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Senate Republicans left Washington this week to sell President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” but the path to writing and passing the law began more than a year and a half ago.
Trump’s $3.3 trillion megaville was packed with his legislative priorities on border security, defense and energy, and was a product for months. And that was the bill’s marquee policy, which was to extend or permanently extend many of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Employment Act.
But Senate Republicans had little time to celebrate the passage of the bill in glory. He spent the month following Trump’s signing a $9 billion clawback package, trying to run through the lockdown of Senate Democratic presidential candidates.
Senate passes Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” after voting for the marathon
President Donald Trump was detained in Scotland on July 25, 2025 at a joint base in Andrews, Maryland. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
The journey to pass the bill began before Republicans held the three regiments in Washington in early 2024. Then Republican Congress Chairman John Baraso was R-Wyo and held a policy setback with Senate Republicans to make the GOP agenda look visible, as if he had won in November.
And a few months later, Trump visited with Senate Republicans to discuss the strategies they were working on behind the scenes.
“We discussed how Republicans could get America back on track with President Trump from the White House,” Barrasso said at the time. “It starts by helping families escape the high-priced Democrat pain, unleash American energy, stop the Democratic tax hike, and secure a southern border. Republicans are united.”
The actual, core work began in January, where concepts were taken and fleshed out by the law.
Senate majority leader John Tune (Rs.D.) chose to jump over the house and advance the Senate’s own budget framework. It put pressure on the Republicans in the lower room to unite behind their own plans.
But for much of the early parts of the year, the Senate was waiting for the House to tweak it to pass its own version of the bill. Still, Thune and his leadership team, including Sen. Markwayne Mullin of R-Okla, worked to get products from one side of the building where the Senate GOP can work, to the other.
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Reporters surround Senate majority leader John Tune as he travels between his office and the senator at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on August 1, 2025. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
And when the bill reached the Senate in early June, pressure was on to Trump to deliver the finished product by July 4th.
One major disagreement in the upper chamber before the bill hit the floor was beyond the nature of Medicaid reductions, particularly aimed at provider tax rates. The issue was ultimately smoothed through the creation of the $50 billion Rural Hospital Fund, but lawmakers who warned against it vowed to ensure that changes to providers would never be effective.
“I think that was a big mistake,” R-Mo said. Senator Josh Hawley said at the time. “I think this was an unfortunate episode in Congress and this effort was to cut Medicaid.”
“And frankly, I think my party needs to find a soul,” he continued. “If you want to be the working class, you have to deliver for the working class people. You can’t take medical care from workers.”
And when the bill finally hit the floor to evolve into a few years of events that ultimately passed the procedural hurdles, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, DN.Y. forced the entire bill and the marathon vote, Senate Republican reading.
First, R-Wis. The cohort of fiscal Hawks, led by Sen. Ron Johnson and Rick Scott of the R-FLA, appeared to not support the package.
They never came to the floor in the end, but were offered sufficient amendments to retreat from tanking the bill. And those resistance began with the first of a handful of herds in Thune’s office outside the Senate floor.
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The North Carolina Republican senator announced in June that he would not serve a third term in the Senate for reelection in 2026.
R-Wyo. Sen. Cynthia Ramis, of the group, joined them for a conversation at the door of the closure, told Fox News Digital that her vote was not conditional on adding changes, but she wanted to insist on why it should be.
“It saved a lot of money,” she said. “It saved a lot of money, so we were able to open up mandatory spending and use the opportunity to really save money, so we wanted to see us use the opportunity.”
And then, on the evening, Republicans bounced off Thune’s office onto the Senate floor, securing Sen. Lisa Markowski of R-Alaska, supporting the bill, knowing that Susan Collins, R. Maine, Thom Tillis, Rn.c. could vote.
“Sometimes you have to put it on the clock because at some point the discussion has to be over,” Marine told Fox News Digital. “That’s why we had to do a part of it on the floor. We had to force our hands.”
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And in the end, Kentucky Senators Rand Paul Collins and Tillis voted against the bill by only three Republicans. From there I went home. There, House Republicans had their own dramatic rally to pass the legislative giant.
And now, as Republicans scattered around their hometowns and sold the bill to their members, Tillis said the “basic” information lawmakers could share is that they avoided a nationwide tax hike.
“The shame of Medicaid regulations is that a large part of the bill is supported,” he told Fox News Digital. “I think the issue with the tax bill is that we have to remember that they can’t see the cut, but if we didn’t, they would have seen a historic increase.”
“So, what we need to remind them of what we’re doing is to continue what we started, and what we created, what it was able to withstand COVID,” he continued. “And I firmly believed that if we hadn’t passed it, we would have taken a different attitude.”
Alex Miller is a writer for Fox News Digital, which covers the US Senate.
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