The US Senate has sat through an all-night voting session on a massive budget bill that is key to President Donald Trump’s agenda. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act – spanning almost 1,000 pages – contains higher spending on border security, defence and energy production, balanced in part by reductions to healthcare and food-support programs.
Its future is uncertain as Trump’s Republicans, who hold both houses of Congress, are still divided on how much to reduce welfare programmes in their efforts to extend tax cuts. Approved by the Senate, the bill will go back to the lower House of Representatives for a final vote before being forwarded to Trump to be signed into law.
Senators debated Tuesday evening into Wednesday morning, arguing for or against amendments – each of them voted on individually in a procedure known as “vote-a-rama.” The process has been underway for over 21 hours so far.
Critics of the bill include Elon Musk, who has escalated his criticism of Republicans who ” campaigned on cutting government spending” and then “immediately voted for the largest debt hike in history.”.
The technology tycoon was heading up Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency, that has been charged with exploring how to reduce government expenditure, until he had a falling out with Trump over the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
The national debt of the US stands at $36 36tn (£ 26 trillion), the Treasury Department says. The bill, new estimates say, will increase the debt by $3.3tn trillion if enacted.
Suggested cuts included in the bill would leave almost 12 million Americans without health insurance coverage, the Congressional Budget Office, which is an impartial federal agency, stated. The Republican discussion has centred on the amount of cuts to welfare programs that should be made to pay for $3.8tn trillion of Trump tax cuts.
Among their amendments, introduced by Senator John Cornyn, was a proposal to cut federal Medicaid payments – the program which subsidises healthcare for low-income populations – to states offering coverage to illegal immigrants who have been charged with certain crimes. It was not adopted.
The planned cuts have been criticised by Democrats. Senator Ed Markey, for example, offered an amendment to strike provisions that he said would compel rural hospitals to scale back their services or close their doors.
Democrats also introduced other amendments opposing the bill’s reductions in food benefits. They were all defeated along party lines. We’ve been arguing about amendments for 21 hours, and we’re still going because after 12 hours of debate and 21 hours of amendment votes, Republicans still don’t have 50 votes for their bill. Because it’s a moral monstrosity,” Democratic Senator Chris Murphy said on Tuesday morning.
