June 9, 2025, 8:08 p.m.
Senate Republicans are heading into an intense week as work on the most crucial thorny portions of their House-passed “big, beautiful bill” heats up.
The tax-writing Finance Committee is set to wrap up work on its portion of the multitrillion-dollar bill, and must decide whether to keep critical provisions, such as the modified cap on the state and local tax deduction, the House’s cuts to Medicaid, and its cuts to clean-energy tax credits, all of which have powerful backers. Committees such as Banking, Commerce, and Armed Services have already released text of their sections of the bill, and Finance is likely set to release text next week.
Republicans are making progress, but a range of internal and external forces could gum up passage of the GOP’s signature legislation. Here’s a few of them:
Market reaction
Budget-hawk Republicans such as Rep. Chip Roy have cited recent federal bond auctions to highlight the government’s debt problem and push for more spending cuts in the GOP bill. Still, all but one in the House, Rep. Thomas Massie, voted for the measure.
Bond auctions following House passage of the reconciliation measure saw the 30-year Treasury yield—which, along with 10-year notes, is a signifier of market expectations on inflation and long-term growth—sit at 4.95 percent Monday, nearly the highest since the 2008 financial crisis.
With the Senate Finance Committee writing the text of the tax and health care portion, markets will get another chance to weigh in on the GOP mega-bill this week. On Wednesday, the Treasury Department is set to hold an auction for $59 billion in 10-year bonds and a $22 billion auction for 30-year bonds on Thursday.
Congress has a mixed history of reacting to major market moves, but some lawmakers have already said they’re concerned about bond rates increasing and the massive spike in interest payments that would create.
“We’re on the cusp of deciding that the world debt markets will run the country,” Rep. David Schweikert said at The Hill’s Invest in America conference in Washington last week. “Let’s be brutally honest: I don’t think the equity markets are as good a tell. It’s bond markets; it’s debt markets.”
Still, Schweikert, a fiscal hawk and member of the House Ways and Means Committee, voted for the reconciliation bill last month.
Yale's Budget Lab released a report Friday finding the House bill would boost GDP an average of 0.2 percent between 2025 and 2027, but debt and deficits would slow economic growth thereafter “such that by 2054 the level of GDP is nearly 3 percent smaller than it would have been if the bill were not passed.”
Senate changes
For weeks, some Senate Republicans have said the House version of the reconciliation bill had too many controversial provisions, and Congress should break up the measure into two separate measures. It’s the strategy Senate Majority Leader John Thune first proposed earlier this year but has set aside for now.
Sen. Ron Johnson has been the most outspoken proponent of breaking up the House version. But Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith has said that the House won’t accept the Senate sending over two bills.
“It would be dead on arrival. Rubber has hit the pavement. The people and the president of the United States—they want action,” Smith said on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures over the weekend.
There may be room for compromise. House Speaker Mike Johnson has hinted at the possibility of not splitting up this reconciliation bill, but crafting a second, altogether new reconciliation bill later this year. Some lawmakers, including Sen. Johnson, have latched onto the idea as a vehicle to pass levels of spending cuts not included in the current bill.
“A commitment and mechanism to force a second, must-pass reconciliation bill and a process that can return us to reasonable pre-pandemic spending and deficit levels will be required for my yes vote,” Sen. Johnson posted on social media Sunday.
Some House Republicans want the Senate to change the bill they already voted to pass. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said she didn’t read the section of the bill that would implement a 10-year moratorium on states regulating artificial intelligence, and she wants the upper chamber to strip out the language before she will vote for it again. That ban has been removed in the Senate version and replaced with language that would deny broadband-expansion funds to states that regulate AI. It’s not clear if that would mollify Greene. In addition, a handful of centrist House Republicans sent a letter to Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo calling on him to extend the phase-out period for some clean-energy tax credits.
Off-the-Hill influencers
It’s up to lawmakers to pass or reject the legislation, but outside forces have swayed its progression through Congress. And last week, one of the bill’s biggest opponents emerged.
Elon Musk, tech billionaire and former Trump adviser, posted his opposition to the bill for his 221 million followers on X, citing its impact on the deficit. Musk told lawmakers to “kill the bill,” trying to mobilize grassroots opposition.
President Trump has shrugged off any chance of reconciling with Musk, who contributed more than $250 million to his 2024 campaign and has been a prolific donor to downballot Republicans. Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker Sunday he “would assume” their relationship is over, and that he believed Republicans were more unified over the GOP bill because of Musk’s split with him.
So far, many House Republicans haven’t said they’ve gotten an uptick in calls into their office because of Musk’s call to oppose the bill. Speaker Johnson and other Republican leaders have downplayed Musk’s impact.
“We don’t have time for a brand new bill, and I want Elon and all my friends to recognize the complexity of what we’ve accomplished here with this extraordinary piece of legislation—record number of savings, record tax cuts for the American people, and all the other benefits in it,” the speaker told reporters last week after the Trump-Musk blow-up.
