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Senate Republicans Risk Their Legacy and Political Future on Legislation
Senate Republicans Risk Their Legacy and Political Future on Legislation
The extensive legislation that Republicans worked tirelessly to push through the Senate represents a significant gamble that is expected to yield substantial repercussions for both the party and the nation.
Senator John Thune, the majority leader, inside the Senate chamber as a “vote-a-rama” begins on Capitol Hill to pass President Trump’s bill on Monday.Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
Senate Republicans narrowly pushed their extensive tax and health policy bill across the finish line on Tuesday, achieving this hard-fought legislative victory at significant risk to their party's political future and fiscal reputation.
The bill, which still has a challenging path ahead for final approval in the House, proposes substantial cuts to popular health and nutrition programs, among other measures, to finance approximately $4.5 trillion in tax reductions. It is anticipated to significantly increase the national debt over the next decade, despite strong denials from President Trump and Congressional Republicans.
An extraordinary all-night session and some last-minute incentives were required for Republican leaders to secure the bill's passage, highlighting the considerable discomfort surrounding the legislation. Senator Lisa Murkowski, the Alaska Republican who was a final holdout, only supported it after obtaining assurances for her constituents against its most severe cuts, describing the process as "agonizing."
Now, the G.O.P. faces the challenge of promoting its widely criticized plan to a public that polls indicate is already doubtful about the legislation. Additionally, they will have to contend with the fierce opposition from Democrats, who plan to make their criticisms of the bill a central theme in their 2026 campaign to reclaim control of the House and Senate.
The long-term financial implications of the measure could be even more detrimental. During the chaotic process of pushing the bill through the narrowly divided Senate, Republicans broke a long-standing budgeting principle designed to limit Congress’s capacity to implement policies that increase the deficit over time. With that safeguard compromised, the nation’s already skyrocketing debt faces the risk of growing exponentially, a questionable legacy for Republicans, who frequently identify as the party of fiscal responsibility.
Some of the harshest criticism of the legislation originated from within the Republican party, particularly from Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina. He had been cautioning his party for several days that the bill was politically unwise even before he unexpectedly declared on Sunday that he would not seek re-election to the Senate next year after facing political backlash from Mr. Trump due to his opposition to the bill.
Mr. Tillis stated that his analysis indicated the Medicaid reductions in the bill would cause significant disruption in his state. In a scathing speech on the Senate floor that likely resonated with his fellow Republicans, he likened their assurances that no eligible Medicaid recipient would lose coverage to a well-known refrain from the Obama administration that Republicans successfully used against Democrats and still enjoy referencing today.
“The last time I witnessed a promise broken regarding health care,” Mr. Tillis remarked, “was when someone claimed, ‘If you like your health care, you can keep it; if you like your doctor, you can keep it,’” Mr. Tillis continued. “We discovered that was not the case.”
This pointed remark referred to President Barack Obama’s commitment in 2009 that under his new health care initiative, Americans would not face any interruptions in their coverage, a promise that ultimately did not hold true, contributing to significant Democratic losses in the 2010 midterm elections.
Republicans made remarks in this situation that could potentially backfire on them. On Monday, Vice President JD Vance referred to the Medicaid cuts, which could affect millions of Americans, as "immaterial" when compared to the new security expenditures in the bill. Facing criticism at home for her endorsement of the bill, Senator Joni Ernst, a Republican from Iowa, addressed constituents' concerns regarding possible loss of health care access by stating, "We are all going to die."
While advocating for their legislation, leading Republicans maintained that Medicaid would remain accessible to those who genuinely need it — asserting that they were merely eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse, and removing able-bodied Americans who could and should be working from the program.
“Medicaid was originally intended for children and poor families, children and people who were disabled and couldn’t work to provide health care,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and chairman of the Budget Committee. “Count me in for that.”
The rub for Republicans is that with generous federal support, many states have greatly extended the reach of their public health insurance programs deep into the ranks of Americans holding down jobs that do not provide health coverage. The states and their residents have come to rely on Medicaid as a stable source of health care. History has shown that once voters obtain government aid under a program, they are not happy to see those benefits threatened, particularly if they are told that it is being done to underwrite tax cuts for affluent Americans.
Republicans also came under fire from within their ranks over the bill’s expected impact on the national debt. Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, has for weeks taken aim at his G.O.P. colleagues for abandoning their professed anti-deficit ideology by promoting legislation that spills barrels of red ink while raising the federal debt limit by $5 trillion.
Mr. Paul warned colleagues who like to consider themselves deficit hawks that they would have no one to point fingers at when the bill comes due if the measure becomes law and the projections are realized.
“Republicans now own the debt, and Republicans now own the spending,” Mr. Paul said. “There is no more blaming — ‘Oh, it’s Biden’s fault.’ The deficit is fully, completely owned by Republicans.”
Top Republicans dispute the claims that their measure will drive up the deficit and say that the growth produced by the legislation will offset any revenue losses, a prediction that has proved to be overly optimistic under past Republican-only tax cuts.
“We want to grow the economy,” Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the No. 2 Senate Republican, said of his party’s legislation, in an appearance on Fox News. “They want to grow the government,” he said of the Democrats.
The Senate Republican projections of the fiscal impact of their legislation were enhanced by a bit of dexterous accounting that allowed them to unilaterally treat the cost of extending the tax breaks as zero in a maneuver that Democrats said perverted special Senate budget rules and undermined the filibuster.
Democrats said that approach would come back to haunt Republicans when Democrats regain control of Congress and use the same tactic to push through legislation Republicans oppose without the threat of a filibuster.
To try to soften the political impact of the health care changes, Republicans pushed off most of the start dates of the program cuts and new work requirements for Medicaid recipients past the 2026 midterm elections.
But Democrats intend to pound home the looming consequences of the cuts, and they may get some help from Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri. Though he voted for the legislation, Mr. Hawley said he was so opposed to the Medicaid provisions that he intended to spend the next two years trying to get them overturned.
It is worth noting that Democrats were crushed in the 2010 midterms even though the botched rollout out of the Affordable Care Act was years away as Republicans capitalized on voter anxiety about the coming health care changes.
Mr. Tillis reminded his colleagues of that fact and the impact on his own political career in North Carolina and Washington.
“That made me the second Republican speaker of the House since the Civil War, ladies and gentlemen, because we betrayed the promise to the American people,” he said about becoming head of the House in his home state after the tumult surrounding the Affordable Care Act. “Three years later, it actually made me a U.S. senator.”
Carl Hulse is the chief Washington correspondent for The Times, primarily writing about Congress and national political races and issues. He has nearly four decades of experience reporting in the nation’s capital.
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