicaid or know someone who is. And, of course, we know that Medicaid has expanded exponentially because of Obamacare. So a lot of people who voted for Trump are going to see their health care potentially disappear. And, Mara, it was pretty clear that Tillis –

was warning about the fallout for those Medicaid cuts. He gave really scathing speeches on the Senate floor in the run-up to this vote in terms of the numbers of people that would be thrown off Medicaid. He warned and basically told President Trump he was making a big mistake.

And the Congressional Budget Office, which is the nonpartisan scorekeeper on this, estimates that nearly 12 million people could lose their coverage because of this bill. All the independent analysts who've looked at this bill have come to pretty much the same conclusion, which is this is a bill that skews to the wealthy, gives tax cuts to billionaires, and is paid for by cuts to lower income people.

Now, in the past, that formula has been very unpopular. I think the White House's calculation is that even if the economic benefits go to the rich, that there are all sorts of things that Trump is doing culturally, whether it's about immigration or trans people or LGBTQ, that are going to keep his working class blue collar MAGA base satisfied. All right. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be back in a moment.

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Listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Mara, this bill makes a lot of changes to programs that Americans like, things like Medicaid, for instance. You know, we were talking about some of the process here of Republicans having to sell this now if it passes to voters. What are some of the political risks of making changes like cuts to Medicaid?

Well, you know, Donald Trump has said he would never cut Medicaid. And there's going to be a big debate about whether there are actual cuts or not. And he says all the cuts are just waste, fraud and abuse. But some people might find themselves without coverage. And there are a lot of people who are now on Medicaid that voted for Donald Trump. So it's politically perilous for Republicans. This was Tom Tillis's message to Republicans and to President Trump. Rural hospitals will close. And then the big political question becomes,

Does this make voters, especially voters who were with the Republicans last time, will they change their minds? Will they stay home or will they vote against Republican candidates? We just don't know that. Yeah. And the other thing that we were talking about earlier is, you know, this this hold that Trump has on the Republican Party. Right. If you cross Trump, you might not have a job in Congress anymore. But if Trump himself doesn't have to face reelection, you know, it's

Does he care here what happens to his fellow elected Republicans if they're voting for these policies that, as we've said, Americans don't really support? Well, he cares when people cross him. You saw how he went after House Republicans who he calls grandstanders. He's threatened primary challenges. So he does take things personally. Whether he feels he has as big a stake as another president might if he wasn't a lame duck or

You know, he doesn't really have a big legislative agenda in the wings. This is it. Yeah, this is really his legacy, Bill, right? I mean, the other thing that Republicans are going to be selling is the tax cut piece of this. But I think it's going to be an interesting question to see how that plays politically because –

I think a lot of voters probably don't remember what their tax rates were pre-2017, but what they'll see come out of this bill may be changes to their health care policies and how that will impact their pocketbooks. So it's going to be a huge messaging war. And no doubt Democrats at least are going to try to make this happen.

at least the Medicaid piece of this bill, the central issue in the 2026 midterms. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, Deirdre makes a really important point here. This is not new tax cuts for people. This is a continuation of existing tax cuts. So the Republicans are saying, if we didn't pass this bill, your taxes would have gone up. I mean, that's kind of a complicated message.

It's not like people are going to see anything different in their paycheck. So that's a much harder message to deliver. Deirdre, there's still a major hurdle in getting this bill passed, which is that it has to go through the House of Representatives. Republicans there have a very narrow majority there, too. And some members have already said that they won't back this bill after the Senate made some of these changes. So where do you see this going next?

I mean, some of these are the same House Republicans who warned they would vote no on the House version of this bill, too, right? I think a lot of House Republicans...

sort of make these big proclamations of like, I'm going to vote no, or I'm going to block this bill. But in the end, I think they saw what happened to Tom Tillis. And the political pressure on House Republicans to get this done quickly is immense. The president already today basically said, I don't see it being a problem. Oh, it'll be easier in the House than it was in the Senate.

I don't necessarily think House Speaker Mike Johnson thinks that's the case. He's also working with a skinny majority. He can only afford to lose three. We already know Tom Massey from Kentucky who voted no.

On the House version of this is a solid no. And there are groups of other House Republicans, conservatives who are unhappy that the Senate bill costs more, moderates who are unhappy that the Medicaid cuts are deeper in the Senate version that are going to have to make this sort of political calculus. How do I vote? Do

Do I want to be standing in the way of the president's agenda? My guess is that it'll squeak through the House, but no doubt there'll be a little drama at the last minute. Well, definitely drama because the president was posting on Truth Social earlier and

saying that anyone he endorses will beat Thomas Massey in Kentucky by 25 points. So along the lines of Tom Tillis, already a campaign against anyone who stands in the president's way. This bill has set off, you know, the on-again, off-again spat, if you will, between President Trump and Elon Musk, who was formerly a member of, you know,

the president's administration and advisor. In the inner circle. In the inner circle, right? Musk had spoken out against this bill. He was mad about the increase to the deficit that this bill would cause. That sort of has simmered down a little bit. But what do you make of where that landed?

No, well, he still added, he said the bill gives handouts to industries of the past while damaging the industries of the future. We assume he considers his own companies industries of the future. He said the bill would be political suicide for the Republican Party. So he's still against this. And I think his clout, of course, has diminished. But there is a lot of overlap between people who really like Elon Musk and people who voted for Donald Trump.

I mean, if he opens his wallet in the 2026 midterms, he could have a pretty big impact. Right. Especially for some of these folks who are in a controversial position. Yeah, absolutely. All right. We're going to leave it there for today. I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House. I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

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