A high-stakes vote on President Donald Trump‘s marquee tax bill remains in limbo as a handful of senators demand additional concessions before granting their support.
After three hours of voting, the Senate had still not concluded a procedural vote that would allow the Senate to debate and amend the legislation. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), one of the chamber’s centrists, finally voted “yes” on the motion Saturday night after repeated huddles on the Senate floor with GOP leadership and Vice President JD Vance.
But the negotiations then shifted to a bloc of fiscal hawks searching for a path to further spending cuts. Vance joined the holdouts for another round of talks in Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s (R-SD) office, with Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), one of those holdouts, telling the Washington Examiner he was “optimistic” Republicans could still reach a breakthrough that night.
The vote capped off a tumultuous week of revisions and cajoling over Trump’s agenda, a hodge-podge of tax, border, and defense priorities. It was not clear what Murkowski got in exchange for her support, but she had already won language Friday easing new cost-sharing requirements for food stamps.
The protracted standoff has laid bare GOP divisions in a chamber Republicans only control by three votes. Trump, after a day of trying to win over some of the holdouts at his Virginia golf course, vented on social media at the delay.
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He trained his ire on Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), in particular – threatening a primary challenge after Tillis voted against the procedural motion. Tillis was joined by two other Republicans – Sens. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Rand Paul (R-KY) – in voting no, forcing Vance to travel to the Capitol in the case of a tie vote.
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