Vice President J.D. Vance cast the tie-breaking vote to ensure Senate passage of President Donald Trump’s signature second-term legislative priority, the One Big Beautiful Bill which denies Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood for one year, boosts the child tax credit, enhances border security, establishes a missile defense system, and spares the majority of Americans an enormous tax hike. Pro-life advocates, stung by the Senate’s decision to shrink or eliminate measures defunding abortionists and those who carry out transgender procedures, called on Congress to restore fuller protections for the unborn before the president signs it. Meanwhile, Democrats tried to continue funding abortionists but invoked the Bible to call Medicaid reform immoral.

“The yeas are 50. The nays are 50. The Senate being evenly divided, the vice president votes in the affirmative. The bill as amended is passed,” announced Vance just before noon on Tuesday. Republicans hold 53 seats in the Senate, and two members of the caucus had announced they would vote no before the all-day vote-a-rama: Senators Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.). Paul, a limited-government conservative, opposed the bill’s $5 trillion debt ceiling increase, while Tillis, a self-styled moderate who recently announced his retirement, worried the bill’s Medicaid reforms would cost his state $30 billion in federal subsidies. “Even using the math, even using the formulas that the supporters of the bill like, the deficit will grow by $270 billion next year,” said Paul. “That doesn’t sound at all conservative to me.”

Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine), who also voted against the bill, had sought to increase funding for rural hospitals by taxing those who earn at least $25 million a year or families who earn $50 million. Although her amendment got voted down, Republicans doubled the rural hospital fund to $50 billion in an effort to win her vote. They lost hers, but that and a suite of other financial inducements (including an expanded tax break for whaling boat captains) helped convince wavering Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). Murkowski, who readily voted for a failed Democratic amendment to maintain compulsory taxpayer funding of abortionists, called her vote in favor of the bill “agonizing.”

Pro-life advocates also voiced concerns over the amended bill that emerged Tuesday afternoon, which now heads back to the House of Representatives.

Pro-Life Advocates: Defund Planned Parenthood for 10 Years

“The House version of the One Big Beautiful Bill defunds abortion organizations like Planned Parenthood for the entire 10-year window of the budget bill. Senate Republicans provide ONE year, a mere 10%,” noted FRC Action President Tony Perkins. Before the Senate vote, he urged readers to call the Capitol Hill switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and demand the bill include the full, decade-long defunding it originally instituted. He also exhorted Republican leadership to “find its conservative voice” by crafting a provision to defund those who carry out transgender procedures that could withstand the Senate parliamentarian’s scrutiny.

On Tuesday, Live Action founder Lila Rose asked her followers to “demand the House reinstate the 10 year defund” provision for abortion business Planned Parenthood. “No more tax dollars for organizations that kill babies and sterilize teens!” said Rose.

“The silver lining in this dark cloud of politics, in which many of us wanted to see health care tax dollars redirected from Planned Parenthood and Big Abortion for 10 years, is not the compromise bill that passed” but rather the “idea that women don’t need Planned Parenthood,” Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life Action, told The Washington Stand. She noted the empowering pro-life message of women’s agency is “shared by the GOP in this bill, by the Supreme Court in the South Carolina win, and by the Pro-Life Generation who could have voted for the most pro-abortion ticket in U.S. history” — Kamala Harris and Tim Walz — “and said no.”

But Republican Senate leaders’ truncated “one-year pause in abortion industry support demands that we keep going, calling on President Trump, U.S. Senate Leader Thune, and House Speaker Mike Johnson to repeat the formula and to go even further, as this pushes the next conversation on ending support for Big Abortion into the midterm election,” Hawkins added. “And we will vote Pro-Life first.”

On the other hand, the abortion industry lobbying group Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America) worried the bill “could force Planned Parenthood clinics to close across the country” and sent Senate Democrats its “[h]uge thanks” for its unsuccessful attempts to thwart “Republicans’ relentless attacks on Planned Parenthood.”

Congressmen watched as many of the bill’s more conservative provisions got stripped out of the legislation by Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, a former Al Gore adviser appointed by former Democratic Senate majority leader, the late Harry Reid of Nevada, in 1999. MacDonough said multiple proposals violated Senate rules exempting them from the 60-vote threshold required to overcome a Democratic filibuster.

Democrats: Abortion Is Fine, Medicaid Reform Is ‘A Moral Obscenity’

Democrats continually voiced their supposed moral objections to the remnants of the bill, a Christian voter outreach strategy DNC Chairman Ken Martin previewed earlier this year revolving around the selective quotation of Matthew 25. Senator Corey Booker (D-N.J.), who supports taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand, called the bill “a moral obscenity” and a form of “violence” in an interview with MSNBC. “Today, Senate Republicans betrayed the American people and covered the Senate in utter shame,” groused Schumer, who called the bill “destructive.” On Sunday, before the bill got moving in earnest, Senator Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) delivered a Senate sermonette implying the Bible’s injunction to serve “the least of these” demands government redistribution of wealth.

Removing the 10-Year Moratorium on AI Regulation

In a far less controversial decision, the Senate removed the bill’s controversial 10-year moratorium on artificial intelligence regulations by a 99-1 vote. (Tillis cast the lone vote in favor of retaining the regulation moratorium.) Advocates, including Family Research Council, had warned AI has created artificial child pornography and has fueled the fantasies of pedophiles.

“It’s a relief that the Senate gave up on trying to wedge a moratorium on state regulation of AI, which would have limited states’ ability to enforce online child safety and consumer protection laws related to AI. This is a huge win for kids and families and a loss for Big Tech,” Arielle Del Turco, director of the Center for Religious Liberty at FRC, told TWS.

Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who expressed doubts about the bill’s Medicaid provisions, praised the AI moratorium removal as a “[b]ig victory for parents, kids and workers.” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who had threatened to vote against the bill when it returned to the House unless lawmakers removed the moratorium, thanked the Senate. “Federalism is preserved and humans are safe for now,” said Greene.

What’s in the Final Senate Version of the One Big Beautiful Bill?

The surviving provisions largely carry out President Trump’s legislative agenda.

1. Boosting the child tax credit. The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act doubled the child tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000 through the end of this fiscal year. The House version made that permanent and temporarily boosted the child tax credit to $2,500. The Senate version settles at $2,200, indexed for inflation. Without legislative action, the child tax credit would return to its pre-Trump level of $1,000.

2. Creating TRUMP savings accounts for children and expanding educational savings accounts. The legislation still creates “TRUMP accounts,” allowing parents to save money for their children’s future, with $1,000 from U.S. taxpayers upon the birth of each child. It also expands educational savings accounts.

3. Extending and deepening tax cuts. The bill would extend and make permanent tax credits set to expire from the 2017 tax bill, including expanded personal exemptions and incentives for business research and development. The Senate enacted a $6,000 deduction for senior citizens with an adjusted gross income of $75,000 per person or $150,000 per couple. As a result of those and other deductions, “88% of seniors receiving Social Security benefits will pay no tax on their benefits under the OBBB,” according to a report from the White House Council of Economic Advisers. It eliminates federal income taxes on tips up to the first $25,000, phasing out for those who earn $150,000 a year (or couples making $300,000). Taxpayers may also deduct up to $12,500 of overtime pay under the same condition; it lapses in 2028. The bill also lets people who buy cars made in America write off up to $10,000 in interest on the car’s loan.

4. Enhancing border security. The bill provides almost $170 billion for border enforcement, including building the president’s border wall, hiring new Border Patrol agents, and increasing deportations. The revised Senate bill altered the proposed 3.5% tax on remittances, which illegal immigrants send back to their home countries, reducing the rate to 1% and applying it to funds wired by U.S. citizens. Advocates say the less targeted tax would raise $10 billion, more than nine times the projected revenue of the original provision.

5. Securing national defense. The bill increases defense spending by roughly $160 billion, including $25 billion for a domestic “Iron Dome” missile defense system.

6. Student loan reform. The bill imposes a $257,500 lifetime cap on student loan borrowing and cuts loopholes that allow borrowers to defer paying back their loans.

7. Underwriting high-tax states and cities. The Senate version of the bill increases the state and local tax (SALT) deduction, which allows the federal government to absorb some of the pain of living in high-tax liberal states and urban areas. Under certain criteria, taxpayers may deduct up to $40,000 for the next five years, then reduced to $10,000 for the following five years.

8. Slowing our exit from the Green New Deal. The Senate bill ends tax credits or subsidies for green energy projects, such as wind and solar power favored by the Biden administration, for projects constructed within a year of the bill’s passage and that go into service by the end of 2027. But the latest bill removed a proposed excise tax on companies in those industries that use more than a specified amount of components (such as solar panels or batteries) made in China. The Senate version generally slows down the GOP’s efforts to phase out the Left’s cherished credits.

9. Slowing SNAP reform. The Senate bill slowed down reforms of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits (formerly food stamps) in certain states, including Alaska — a provision added to woo Murkowski.

10. Reforming Medicaid. Medicaid recipients capable of work must spend 80 hours a month in paid work, community service, or schooling/vocational training. The work requirements would save taxpayers an estimated $325 billion over the next 10 years. It also lowers the Medicaid provider tax from 6% to 3.5% beginning in the 2028 fiscal year.

Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) told “Washington Watch” the bill still cracks down on one of the greatest threats facing U.S. finances today: out-of-control entitlement spending. “Some of the states have figured out ways to spend way more money on healthy, young people who are added to Medicaid under Obamacare than it spends on the traditional Medicaid population: the needy, the disabled, the elderly, pregnant women, and their children,” said Harris. “The program has wandered way far from its core functions. And because of that, Medicaid spending at the federal level is out of control.”

The bill’s policy changes threaten to open, or reopen, fissures House Republicans thought they had put behind them.

The Big Beautiful Bill Is ‘Not as Beautiful as It Was’: House Conservatives

House conservatives object to the Senate bill’s larger price tag, expanded deficit spending, and less robust protections for the vulnerable at risk of abortion or transgender procedures.

After the Senate’s revisions, the One Big Beautiful Bill “is not as beautiful as it was,” Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.) told One America News on Monday evening.

The House Freedom Caucus cited the Senate version’s vastly expanded cost and deeper deficit spending as a potential hurdle, even before the bill’s parliamentary subtractions and Democrats’ vote-a-rama amendments. “The House bill added $72 billion to the deficit with interest costs included. The Senate version adds $1.3 trillion to the deficit. That’s 1,705% more,” the conservative faction noted online. “Even without interest costs, it is $651 billion over our agreed budget framework.”

Congressional leaders hope to deliver the president non-negotiable policies while attempting to thread the needle between the Freedom Caucus and House Republicans who fall closer to the party’s centrist wing, who want bigger SALT deductions and smaller Medicaid reforms.

President Trump optimistically forecasted that the bill “will be easier [to pass the second time] in the House than it was in the Senate,” because “there’s something for everyone” in the bill. But some in Congress foresee trouble. “It’s a pretty tall order for the Senate to be able to upset conservatives and moderates” at the same time, Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) told “Washington Watch” Monday. “It’s expanding the debt ceiling by $5 trillion, which is obviously hard for conservatives.”

“It leaves a huge hole in the budget,” agreed Harris on “Washington Watch” last Friday.

But Steube emphasized the high economic stakes if Congress does not extend the lower tax rates secured by President Trump in his first term through the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. “If this bill does not pass, the average family of four’s taxes are going to increase [roughly] $3,500 a year. You’re going to see small business taxes increase by 20%.”

Conservatives have expressed a desire to revise the bill and send it back to the Senate for a revision that may be more likely to pass the Senate parliamentarian’s review or iron out the differences between the two versions in a conference committee. But the president’s July 4 deadline may also foreclose the possibility.

Will Congress Pass the One Big Beautiful Bill by July 4?

President Trump, who repeatedly stated he wanted Congress to pass the bill before the Fourth of July, recently expressed some ambivalence about the final bill’s passage date. Getting the gargantuan spending act to his desk by July 4, he acknowledged Tuesday, would be “very hard to do.”

Schumer stalled the process as much as possible. Over the weekend, he employed a technicality to force the chamber to read the entire 940-page bill aloud, an undertaking that lasted nearly 16 hours. The Senate then commenced a 27-hour vote-a-rama that lasted from 9 a.m. Monday morning until nearly noon on Tuesday. In a last-minute act of spite, Schumer used a procedural point-of-order motion formally stripping the title of the legislation, “The One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” from the bill.

The revisions slimmed the 940-page bill down to 887 pages.

But Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (both R-La.) promised Tuesday afternoon they would expedite the bill’s passage. “Republicans were elected to do exactly what this bill achieves: secure the border, make tax cuts permanent, unleash American energy dominance, restore peace through strength, cut wasteful spending, and return to a government that puts Americans first,” said a joint statement Johnson posted on social media. “This bill is President Trump’s agenda, and we are making it law. House Republicans are ready to finish the job and put the One Big Beautiful Bill on President Trump’s desk in time for Independence Day.”

Perhaps bowing to political reality, Steube anticipates a swift House vote on the Senate version. “Leadership has made it very clear that we’re going to be voting on this bill that comes from the Senate, regardless of what it looks like,” said Steube. “So, whatever product comes out of the Senate, we’re going to have a vote.”