Trump bill latest: ‘Vote-a-rama’ to be held for Big, Beautiful Bill after Musk calls plan ‘utterly insane’

“Republicans are doing something the Senate has never, never done before, deploying fake math and accounting gimmicks to hide the true cost of the bill,” Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said as debate about the “Big, Beautiful Bill” opened on the Senate floor on Sunday.

“Republicans are about to pass the single most expensive bill in U.S. history, to give tax breaks to billionaires while taking away Medicaid, SNAP benefits and good paying jobs for millions of people.”

Here’s a look at how his fellow Democratic senators Patty Murray, Gary Peters, Brian Schatz, Ron Wyden and Raphael Warnock attacked the bill over the course of a long and drawn-out session yesterday.

Here’s the latest Truth Social post on today’s upcoming “vote-a-rama”:

The president last night attacked the upper chamber’s top legal adviser, Elizabeth MacDonough, for blocking provisions in his signature legislation on budgetary grounds.

Steube, whom he quotes, last week called MacDonough, “an unelected swamp bureaucrat.”

Here’s what other Republican loyalists have had to say on the same issue.

An unidentified interrupter burst onto the Senate floor just after 7pm last night, just as independent Sen. Bernie Sanders had concluded his speech opposing the bill during a marathon day of debate.

“This bill is not what the American people want, and I hope very much we can defeat it,” Sanders said in his concluding speech, in which he also branded the bill “probably the worst piece of legislation in modern history,” claiming “it attacks the most vulnerable people while giving massive tax breaks to billionaires.”

Just as he finished, a livestream of the debate caught a muffled voice in the background yelling: “You people are awful. You’re awful. You’re awful.”

Presiding officer Sen. Dave McCormick quickly interjected and told the sergeant at arms to “restore order in the gallery.”

However, the heckler continued to yell out as officials raced to restore calm.

Here’s more from Madeline Sherratt.

As Trump attempted to marshall his forces, his former pal once more poured scorn from the sidelines.

“It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future,” Musk warned.

Here’s more from Gustaf Kilander, Eric Garcia and Rhian Lubin.

Despite the CBO’s warnings, the president has urged his party to push through the megabill as its July 4 deadline looms and has threatened to primary any Republican “grandstanders” who disobey.

That led to his attacking North Carolina GOP Sen. Thom Tillis over the weekend, who stressed he could not support the bill because of its likely impact on his constituents.

“What do I tell 663,00 people in two years, three years, when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding’s not there anymore?” he asked from the Senate floor.

The holdout also announced his plan not to seek re-election…

…which drew this gloating response from Trump:

Tillis could not resist responding with a sarcastic crack at the president and a reminder of his ill-advised decision to endorse Mark Robinson for North Carolina governor last year, which did not end well.

New estimates from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) have revealed that Senate Republicans’ version of Trump’s spending package would lead to more Americans losing health coverage than the version of the president’s flagship legislation that passed the House last month.

The legislation would push 11.8 million Americans off insurance by 2034, according to the report from the nonpartisan CBO.

Over the same period, federal spending on Medicaid, Medicare and Obamacare would be cut by $1.1trn. More than $1trn of the cuts would be made to Medicaid.

The estimates confirm the concerns of some Republicans who are worried about cuts to Medicaid, which amount to the steepest cuts to the federal healthcare program in history.

Some Republicans, worried about the deficit and national debt, have pressed for further cuts, while others fear what deep cuts mean for their constituents.

The estimates also clash with Trump’s promise not to cut Medicaid apart from removing what he describes as fraud and waste.

Here’s Gustaf Kilander’s report on the megabill’s potential impact.

President Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” will be subjected to an unlimited series of amendment votes in the Senate on Monday in what promises to be a defining moment for his second term in the White House.

The 940-page tax and spending bill, which maps out much of the president’s domestic legislative agenda, narrowly passed the House of Representatives earlier this month and scraped through the Senate on Saturday night 51-49 after Majority Leader John Thune and Vice President JD Vance managed to persuade most Republican dissenters to fall in line.

Senators will start voting on amendments to the contentious megabill from 9am ET (2pm GMT) on Monday, a process that could well run long.

Hello and welcome to The Independent’s live coverage of Capitol Hill as the United States Senate reconvenes to vote on an unlimited series of amendments to Donald Trump’s signature “Big, Beautiful Bill” on what promises to be a very long day indeed.