After weeks of uncertainty, blackmail, threats, and a marathon in the final hours, the United States Senate has given green light this Tuesday to the processing of the well-known Big Beautiful Bill, Donald Trump's big and beautiful bill. It did so by the narrowest margin possible, with 50 votes against and 51 votes in favor in the Upper House, and only thanks to the country's Vice President, JD Vance, breaking the tie in his role as president pro tempore.
The approval represents an important victory for the White House, which has pulled out all the stops. The Republicans have a broad majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate, but three party figures (Thom Tillis from North Carolina, Susan Collins from Maine, and Rand Paul from Kentucky) have defied the president, ignored his threats and insults, and have remained firm. If only one more had broken ranks, the proposal, a fiscal and budgetary hybrid estimated to skyrocket the country's deficit by trillions of dollars, would have been defeated. The text now returns to the Lower House of Congress for review and final vote, with the added pressure of being ratified (it was also approved by just one vote a few weeks ago) and sent to Trump to fulfill his dream schedule and sign it in the Oval Office this coming Friday, coinciding with the July 4th celebration, Independence Day.
The document resulting from the processing, over 1,000 pages long, is enormously complicated, full of patches and improvisations. The initial goal was to find a formula for Trump to extend the tax cuts he implemented in his first term, set to expire in a few months. But it has since become something much more convoluted, not even including the Budget for the next year. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it could increase the deficit by three to five trillion dollars over the next decade, which in turn will require a surge in debt issuance to finance it. Something that the three mentioned senators have strongly criticized.
The battle in Congress has been monumental. In the last session, which began early Monday and lasted 28 hours, senators voted up to 49 times, surpassing the record set in March 2008 during a budget debate. With the Republican Party pulling out all the stops to prevent the process from being subjected to what is known as filibustering, which in parliamentary jargon means delaying its processing with all sorts of tricks. It has forced the White House and the majority in both chambers to work tirelessly to secure the necessary votes, in exchange for all kinds of concessions, changes, and perks. This makes the final text have little resemblance to the initial one, especially in terms of energy and subsidies for renewables, for example.
The procedure used for approval is known as "reconciliation," which allows avoiding such delays, but by not achieving bipartisan support on such an ambitious matter, a step with no precedent of this magnitude since the 60s at least, there are limitations. According to the rules, in theory, bills cannot increase the debt for more than a decade, something this proposal does according to all experts. But the White House has maneuvered on the premise, an accounting trick, that the impact of nearly four dollars from extending the 2017 tax cuts will be neutral.
This has indeed been one of the clearest points of friction between Trump and his former friend and partner Elon Musk, who has led a crusade against the Big Beautiful Bill, to the point of completely breaking with the president. A few weeks ago, things escalated with all kinds of threats and accusations. Musk backtracked and publicly and privately apologized to Trump. But these days he has come back saying that the fiscal law represents "slavery" for future generations, hinting at funding a third party that disrupts the historic balance between Republicans and Democrats. Or to punish all legislators who voted yes. This time Trump has had less patience, telling the world's richest man that he is not interested in facing him and has played with the possibility not only of using DOGE, the entity created by Musk himself to cut public spending, against him and his companies and the contracts he has with the administration. He has not ruled out reviewing whether Musk properly completed his naturalization papers years ago with the idea of deporting him, as some of the MAGA world gurus demand. "It's tempting to escalate this, but I'm going to hold back," the billionaire tweeted today on his social media.
The text includes funding for religious charter schools, extending the costly tax credits adopted during Trump's first term (2017-2021), eliminating the tip tax, and including billions of additional dollars for defense and immigration control. The fiscal impact is evident, and to partially offset it, Republicans have designed a formula that will cut Medicaid, the public health insurance program on which millions of low-income Americans depend. But the accounts are very exposed, the markets know it, especially the bond markets. And the costs for the country could skyrocket, all while Trump issues orders to reduce emissions this year, ensuring that the next Federal Reserve chairman, whom he will appoint in 2026, will be much more compliant and will significantly lower interest rates, down to 1% specifically.
These threats could prove very costly if investors tighten the screws again, as they did a few weeks ago. Something increasingly likely, as in the coming years, not beyond 2032 or 2033, the next major crisis will be the Social Security fund. While the White House boasts of the "most conservative law in history," it denies or minimizes the effects on health coverage, on the accounts, and claims that it will only bring wealth and growth. It also rules out that it will dismantle the SNAP food assistance program, which is also crucial for hundreds of thousands of people. "When the American people see the damage caused, hospitals close, people are laid off, costs rise, and debt increases, they will see what our colleagues have done and they will remember. And we, the Democrats, will make sure they remember," reacted Senator Chuck Schumer, minority leader in the Upper House, reproaching the Republicans for total submission to the president.
The final version is somewhat more lenient with aid to wind and solar energy than a draft published on Saturday, but it still entails deep cuts in the subsidies of the Biden era for renewable energies and electric vehicles. Energy companies have denounced that the new changes could derail or bankrupt hundreds of projects in progress and jeopardize billions of dollars in manufacturing facilities planned across the country with those subsidies factored in.