Senate Republicans are planning to take an initial vote at noon on Saturday to take up the megabill.
Leadership laid out the timeline during a closed-door lunch on Friday, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) and John Hoeven (R-N.D.) said after the lunch. A person granted anonymity to discuss internal scheduling confirmed the noon timeline but cautioned Republicans haven’t locked in the schedule yet.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune did not tell senators at the lunch that he currently has the votes to take up the bill. Several senators are not currently ready to vote “yes” over concerns about Medicaid language or the deficit. “We’ll find out tomorrow,” Thune told reporters, when asked if has 50 votes.
During the meeting, House Speaker Mike Johnson pitched Senate Republicans on the tentative SALT deal, according to three people in the room. He said the deal was as good as Republican can get, according to the people.
Johnson noted he still has “one holdout” — an apparent reference to New York Republican Nick LaLota, who said in a brief interview Friday that if there was a deal, he was not part of it.
Leaving the meeting, Johnson was asked by reporters whether he thought Senate Republicans would accept the SALT deal. “I believe they will,” he replied. “They’re going to digest the final calculations, but I think we’re very, very close to closing that issue.”
In the meeting, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Johnson laid out details of the fragile agreement, telling Senate Republicans the House SALT deal would be cut in half, to total roughly $192 billion. They restated it would raise the SALT cap to $40,000 for five years under the current House-negotiated SALT deal, and snap back to the current $10,000 cap after that.
In related matters:
– Kennedy and Hoeven also said the Senate will keep its provider tax proposal but delay its implementation, which Republicans believe will help it comply with budget rules.
– Johnson told Senate Republicans that he wants to do another reconciliation bill — which senators took to mean they would get another opportunity to secure spending cuts or provisions passed that have been squeezed out of the megabill.
– Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) left the lunch and told reporters she’s still waiting to see if GOP leaders alter language around cuts to food aid. The megabill’s controversial SNAP cost-share provision would financially hammer her state of Alaska. It is poised to push billions in food aid costs to states in the coming years, hitting states like Alaska with the highest payment error rates especially hard.
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