Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told fellow Democrats they will force the out-loud reading of the GOP’s “big, beautiful bill” if the Senate votes to start debate Saturday.

The maneuver, which was described by a person granted anonymity to describe private plans, is meant to slow down Senate passage of the megabill and give Democrats more time to raise awareness of provisions inside of it. The reading of the bill by clerks is provided for under Senate rules but is almost always waived by unanimous consent.

Senate aides estimate reading the 940-page bill could take about 15 hours. When Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) forced the reading of Democrats’ 628-page American Rescue Act in 2021, it took 10 hours and 44 minutes. (Johnson said he bought the clerks a case of wine afterward.)

“Schumer believes Americans deserve to hear exactly what’s in this monstrosity: permanent tax breaks for billionaires, millions of Americans losing health care and food assistance, giveaways to fossil fuel companies and land sales to the highest bidder — all paid for by working families,” the person said.

The cost of Senate Republicans’ tax cuts has grown to $4.45 trillion, congressional forecasters said Saturday night.

That’s up more than $200 billion from a previous draft of the plan, and reflects numerous last-minute changes lawmakers have made as they negotiate the details of the domestic policy megabill now before the Senate.

The growing price tag could be a problem for some Republicans, especially in the House where many lawmakers have been adamant that their tax cuts cost no more than $4 trillion, unless they find more spending cuts.

Lawmakers in the two chambers have not resolved a months-long dispute over the bill’s cost, even as they push to finalize the plan, which they hope to get to President Donald Trump next week for his signature into law.

The specifics of the sweeping tax, energy, defense and immigration package are still in flux, and it’s possible lawmakers will make additional changes to bring down its cost to the Treasury.

At Republicans’ request, the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation also analyzed the plan using an alternative metric known as a “current policy baseline.” By that standard, the bill costs $693 billion, up from a previous $442 billion estimate.

JCT only examined the tax portion of the plan. The rest will be analyzed by its sister agency, the Congressional Budget Office.

Vice President JD Vance has arrived at the Capitol to potentially cast a tiebreaking vote to advance the GOP megabill. He was accompanied by Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri, who golfed earlier today with President Donald Trump. Four other GOP senators — Mike Lee of Utah, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Rick Scott of Florida — have yet to vote. All need to vote “yes” to advance the legislation.

Voting is underway in the Senate on an initial procedural vote on the GOP megabill, and Vice President JD Vance is expected to arrive soon at the Capitol to break a likely tie, according to a Senate aide granted anonymity to describe the private plans.

GOP Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin have voted against proceeding with debate. Republican leaders can bear no more than three defections while letting Vance break a 50-50 tie.

Senate Republicans stepped up their attacks on U.S. solar and wind energy projects by quietly adding a provision to their megabill that would penalize future developments with a new tax.

That new tax measure was tucked into the more than 900-page document released late Friday that also would sharply cut the tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act for solar and wind projects. Those cuts to the IRA credits were added after a late-stage push by President Donald Trump to crack down further on the incentives by requiring generation projects be placed in service by the end of 2027 to qualify.

The new excise tax is another blow to the fastest-growing sources of power production in the United States, and would be a massive setback to the wind and solar energy industries since it would apply even to projects not receiving any credits.

“It’s a kill shot. This new excise tax on wind and solar is designed to fully kill the industry,” said Adrian Deveny, founder and president of policy advisory firm Climate Vision, who helped craft the climate law as a former policy director for Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer.

Analysts at the Rhodium Group said in an email the new tax would push up the costs of wind and solar projects by 10 to 20 percent — on top of the cost increases from losing the credits.

“Combined with the likely onerous administrative reporting burden this provision puts in place, these cost increases will lead to even lower wind and solar installations. The impacts of this tax would also flow through to consumers in the form of higher electricity rates,” Rhodium said.

The provision as written appears to add an additional tax for any wind and solar project placed into service after 2027 — when its eligibility for the investment and production tax credits ends — if a certain percentage of the value of the project’s components are sourced from prohibited foreign entities, like China. It would apply to all projects that began construction after June 16 of this year.

The language would require wind and solar projects, even those not receiving credits, to navigate complex and potentially unworkable requirements that prohibit sourcing from foreign entities of concern — a move designed to promote domestic production and crack down on Chinese materials.

In keeping with GOP support for the fossil fuel industry, the updated bill creates a new production tax credit for metallurgical coal, which is used in steelmaking.

Elon Musk is once again bashing the Republican megabill.

Weeks after an initial tirade against the legislation, the former top White House staffer and current richest man in the world wrote Saturday on X that the “latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country!”

“Utterly insane and destructive,” he added. “It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future.”

The bill significantly cuts subsidies for clean power sources like wind and solar, along with tax credits for buying electric vehicles and instead includes incentives for the coal industry.

Musk has intervened before to tank a major spending bill. The billionaire torpedoed a compromise government spending bill in December by repeatedly posting in opposition to it. This caused a number of Republicans to back away and nearly spaked a government shutdown.

At the time, Musk had far more influence as a close Trump ally and as the largest donor in support of Trump’s reelection bid. His influence in the GOP has waned after his controversial stint atop the Department of Government Efficiency initiative created repeated hassles for the White House.

Every major health system in Louisiana is warning Speaker Mike Johnson and the rest of the state’s congressional delegation that the Senate GOP’s planned Medicaid cuts “would be historic in their devastation.”

The group sent the warning in a letter that also went to Majority Leader Steve Scalise and GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy, a physician who has also raised concerns about the cuts.

The health systems said the Senate’s revised text hits states like Louisiana even harder than previous iterations and would slash more than $4 billion in Medicaid funding for the state’s health care providers.

“This will negatively impact our ability to deliver care and have devastating consequences for our state budget,” they said. “These economic consequences pale in comparison to the harm that will be caused to residents across the state, regardless of insurance status, who will no longer be able to get the care that they need.”

They added: “The House version, while it presented challenges, is a more workable solution which would help to avoid many of these effects.”

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told GOP members on a Saturday conference call to prepare for votes Tuesday evening or Wednesday on the sweeping Republican megabill, according to three people who were on the call and were granted anonymity to describe it.

Scalise and Speaker Mike Johnson addressed House Republicans as GOP leaders in the Senate raced to tweak and advance their version of the megabill. Johnson said on the call he has been working with Senate Republican leaders to shape the bill so the version that emerges from the other chamber can be passed in the House without changes and sent to President Donald Trump for enactment.

The leaders have been planning to iron out some issues in a final amendment before Senate passage, but Senate GOP leaders have pushed back hard on reversing deep Medicaid cuts — something dozens of House Republicans are concerned about.

Johnson also members to bring any remaining concerns directly to their GOP senators and to the White House — and to not air those grievances in public. House GOP leadership said they would stick with a promise to give members 48 hours notice of a vote so that lawmakers have adequate time to return to Washington.

House GOP leaders did not take questions on the call.

Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said in a statement Saturday he will vote against the GOP megabill, absent changes to Medicaid that GOP leaders have not so far been willing to make.

“I did my homework on behalf of North Carolinians, and I cannot support this bill in its current form,” said Tillis, who is up for re-election next year. “It would result in tens of billions of dollars in lost funding for North Carolina, including our hospitals and rural communities. This will force the state to make painful decisions like eliminating Medicaid coverage for hundreds of thousands in the expansion population, and even reducing critical services for those in the traditional Medicaid population.”

“We can and must do better than this,” he added, calling on the Senate to adopt the House’s less drastic approach to Medicaid.

With Vice President JD Vance available to break ties, GOP leaders can afford no more than three defections. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky has already indicated he will likely vote against the bill, and at least five other Republican votes are in flux.

Jim McLaughlin, one of President Donald Trump’s top pollsters, said Hill Republicans should nix Senate Republicans’ deeper Medicaid cuts in the megabill or risk deep backlash from voters.

“The Senate needs to go back to the House version on Medicaid in the [One Big Beautiful Bill Act], just like the president wants,” Jim McLaughlin, who runs McLaughlin & Associates, told POLITICO Saturday.

He continued: “The working class Americans who gave President Trump his overwhelming victory as well as majorities in the House and Senate deserve nothing less.”

More than a dozen at-risk House Republicans are deeply alarmed at the Senate’s decisions to keep its deeper Medicaid cuts in newly unveiled text, including the politically explosive provider tax.

They’re warning they won’t support the bill unless the Medicaid language moves closer to the House text.

More than a dozen House Republicans are saying privately they won’t vote for Senate text unless Medicaid language moves much closer to the House version, according to a half-dozen people familiar with the matter and granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

The resistance comes as House GOP leaders are set to hold a 3 p.m. member call on the megabill.

Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.) warned in a statement Saturday he will oppose the bill unless it returns in total to the House Medicaid text.

More than 30 members have raised concerns to House GOP leaders on the Senate’s Medicaid update, many directly texting Speaker Mike Johnson in the last few hours, three of the six people said.

New York Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, a key House centrist, said in a Saturday interview he supported the latest version of the state and local tax deduction in the Senate’s megabill, praising it as “a big win.”

“In a negotiation you’ve got to know how to define a win and take yes for an answer,” he said.

Lawler and other blue-state Republicans have been going back and forth with GOP leaders about the fate of the SALT deduction, which they’ve been trying to hike from a $10,000 cap. The latest Senate bill would raise it to $40,000 through 2029.

Lawler said most of the group of blue-state Republicans advocating for a higher SALT cap were on board with the deal, which has been a major hangup as the megabill moves through the House and Senate.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said on Saturday that he will back President Donald Trump’s signature legislation after Republicans made changes to the health care language, helping leadership shore up their whip count.

“I’m going to vote yes on this bill,” Hawley said.

Hawley, whose intentions had been unclear, said he was satisfied by a change that would delay implementing changes to the provider tax language, which most states use to help cover Medicaid costs. He was also encouraged by an increase in the rural hospital fund, which means that his state will get more Medicaid funding for the next four years.

Hawley’s decision comes as Majority Leader John Thune is expected to hold an initial vote on the megabill on Saturday, setting up final passage as soon as Sunday.

Several senators have yet to say if they will vote to start debate or help pass the final bill. Thune can lose no more than three GOP senators and still let Vice President JD Vance break a tie.

Senate Republicans are trimming plans to expand the standard deduction and other broad-based tax cuts in an apparent effort to make up for the revenue lost through other last-minute changes to their sprawling megabill.

In the latest draft of their plan, they’d increase the standard deduction to $15,750 for single filers, down $250 from what they had planned.

They’re also ratcheting back plans to cut taxes on average people via a bump in the way the tax brackets are indexed for inflation. Senate Republicans had wanted to offer that to people in the bottom three marginal tax brackets, but now it’s reserved for those in the bottom two. The revised plan would also expose more high-income people to the alternative minimum tax.

It’s unclear how much money the adjustments would save – a cost estimate was not available. But it appears to be intended to compensate for other late changes to the package, such as adding a more generous deduction for state and local taxes.

The new plan for the standard deduction and the other provisions is less generous than what the House approved last month in its draft of the plan. The Senate, though, would speed up its implementation of the bigger standard deduction, matching the House’s proposal to make it available for this tax year, as part of a bid to boost people’s refunds next year, ahead of the midterm elections.

The revisions, unveiled last night, come as lawmakers try to push the tax, energy, immigration and defense legislation – which is still being negotiated -- through the Senate, back through the House and onto President Donald Trump’s desk by their July 4 recess.

Hospital lobbies are up in arms over the updated Senate megabill, saying it will jeopardize health care for millions of Americans.

GOP senators delayed cuts to provider taxes that fund state obligations to Medicaid to begin drawing down in 2028 and included a $25 billion stabilization fund for rural hospitals over five years, but that has not allayed the fears of the American Hospital Association and the Federation of American Hospitals.

“By making severe limitations to provider taxes and state directed payments, two lifelines for hospitals, the bill will result in the curtailing of essential services and the closure of hospitals, particularly in rural areas,” said AHA CEO Rick Pollack, adding that the Senate bill is “substantially worse than its House counterpart.”

The White House is formally blessing the Senate’s changes to President Donald Trump’s sweeping domestic policy bill.

Trump officials told Senate offices in a statement of administration policy obtained by POLITICO that Trump would sign the megabill and that he wants it by July 4.

“President Trump is committed to keeping his promises, and failure to pass this bill would be the ultimate betrayal,” the White House said.

There’s a surprising winner in the latest draft of Senate Republicans’ domestic policy megabill: whaling boat captains.

Buried in the 940-page bill is a provision upping a deduction some can take for whale-hunting-related expenses to $50,000 from the current $10,000.

It’s one of the more unusual breaks in the tax code, and often mocked because it allows people to deduct the cost of maintaining boats and weapons as a charitable contribution.

But it’s long been important to Alaskan lawmakers. Spokespersons for Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The provision comes as lawmakers released last night the latest draft of the tax, energy, defense and immigration bill they hope to push onto President Donald Trump’s desk by early next month.

The deduction was added to the code in 2004. In order to claim the benefit, the IRS says someone has to be recognized as a whaling captain by the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission and must be engaged in the sanctioned, subsistence hunting of bowhead whales.

A cost estimate of the proposed increase was not available.

A proposed tax on remittances that’s kicked up a good amount of controversy would further shrink to 1 percent under the latest draft of Senate Republicans’ megabill.

That’s down from the 3.5 percent they had previously considered, and well off the 5 percent charge House Republicans approved last month as part of their version of the plan.

It’s one of a number of tax increases in the legislation on undocumented immigrants Republicans are using to help finance their package, and it’s a priority for President Donald Trump.

But it’s sparked concern it could hit a wide range of other cross-border payments as well, from cash parents send kids studying abroad to money flows in the global financial system, and lawmakers have faced myriad demands from banks to the government of Mexico to scale it back.

The change comes as Senate Republicans attempt to finalize their tax, energy, defense and immigration bill and get it to Trump early next month.

A cost estimate of the new iteration was not available, though the 3.5 percent levy Senate Republicans had previously contemplated was estimated to raise $1 billion. The House version is expected to bring in $26 billion.

Senate Republicans made a series of changes to the education portion of President Donald Trump’s domestic policy megabill that maneuver around budget rulings from the chamber’s parliamentarian.

New bill text and summaries released late Friday show GOP lawmakers changed the rules around student loan repayment systems and lifted a restriction when doctors’ and dentists’ debt payments would count toward Public Service Loan Forgiveness.

Republican proposals to end student aid eligibility for certain foreign nationals and expand Pell Grants to non-accredited schools for certain programs were both removed.

Each of those changes appear to reflect the findings of the parliamentarian this week.

Student loan repayment: The new text maintains the creation of a “Repayment Assistance Plan,” which would be based on income, and a standard plan, with fixed payments for 10 to 25 years based on debt load. According to the bill summary, under the new text, existing borrowers (with loans taken before July 1, 2026) would have access to both the assistance plan and the income-based repayment plan created by Congress starting in July 2028.

Notable trims: Lawmakers did not include language that expanded the Pell Grant to short-term workforce training programs outside of the accreditation system after Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough determined the proposal would also be subject to the 60-vote threshold.

Prior language that blocked doctors and dentists from having their student loan payments during residency count toward Public Service Loan Forgiveness was also not included after the parliamentarian determined the provisions did not clear the “Byrd Bath.”

Borrower defense and closed school discharges: The new language would delay — rather than repeal — Biden-era borrower defense and closed school discharge regulations for 10 years.

Tweaked ‘do no harm’ standard: The revised HELP Committee text would prohibit new federal student loans from paying for undergraduate programs where the majority of “completers” earn less than the median high school graduate in the same state; or graduate programs where the majority of completers earn less than the median bachelor’s degree recipient in the same field in the same state, according to the bill summary.

Prior language applied the standard to a broader category of “former students.”

Alaska and Hawaii could be temporarily exempted from paying for some costs of the nation’s largest anti-hunger program after last-minute negotiating from lawmakers, according to Senate Republicans’ new megabill text.

The new text grants the Agriculture secretary authority to waive the two states’ cost-share requirement for up to two years if they are “actively implementing” a plan to lower their payment error rates, which is what will be used to calculate how much of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program states will need to fund.

Alaska’s SNAP error rate was over 60 percent and Hawaii’s was over 20 percent as of fiscal year 2023, which is the latest available data. Alaska’s two Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, have spent the past several weeks pushing their colleagues to provide an exception for their state.

Hawaii and Alaska are also eligible for waivers to bypass the new SNAP work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents, if the Agriculture secretary deems they are making a “good faith effort” to comply with the requirements.

Other provisions of the Senate Agriculture Committee’s plan remain unchanged in the new megabill text, though lawmakers could still modify the bill through amendments during the floor vote.

Grace Yarrow and Marcia Brown contributed reporting.

Senate Republicans stripped provisions aimed at overhauling the federal government’s pension program from their policy megabill, according to new text released Friday night.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s proposals to raise federal employees’ required retirement contributions and charge unions for time spent engaging in organizing activities were among those removed. The new text comes after Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough determined that several of the GOP’s civil service provisions violated the chamber’s reconciliation rules.

Lawmakers could still modify the megabill through amendments during the floor vote.

POLITICO reported that the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee was at one point considering a plan to require workers to contribute up to 15.6 percent of their salaries to retirement, while creating a carveout for members of Congress, their staff and federal law enforcement personnel.

Small colleges would get a break from a special tax on university endowment earnings under the latest draft of Senate Republicans’ domestic policy megabill.

A revised version of the legislation released overnight exempts schools from the levy if they have fewer than 3,000 tuition-paying students. That’s up from the current threshold of 500 tuition-paying students that lawmakers had previously planned to stick by.

The change comes as lawmakers attempt to finalize the details of their sprawling tax, energy, defense and immigration bill they hope to get to President Donald Trump’s desk by early next month.

The updates to the endowment tax come after the Senate’s parliamentarian had nixed a proposed carveout for religious schools because it violated the chamber’s rules about what can go into so-called reconciliation bills. Senate Republicans had already dialed back a proposed increase in the endowment tax approved last month by the House.

The Senate’s iteration creates a sliding scale, with the rate topping out at 8 percent for some schools, up from the current 1.4 percent. House Republicans had proposed increasing it to as much as 21 percent.

A cost estimate of the revised plan was not available.

Senate Republicans have included compromises on key Medicaid and tax issues in updated text for their sweeping domestic policy bill.

In an effort to placate GOP moderates on the fence on the legislation, Senate Republicans are planning to provide a $25 billion stabilization fund for rural hospitals over five years. It’s a significant bump up from the $15 billion offer Senate Republican leadership had made to a group of Medicaid moderates, who have balked at the steep cuts to the health program contained in the marque legislation.

Senate Republicans would also delay planned cuts to provider taxes that fund state obligations to Medicaid. The changes would still incrementally lower the allowable provider tax in Medicaid expansion states from 6 percent down to 3.5 percent.

But the drawdown would begin in 2028, one year later than planned — in a nod to concerns from senators like Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who warned this week that resulting cuts to Medicaid could have disastrous electoral consequences in the midterms.

The changes come as Senate Republicans are racing ahead with plans to hold a vote on their legislation Saturday. President Donald Trump still wants the bill on his desk by July 4, though Republicans, as of Friday evening, did not have the votes to start debate.

The language also reflects changes to the state and local tax deduction sought by blue state House Republicans. The New York, New Jersey and California Republicans have been in prolonged negotiations with Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent over a boost to the deduction, which Senate Republicans universally want lowered.

The new Senate text keeps House Republicans’ plan to increase the deduction from $10,000 to $40,000, but it would snap back to current levels after 2029. The new language likely shaves off at least $100 billion from the approximately $350 billion price tag of the House plan.

It’s still unclear, though, if the compromise would get all of the hardcore SALT Republicans to “yes.” In a Friday lunch with Senate Republicans, House Speaker Mike Johnson said he still had one holdout on the SALT deal -— a likely reference to Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.), who indicated on Friday that, if there had been a deal, he was not part of it.

The text for the Finance committee, which has jurisdiction over tax policy and Medicaid, could still see major changes. That’s because the language still hasn’t been fully updated to reflect rulings from the parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, on whether the contained provisions comply with strict budget rules.

The tax panel had their final meetings with MacDonough Friday night, but it’s unclear how she would weigh in, if at all, on tax provisions enacted under a novel accounting tactic called “current policy baseline. That tactic takes the unprecedented step of zeroing out trillions of tax cut extensions. Senate Republicans are relying on it to make a slew of provisions, from individual to business tax cuts, permanent.

David Lim contributed to this report.

Senate Republicans released updated megabill text late Friday that would make sharp cuts to the Inflation Reduction Act’s solar and wind tax credits after a late-stage push by President Donald Trump to crack down further on the incentives.

The text would require solar and wind generation projects seeking to qualify for the law’s clean electricity production and investment tax credits to be placed in service by the end of 2027 — significantly more restrictive than an earlier proposal by the Senate Finance Committee that tied eligibility to when a project begins construction.

The changes came after Trump urged Senate Majority Leader John Thune to crack down on the wind and solar credits and align the measure more closely with reconciliation text, H.R.1, that passed the House, as POLITICO reported earlier on Friday.

The changes are likely to put some moderate GOP senators, who have backed a slower schedule for sunsetting those incentives, in a tough position. They’ll be forced to choose between rejecting Trump’s agenda or allowing the gutting of tax credits that could lead to canceled projects and job losses in their states — something renewable energy advocates are also warning about.

“We are literally going to have not enough electricity because Trump is killing solar. It’s that serious,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) responded on X early Saturday. “We need a bunch of new power on the grid, and nothing is as available as solar. Everything else takes a while. Meantime, expect shortages and high prices. Stupid.”

The revised text would retain the investment and production tax credits for baseload sources, such as nuclear, geothermal, hydropower or energy storage, as proposed in the Finance Committee’s earlier proposal.

But it would make other significant changes, including extending a tax credit for clean hydrogen production until 2028. The panel’s earlier proposal would have eliminated the credit after this year.

And despite vocal lobbying by the solar industry, the proposal would maintain an abrupt cut to the tax incentive supporting residential solar power. The committee’s earlier proposal would have eliminated that credit six months after the enactment of the bill; now the updated draft proposes repealing it at the end of this year.

It would also deny certain wind and solar leasing arrangements from accessing the climate law’s clean electricity investment and production tax credits, but, in a notable change, removed earlier language specifically disallowing rooftop solar. And it would move up the timeline for certain rules barring foreign entities of concern from accessing those credits.

The bill would move up the termination date for electric vehicle tax credits to Sept. 30, compared to six months after enactment in the earlier Finance text. The credit for EV chargers would extend through June 2026.

The new text also provides a bonus incentive for advanced nuclear facilities built in communities with high levels of employment in the nuclear industry. And the bill makes metallurgical coal eligible for the advanced manufacturing production tax credit through 2029.

Sam Ricketts, co-founder of S2 Strategies, a clean energy policy consulting group, said the new draft is going to “screw” ratepayers, kill jobs and undermine U.S. economic competitiveness.

“All just to give fossil fuel executives more profits,” he said. “Or to own the libs. Insanity.”

Josh Siegel contributed to this report.