The Big Ugly Bill: A Crime Against America—Republicans Cheered While Millions Lost Their Health Care

Will People Remember This Vote In 2026?

She just votes like one when it's important: The Villain

Late Monday night— actually 3 AM— every single Democrat, including even Fetterman and Slotkin, voted for Bernie’s amendment to the Big Ugly Bill to cut the price of prescription drugs under Medicare in half and expand Medicare to cover dental, vision, and hearing. Every single Republican, including the fake moderates like Collins and Murkowski, voted against it.

Yesterday, the Punchbowl crew did a rundown of why the Big Ugly Bill still hadn’t passed and what its prospects were at the time— before Vance broke the 50-50 for passage. Thune, they wrote, was still “struggling to round up enough GOP votes to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill.” Rand Paul (R-KY) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) are confirmed NO votes and can’t be bought off, while Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who always has a “for sale” sticker hanging off her ass, and Susan Collins (R-ME) “haven’t yet been convinced to vote for the sprawling legislation. Republicans can’t afford to lose more than three votes. In the end Collins joined Tillis and Paul in voting NO; Murkowski didn’t. Vance broke the tie and it passed 51-50. Thune was also dealt another blow from the parliamentarian “in the early morning hours that moved Murkowski [briefly] into the ‘no’ column, causing a mad scramble on the Senate floor overnight… [MacDonough] ruled that a revised provision aimed at shielding Murkowski’s home state of Alaska from the reconciliation bill’s Medicaid cuts does not comply with the Byrd Rule.”

What ensued was a series of marathon sessions with Thune, Finance Chair Mike Crapo (ID) and Whip John Barrasso (WY) offering Murkowski replacement bribes fro her vote. In the end, Thune seemed to think he had a deal, though wouldn’t say what Murkowski is getting in return for her vote.

This is how bad things appear to be at the moment— not only is the Senate still voting on amendments with no end, but Collins floated reverting to a two-bill approach the Senate initially preferred. This was an issue hashed out months ago in favor of the “one-bill” process.

At one point, Paul was summoned to Thune’s office where he met with the majority leader, Graham and Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-ID). When asked if he would accept an offer to switch his vote, Paul responded: “I don’t want anything.” Paul opposes the bill because of the $5 trillion debt-limit increase and has separately proposed lowering that number to just $500 billion.

… But Thune and Barrasso are prioritizing flipping Murkowski. And Republican senators think Paul’s proposal is a bad idea. Not only will Trump hate it, but it would give Democrats leverage because of the filibuster.

Collins’ proposal and the meeting with Paul shows you the logjam Thune faces is in. Thune could get onto the OBBB, yet he’s unable as of now to bring it to a close. He’s still more likely than not to get there, but the landing is very ugly.

Separately, the Senate passed a bipartisan amendment by Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA) to strip out a controversial provision to restrict state-level regulation of AI for a decade from the bill.

Blackburn and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who supported the moratorium, had a deal for a shorter moratorium, but Blackburn pulled out from that agreement because she said it lacked protections for children and consumers. The Senate then approved the Blackburn-Cantwell amendment by a 99-1 margin. This is a big setback for Cruz.

The Senate was supposed to be the easy part. This GOP reconciliation bill is going to hit even choppier waters in the House.

Speaker Mike Johnson is dealing with simmering frustration across the House Republican Conference.

Why? Because this bill does not fulfill the promises that the speaker made to the House Republican Conference. It cuts $1.5 trillion in exchange for $4.5 trillion in tax cuts— $500 billion short of the savings Johnson vowed to achieve in this scenario.

There are more problems than this. The Senate’s Medicaid cuts total close to $1 trillion, irking GOP moderates.

This is why Johnson’s leadership team spent the last few days trying to convince Thune to use the “wraparound” amendment at the end of the vote-a-rama to restore the House’s version of the provider tax, change SNAP language and even add more spending cuts.

This was highly unrealistic. Johnson’s leadership team— and, in fact, Johnson himself— left open the possibility all Monday that the Senate package would revert closer to the House’s language. House Republicans spent all day telling us that they were holding out hope that Thune would change the bill to mollify conservatives.

Johnson even said this to us on Monday evening.

“I have prevailed upon my Senate colleagues to please, please, please, put it as close to the House product as possible,” Johnson said.

Johnson has been saying for weeks that he was confident the Senate’s bill would closely mirror the House’s legislation. Of course, that was never realistic. Most people realized that. That was poor expectation-setting on behalf of Johnson and the GOP leadership.

The House Rules Committee is slated to come at noon to begin to prepare the bill for floor consideration. The full House is expected back Wednesday.

CNN pollster Harry Enten explained why thee bill has been on the verge of collapsing over and over during the process. Basically, the public HATES it. He said on air that “You don’t have to be a mathematical genius to know that these are horrible, horrible, horrible numbers. Washington Post,  minus 19 points, Fox News minus 21 points … holy Toledo— you just never see numbers this poor… to quote Sir Charles Barkley, ‘terrible terrible terrible’… it is one of the most unpopular pieces of legislation that I have ever seen.”

So why is it so hated? Emily Peck ran that down: “It slashes food and health benefits for the poorest Americans, while giving tax cuts to higher earners— blowing a hole in the nation's safety net, according to healthcare experts and advocates for lower-income people. Experts say the cuts could unleash a tidal wave of pain— overcrowded emergency rooms, an increase in chronic health care issues, more medical debt, and more folks going hungry. If the $4 trillion bill passes into law, it would be the biggest cut to the social safety net in decades… on track to cut 20% of spending on food stamps, or SNAP, with more than 2 million losing benefits… Cuts to Medicaid could lead to nearly 12 million people losing health insurance, per the CBO. Changes to the Affordable Care Act could lead to losses for millions more; others would face higher healthcare costs. There's massive overlap here— nearly 30 million of the 38.3 million people receiving SNAP in 2022 were also enrolled in Medicaid. It's a double-whammy: these folks would need more for healthcare, while being further stretched on groceries. The bottom 20% of earners would see a nearly 3% decline in income, about $700, under the Senate version of the bill. The top 1 percent would see a nearly 2% increase, or $30,000.”

Annie Lowrey’s essay for The Atlantic, The Ugliest Bill Ever, makes the point that as consequential as the bill is, most “Americans say they have heard little or nothing about it... [but] If you’re looking to give $29,999,999 to your heirs, this bill is for you… On the campaign trail, Trump promised to get rid of taxes on Social Security benefits. The bill does not do that. Trump also promised ‘no taxes on tips.’ The bill creates a profession-specific, fine-print loophole for tipped income. But many hairdressers and barbacks do not earn enough to pay federal income taxes anyway, and tax professionals figure that rich people will exploit the provision by making their earnings look like tips. As the OBBBA makes the tax code more regressive, it also makes it more complicated, a boon for multinational corporations employing creative accountants and a blow for American business dynamism… [The bill] finances largesse for the rich with austerity for the poor. It will kill tens of thousands of Americans and impoverish millions more to grant million-dollar tax cuts to Trump and other billionaires. It will gut the Affordable Care Act to enrich corporations that move jobs overseas. And it will do nothing to solve the cost-of-living crisis that propelled Trump into office.”

Wondering if the bill will cost the GOP the Senate next year, Dan Pfeiffer wrote that “Congress has done a lot of dumb shit over the years, but this bill— if and when it becomes law— might just be the dumbest. The whole process of passing it has been surreal and serves as a metaphor for the Trump-era Republican Party. No one is asking for it. Other than preventing a tax increase, it doesn’t achieve a single long-standing conservative policy goal. No one campaigned on these ideas, and the public is screaming that they hate the bill. It’s bad policy, worse politics— and yet Republicans march onward because Donald Trump wants a ‘win.’ Not a substantive win. Not even a political win. Just a win for the sake of a win. That’s the only rationale. There’s no further consideration for why this bill should be passed or what happens when it does. They do it because Trump wants it— even though he has no idea why he wants it, or what’s in it. In the past, passage of bills this destructive and unpopular has triggered political earthquakes that reshaped the map. At this moment, Democrats are probably slight favorites to take the House, but the Senate has been considered just out of reach.”

You can  help put the Senate in play: here. Bottom line: this bill is cruel, nihilistic and doesn’t solve problems as much as it deepens them. It’s more a monument to Trump’s ego, stitched together by lobbyists and passed by lawmakers too afraid— or too cynical— to say no to a tyrant, than a governing philosophy. It’s an act of class warfare against people who skip meals to afford insulin and who sleep in cars while working two jobs, Some of these people don’t follow politics as closely as DWT readers do and they vote and pray and hope that someone in power might finally see them. The hope is that this time, more people are watching and they know what it means when 11 to 17 million lose Medicaid so a billionaire can dodge the estate tax. They understand who benefits and who suffers. And the consequences might finally catch up with the perps who enable Trump and his for-the billionaires regime. If this monstrosity becomes law, the suffering will be real… but so might the backlash. This could be the moment when the cruelty backfires— when the public says enough.

Elizabeth Warren’s video about staying in the fight: “When the Republicans won, they cheered. They cheered over taking away health care from around 17 million people. They cheered over giving huge tax breaks to a handful of billionaires. They cheered over running up the national debt by another three and a half trillion dollars. You know, this bill is bad. It's bad economically, it's bad morally. This bill is just wrong… [T]hey may do this now, but come November 2026, they're going to have to face the voters. They're going to have to face the people, the families of the people whose health care they took away, and they're going to have to explain exactly what they just did just now on the floor of the United States Senate and whatever they do next. So, this is hard, but damn, we stay in the fight. We stay in it not because it's an easy fight, not because we're guaranteed to win every time. We stay in it, because it's the right fight.”

MAGA Mike can only lose 3 votes and the House is expected to vote later today— if he can wrangle enough Republicans to just say OK, that they’ll go with the Senate bill as is. I doubt that’s going to happen. There are more than a few Republicans who want a chance to make changes though the conference committee process. Carl Hulse reported that “After more than 24 hours in session and a climactic vote at the strike of noon, most senators have quickly fled the Capitol. Their cars were idling on the plaza to ferry them to the airport in time to make Fourth of July parades back home and other travel. The mass departure means there is no way the Senate could be convened again to vote on the bill this week if the House decides to make changes. In congressional parlance, passing legislation, sending it to the other chamber and skedaddling is known as jamming.” So... consider MAGA Mike to be jammed.

Lots of House Republicans are vowing they’ll vote NO. But they’re almosst all the types who fold when push comes to shove. Thomas Massie (KY) and Warren Davidson (OH) voted against the House bill already and there’s no reason to think they won’t be NO votes today. But finding two more NO voters... looks nearly impossible to me. Others claiming they’ll vote against it— but almost certainly won’t— include David Valadao (CA), Nick LaLota (NY), Jeff Van Drew (NJ), Young Kim (CA), Brian Fitzpatrick (PA), Andy Biggs (AZ), Chip Roy (TX), Victoria Spartz (R-IN), Derrick Van Orden (WI), Ryan Mackenzie (PA), Mike Carey (OH), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA), Mike Lawler (NY), Josh Brecheen (OK), Eric Burlison (MO) and Ralph Norman (SC). Don Bacon isn’t running again, so Trump has nothing to hold over his head and he could be a no vote… but I doubt it. Most of the ones saying they’re voting NO are just looking to make deals in exchange for “changing” to Yes. Ralph Norman and Chip Roy voted against the Rule in committee last night, not a good harbinger of what's going to happen on the floor this morning.

By late yesterday, Andrew Solendar and Katie Santal were reporting that GOP leadership was facing a serious rebellion in their ranks and that there could be more than 20 No votes. One clown, Andy Ogles (R-TN), tweeted that he will introduce an amendment to the Senate bill that would delete all its text and replace it with the version passed by the House in May.