Dem
47
GOP
53
Late Saturday evening, the Senate voted to advance the giant MAGAbill to a floor vote, which will probably take place today. It was an almost-party-line vote of 51-49. The vote had to be kept open for 3 hours to allow for last-minute sausage making. For example, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) threatened to vote "no" unless the bill was changed to make it harder for able-bodied adults to get Medicaid. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) gave Johnson what he wanted and Johnson flipped his vote.
All Democrats voted "no" and so did Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Thom Tillis (R-NC). Paul is against everything and Tillis is worried that his state will lose $38 billion in funding and many rural hospitals will close. Trump threatened Tillis with his support for a primary opponent next year, but Tillis surprised him and everyone else by announcing that he will retire at the end of his term (see below). Consequently, Tillis is now free to vote what his constituents want when the actual bill comes up for a floor vote.
If Paul and Tillis stick to their guns, then two female senators will suddenly have an immense amount of power. These are Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK). Collins is up next year and is polling badly (see below). Murkowski is not up next year, but is making noises about becoming an independent and caucusing with the Democrats. At the very least, if the two of them get together and threaten "no" votes, they could arrange for their states to get more pork than Iowa produces in a decade.
Another potential problem is Elon Musk, who is shooting from the sidelines. He is all over eX-Twitter tweeting how the bill will cost millions of jobs and cause immense harm to the country. He has millions of followers, but do they actually believe him anymore? We don't know.
Another stalling tactic is that in principle, all bills must be read aloud in the Senate chamber unless there is unanimous consent to skip the reading. Usually there is, but Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) withheld his consent, forcing the Senate clerks to read the 940-page bill out loud. That took 16 hours, and wrapped up late last night. Schumer said that Americans are entitled to know what is in the bill: tax breaks for billionaires, while ordinary families lose health care and food assistance.
Now that the bill has been read, each party will get 10 hours to talk about it on the floor. The Republicans might just decide not to use their time since nobody will be paying attention anyway. Then comes the vote-a-rama. Democrats will introduce a barrage of amendments. None of them will pass, but it will waste a lot of time during which they can try to get public opinion to back them and have people contact their senators.
Once the bill passes, possibly with amendments to placate recalcitrant Republican senators, the Republicans have another problem. Either the House must swallow the bill whole, which seems unlikely to us, or there will have to be a conference committee formed and they will have to thrash out a single compromise bill. It matters a lot who is on the committee. For example, if one Freedom Caucus member is on it, he could gum up the works. But if no FCer is on it, the resulting bill could go down to defeat in the House. Similarly if the SALT cap is greatly reduced by the Senate, House moderates from New York and California could vote no in the end to force changes they want.
Bad as the bill may be, it could have been worse. The Senate Parliamentarian has gone through the bill and said that many provisions failed the Byrd bath and have to be removed. Among her cuts are these:
In short, the sausage grinder is working at full speed now, grinding up everything in its path, and pigs are flying (well, pork is flying, anyway). We may not know for days, maybe even weeks, what is in the final bill and what compromises had to be made to get there. (V)