For Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Trump’s big bill is a big test

Senate Republicans are rushing to pass a massive bill that includes much of President Donald Trump’s domestic agenda, the first big legislative test for the party’s new majority leader, Sen. John Thune.

When Republicans passed their last mammoth tax bill, in 2017, the South Dakota Republican was a top lieutenant to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), then the longtime majority leader. Now, it’s all up to Thune to shepherd Trump’s agenda through a narrowly divided chamber — where some Republicans are already bashing the bill.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which passed the House last month, includes new tax and spending cuts, and new funding for border security and defense. Republicans are racing to send the bill to Trump’s desk by July 4. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has asked Congress to raise the debt limit, which is included in the bill, by the middle of next month before the government exhausts its borrowing capacity later this summer.

Thune is facing a tough balancing act as he and other Senate Republicans rework the bill. He can lose only three GOP votes — and one Republican, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, has already vowed to oppose the bill because it would raise the debt limit by trillions of dollars.

Other Senate Republicans have raised serious concerns about the bill.

On one side are Republicans worried about spending cuts. Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Josh Hawley (Missouri) have said they are concerned about Medicaid funding cuts. Sen. Thom Tillis (North Carolina) and other Republicans have suggested they will fight to roll back tax breaks for solar, wind and geothermal energy that Democrats passed in 2022 more slowly than the House bill, which would scrap credits for projects that don’t start construction within 60 days of Trump signing the bill into law.

“Medicaid is a big, big, big deal for us,” Murkowski said last month, adding that she had been raising her concerns about the cuts for months.

On the other side are Republicans pushing for deeper reductions. Sen. Ron Johnson (Wisconsin) has said he won’t vote for the bill unless it returns spending to 2019 levels — which would require much more aggressive cuts — and spent much of last week denouncing its shortcomings. Sen. Mike Lee (Utah) warned last week that Republicans needed to include more spending cuts in the bill “or else it’s not going to pass.”

“Under this bill, under the (Congressional Budget Office) projections, we’re still looking at $2.2 trillion a year on average in deficits over the next 10 years,” Lee said on “The Charlie Kirk Show.” “That’s not good enough. We’ve got to get to a point where we can balance (the budget) during this president’s time in office.”

Paul also bashed the cuts in the bill last week, describing them as “wimpy and anemic.”

Thune has suggested that Senate Republicans might rework the bill to include deeper cuts — especially after Moody’s Ratings downgraded the federal government’s credit rating last month because of growing deficits and rising interest rates.

“It is a warning shot that we need to get serious about spending restraint,” Thune told reporters last month, referring to the downgrade. “That’s why I think a lot of colleagues have made it very clear that in order for a bill to get through the House and the Senate and onto the president’s desk, it has to make a meaningful dent in the out-of-control spending we’ve seen over the past several years.”

But Thune is also pressing to make permanent several business tax breaks that would expire after a few years in the House bill — which would add billions of dollars to the cost. In the end, he told reporters, “we’ve got to do what we can get 51 (votes) for.”

Neil Bradley, executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is running ads backing the bill, said it was too soon to say whether Senate Republicans would cut spending more or less deeply than the House bill does.

“There’s always some who think it’s too hot, some that think it’s too cold,” Bradley said. “Where do you find the point where a majority think it’s just right?”

Thune and other Senate Republicans might be tempted to find savings by going after a tax break they don’t care about: the state and local tax deduction. A handful of House Republicans from New York, New Jersey and California refused to vote for the bill unless it raised the limit on how much their constituents could deduct on their federal returns. But no Senate Republicans hail from the high-tax states where the tax break is a priority for affluent suburban votes.

The more-generous state and local tax deduction included in the House bill would cost more than $350 billion over 10 years, according to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. But some tax lobbyists tracking the bill are skeptical they’ll get rid of it.

Russ Sullivan, a Democratic lobbyist who is the chair of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck’s national tax policy group, predicted that Senate Republicans would “hold their nose” to avoid jeopardizing the bill’s chances in the House, which will need to pass it again.

“I don’t think they’ll strip it out entirely,” said Rohit Kumar, a former McConnell aide who is now coleader of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ national tax office.

Trump called Friday for Senate Republicans to include more tax cuts in the bill — and he could play a critical role in pressing senators to back the legislation. Thune has forged a close relationship with Trump despite their past differences, including Thune’s endorsement of Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) for president over Trump in the 2024 primary race.

Some of the pressures on Thune as he works to secure the votes are similar to the ones on McConnell eight years ago — and some of the senators pressuring him are the same.

Johnson came out against the 2017 tax bill because of its treatment of “pass-through” businesses before ultimately voting for it after securing changes. Collins raised concerns about scrapping the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate as part of the 2017 bill before backing it.

Other Republicans worried that the 2017 bill would exacerbate the deficit, including Bob Corker of Tennessee, the only Senate Republican to vote against the bill. He left office in 2019.

But Thune is taking a different approach to guiding this bill through the Senate than McConnell did eight years ago, according to Sen. Mike Rounds, Thune’s fellow South Dakota Republican. “John Thune gets more personally involved and stays on top of each separate member with the discussions,” Rounds said.

McConnell was a taciturn tactician who leaned into his image as “Darth Vader.” Thune talks more about teamwork and the importance of taking care of each team member, Rounds said.

“John has always been more approachable,” Rounds said. “He’s just part of it; he’s in the middle of it. He continues to be that way. I think right now if you asked John just exactly what each person in the conference is going to be concerned about, he could probably tell you now.”