The GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill – which makes sweeping changes to federal policies on taxes, health care, and much more – was a teetering tower of compromises designed to get the bill through the House, where a narrow and fractious Republican majority complicates any attempt at smooth governance. It worked, just barely: the bill passed 215-214, with New Jersey’s three Republicans voting yes.
Now the grand deal is starting to run into turbulence.
In the two weeks since the bill passed the House, Republicans in the Senate have begun talking about ways to change it, frustrating House Republicans who had fought tooth and nail for particular policy wins that could be on the chopping block. Harsh criticism from erstwhile Donald Trump ally Elon Musk and a report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) citing how many people could stand to lose health coverage have also made repeated unflattering headlines for the bill.
From a New Jersey perspective, perhaps the biggest development relates to the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction cap, which is raised from $10,000 to $40,000 under the bill, a big deal in wealthier, higher-tax states like New Jersey. The SALT cap hike was something that Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield), a swing-district congressman critical to the GOP’s House majority, insisted on in order for the bill to earn his vote.
But unlike in the House, there are no Senate Republicans from high-tax blue states like New Jersey, New York, or California for whom SALT is a top priority. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) said yesterday that “there really isn’t a single Republican senator who cares much about the SALT issue” and has implied that the $40,000 deal struck in the House is likely to change, a concerning prospect for Kean and his fellow pro-SALT Republicans.
Kean, though, is choosing to direct his ire for now at New Jersey Senators Cory Booker and Andy Kim – who are highly unlikely to support the bill regardless of what it does on SALT – rather than on the Senate Republican leaders who will ultimately decide the fate of the bill’s tax policies.
“I have been disappointed to see your broken promises on SALT have left our constituents without relief for years,” Kean wrote in a letter to Booker and Kim. “In 2022, when Democrats had complete control in Washington, you both voted for the Inflation Reduction Act to become law, even after then-Majority Leader Chuck Schumer advanced a bill with no SALT relief… Again and again, Leader Schumer has sunk SALT; this time, I urge you to join me in delivering the SALT relief New Jersey needs and deserves.”
Musk, meanwhile, has decided to throw his own wrench into the proceedings. Having officially left the Trump administration last week, Musk took to social media to blast the bill as a “disgusting abomination” and zeroed in on its impacts on the federal deficit, prompting a bitter and ongoing fight with Trump. (The CBO estimates that the bill will add $2.4 trillion to the national debt over ten years.)
Late last year, Musk’s criticism of a government funding bill was enough to derail it at the last minute. Given his nuclear spat with Trump today, though, his influence over the Republican Party may be lessened – and Democrats are willing to conditionally praise him in ways they haven’t done for years.
“What Elon Musk points out is, for what purpose are they doing this?” Kim said. “It’s not to bring down the deficit, it’s to reward the billionaires and the wealthiest Americans – that’s what people are understanding. I may have differences with Elon Musk on why we oppose this bill, but it gets to the central purpose: them trying to gut Medicaid, SNAP, any number of other programs.”
And the deficit isn’t the only thing the CBO analyzed. The nonpartisan office also estimated that 10.9 million people could stand to lose health coverage thanks to the bill’s Medicaid work requirements, stricter rules against undocumented immigrants, and other health care policy changes, an increase from the 8.7 million estimated under earlier versions of the bill. (Another 5.1 million people may lose health coverage thanks to the expiration of Affordable Care Act subsidies, the CBO said.)
In New Jersey specifically, the state Department of Human Services has estimated that the policy changes could result in 350,000 fewer New Jerseyans receiving health care coverage and a $3.6 billion annual loss in federal funding for the state.
Rep. Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch), who has been leading the Democratic effort against Medicaid for months as the ranking member of the House Energy & Commerce Committee, said that the bill is “morally bankrupt” and that any Republican saying it won’t affect Medicaid for those who deserve it is lying.
“Everybody will be affected by the disastrous Republican bill,” Pallone said in a joint statement with several other top Democrats. “Despite Republican propaganda, Americans need to know that the bill’s thicket of red tape and increased out-of-pocket costs in Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act will fall especially hard on working families, including those with children, caregivers, Americans with disabilities, and those with chronic illnesses.”
Earlier on in the process, Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis) had been a vocal advocate for limiting how far his party went in cutting Medicaid, saying he wouldn’t vote for a bill that kicked vulnerable people off the colossal health program. But he voted for the final bill, saying that projections of people losing insurance largely amounted to eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse and cutting off ineligible recipients.
“I have been heavily involved in negotiations for the House version of this bill, and I will continue to closely monitor the bill as changes are made in the Senate to ensure there are no cuts to the programs our people rely on,” he said two weeks ago after the bill passed. “I have said it before, and I will say it again: we owe it to hardworking American families to ensure these vital programs remain strong and funded.”
Republicans more broadly have argued that the bill strengthens Medicaid through work requirements and blocks against undocumented immigrants, and have pointed to the bill’s funding for border security and continuation of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts as more reasons to support it. Those arguments, and Democrats’ counterarguments, are sure to be heavily debated during next year’s races for Congress.
But in the meantime, what changes the Senate makes to the bill in the coming weeks – and whether they’ll be able to pass muster with both Senate and House Republicans – is still to be seen. Kim, who like most Democrats will be observing and criticizing the process from the outside, said he thinks it won’t be an easy process.
“As I hear more and more from my Republican colleagues in the Senate, I think they’re going to have a hard time with this bill. People are waking up to exactly the damage that would be done through this,” Kim said. “I don’t know where it goes from here, but right now, there’s quite a bit of opposition to it, including [among] Republicans.”