Senate Democrats’ delay tactic has finally come to a close, but Senate Republicans are still a ways out from voting on President Donald Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill.’
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., forced clerks on the Senate floor to read aloud the entirety of the Senate GOP’s version of Trump’s megabill on Saturday. In all, reading the 940-page legislative behemoth bled well into Sunday and took nearly 16 hours.
Schumer announced that he would be forcing the clerks to read the bill ahead of the ultimately successful, albeit drama-filled, procedural vote. And after forcing the reading of the bill, he said on X, ‘Republicans are squirming.’
‘I know damn well they haven’t read the bill, so we’re going to make them,’ he said.
It’s an oft-unused strategy Schumer and Senate Democrats deployed as part of the pain campaign against Republicans, who have iced them out from having input on the president’s agenda.
The last time Senate clerks were forced to read the entirety of a bill on the floor was in 2021, when Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., similarly objected and demanded that former President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Act be read aloud.
Now with the reading dispensed, lawmakers will trudge onward with 20 hours of debate evenly divided between both Democrats and Republicans. Senate Democrats are expected to squeeze every second from their allotted time, while Senate Republicans will likely only use a couple of hours at most.
That time on the GOP side will be used by those already critical of the bill, like Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. While his support for final passage is unlikely, he is not the only headache that Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., may have to worry about.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., is unlikely to change his mind and vote for final passage – despite Trump bashing him on social media and threatening a primary challenger – unless substantial changes are made to the Medicaid adjustments in the bill.
Tillis further steeled his resolve against the bill when he announced his retirement from Washington at the end of his term, opting against a likely grueling primary battle.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who supported the legislation through the first test, also wants to see real changes to the Medicaid provider tax rate.
Then there are the fiscal hawks who held the vote hostage on Saturday night as they negotiated with Thune, with the help of Vice President JD Vance, to get an amendment to make changes to the federal medical assistance percentage (FMAP), which is the amount that the federal government pays for Medicaid to each state.
Changes to FMAP are not popular among most Senate Republicans, save for fiscal hawks looking for steeper cuts in the colossal bill.