Donald Trump’s big, beautiful bill (BBB) has been having its problems in Congress, but the presisdent managed to catch a break with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) flipping her vote at the last second.
Murkowski put her vote up for sale in exchange for additional funding for her state.
The bill passed 51-50, with Vice President JD Vance providing the tiebreaking vote in a marathon voting session in the Senate.
It took quite a bit of work, but the Senate finally got the BBB over the finish line, and Trump will now have to thank one of his mortal enemies in the party for making it happen, namely, Murkowski.
Murkowski was a “no” vote until the last minute, when she flipped after securing more funding for her state.
She stated, "I held my head up and made sure that the people of Alaska are not forgotten in this, but I think that there is more that needs to be done, and I’m not done. I am going to take a nap, though."
The lawmaker continued, "What I tried to do was to ensure that my colleagues understood what that means when you live in an area where there are no jobs, it is not a cash economy. And so I needed help, and I worked to get that every single day."
It was not an easy road, but the Senate did manage to get the bill across the finish line much sooner than I had thought.
Trump has repeatedly stated that he wanted the bill on his desk by July 4 to sign, but that will still not be an easy task for Republicans.
There was already resistance in the House before the Senate made changes, as the initial bill barely passed in the lower chamber.
Members of the House Freedom Caucus have already stated they will reject it, but House GOP leaders are hopeful they can get this done, stating, “The House will work quickly to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill that enacts President Trump’s full America First agenda by the Fourth of July. The American people gave us a clear mandate, and after four years of Democrat failure, we intend to deliver without delay.”
We already know that Democrats will not give a single vote in favor of the bill, which means that Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) can only lose a few votes, but the current temperature suggests he has considerably more resistance than that.
Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) believes there are as many as 20 Republicans who will not support the bill, and with only three votes to spare, that spells doom for Johnson, but he had a rather significant “but” in that assessment.
He stated, “Now we’ve got to be honest all the time, the moderates on the Republican side always fold. They put up a little fight. So that way, they have some footage that they can put behind their ads during election time, and then they fold right away. The far-right kind of Freedom Caucus folks, most of the time, they fold. Sometimes they stick to it. So we’ll see.”
Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Chip Roy (R-TX) have already stated they will not support the bill as is, and I have heard quite a few other members of the Freedom Caucus say they will not back it, either. Remember, if the House makes even a single change to the bill, it would have to go back to the Senate for another vote. Can they get all this done in two days to have the bill on Trump’s desk by July 4? I say no, unless the resistance winds up being nothing more than grandstanding.