The US Senate passed a procedural vote on a tax amendment

The US Senate passed a procedural vote on a tax amendment that will increase the US debt burden by $3.3 trillion.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) stated in a new analysis report that the Senate's amendments to President Trump's massive tax bill would increase the US debt burden by trillions of dollars while resulting in greater losses in Medicare coverage, posing additional challenges for Republicans seeking to push the bill through.

The CBO estimates that from 2025 to 2034, the Senate bill would increase the deficit by nearly $3.3 trillion, an increase of nearly $1 trillion compared to the version passed by the House of Representatives. The CBO projects that the House-passed bill would add $2.4 trillion to the debt over a decade.

The analysis also found that if the bill becomes law, over 11.8 million Americans would be uninsured by 2034, an increase from the House-passed version, which projected over 10.9 million uninsured.

These grim figures present another obstacle for Republican leaders as they strive to pass the bill before the July 4 deadline set by Trump himself.

Even before the CBO's estimates, Republicans were divided over the bill's contours, with some opposing cost-saving proposals to cut spending on Medicaid and food assistance programmes, while others argued these proposals were insufficient. Republicans are cutting these programmes to help cover the cost of extending the approximately $3.8 trillion in tax cuts implemented during Trump's first term.

On Saturday evening, the Senate's routine procedural vote on the bill lasted several hours, with Vice President Pence and Republican leaders meeting with several opponents, vividly illustrating the contentious nature of the situation. The bill ultimately passed the procedural vote by a margin of 51 to 49, but the path ahead remains fraught with challenges, as amendments will still need to be voted on.

On 29 June local time, Senate clerks completed the reading of the Senate version of the ‘Big and Beautiful’ bill and began formal debate on the legislation. The debate is expected to last up to 20 hours, though it may be shorter. Democrats and Republicans each have 10 hours to use, with Democrats likely to exhaust their time and Republicans using only a small portion. Following the debate, the Senate will begin voting on the bill.

The U.S. Senate will begin voting on the ‘Big and Beautiful’ bill at 9 a.m. local time on June 30 (9 p.m. Beijing time). This schedule was communicated to all offices via an internal notice on the 29th. The final results are expected to be announced in the evening of the 30th or early the next morning.

Many Republicans continue to question the CBO's estimates and the reliability of its work. To secure passage of the bill, they used a different budget baseline, assuming that President Trump's tax cuts, set to expire in December, had been extended, effectively eliminating their cost in the budget.

The CBO released another analysis of the Republican preferred plan on Saturday, finding that the Senate bill would reduce the deficit by approximately $500 billion.

Democrats and economists condemned the Republicans' approach as ‘magic math,’ obscuring the true cost of Republican tax cuts.

Additionally, Democrats pointed out that under the traditional scoring system, the Republican bill would violate the Senate's ‘Byrd Rule,’ which prohibits legislation from increasing the deficit after 10 years.

The CBO director wrote to the Democratic leader of the Senate Budget Committee on Sunday, stating that the office estimates that under the traditional scoring method, the fiscal committee's bill section, Chapter 7, would ‘increase the deficit in the years after 2034.’