Senate kicks off marathon voting session on Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’

The Senate has kicked off its marathon voting session on President Donald Trump’s sweeping domestic policy bill after a weekend of negotiations and delays.

The Senate has kicked off its marathon voting session on President Donald Trump’s sweeping domestic policy bill after a weekend of negotiations and delays. As Senate Majority Leader John Thune went to the floor Monday morning, he told reporters that “hopefully we’ll know soon enough” if Republicans’ have the votes to pass the bill. “This may take a little while,” he noted. The vote-a-rama – an open-ended, hourslong series of votes on amendments, some political, some substantive – provides an opportunity for Republicans to make any eleventh-hour adjustments to the package and Democrats to push on GOP weak points in the bill and put their colleagues on the spot. Those politically tough votes are likely to provide fodder for campaign ads down the line. Trump’s multitrillion-dollar bill would lower federal taxes and infuse more money into the Pentagon and border security agencies, while downsizing government safety-net programs including Medicaid. Democrats are expected to zero in on Medicaid and other safety-net programs as they message against the president’s agenda. Monday’s exercise in stamina comes after Senate Democrats employed a major delay tactic over the weekend that forced clerks to spend more than a dozen hours reading aloud the entire bill. Senators then debated the bill into the early hours Monday before adjourning and returning to the chamber at 9 a.m. ET to begin offering amendments.