Thune, Vance cut deal with Senate conservatives to save GOP megabill

by Alexander Bolton – 06/29/25 12:51 AM ET

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Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and Vice President Vance struck a deal Saturday night with a group of Senate conservatives who want bigger Medicaid spending cuts to save President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” from stalling.

The deal hatched in Thune’s office late Saturday evening paved the way for Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) to flip his “no” vote on proceeding to the bill to “aye” and for Sens. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) to also vote for the bill.

Without their votes, the 940-page bill to boost spending on border security, immigration enforcement and the military and to cut an array of taxes could not have advanced on the Senate floor. It advanced 51-49.

The vote to proceed to the sprawling budget reconciliation package remained open on the Senate floor for more than three and a half hours, stuck for a long time at 47 yes’s and 50 no’s.

For much of that time, the four conservatives — Johnson, Scott, Lee and Lummis — huddled off the Senate floor to negotiate a way to add new language to the bill to further cut federal Medicaid spending.

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The language in the revised Senate bill is projected to reduce Medicaid spending by $930 billion over the next decade, according to a preliminary analysis by the Congressional Budget office.

But Scott and his allies wanted to do more to reduce the amount of money spent on able-bodied adults who are allowed to enroll into Medicaid in states that expanded the program under the Affordable Care Act, which was former President Obama’s signature domestic achievement.

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“I met with the president today, met with him quite a bit. Met with the vice president. We all wanted to get to yes and we’re all working together to make sure that happens,” Scott told reporters after voting to advance the bill.

He said conservatives want to “stop Blue State governors from taking advantage of Red States.”

“Paying for health care for illegal immigrants with federal tax dollars is going to end,” Scott said.

Senate conservatives say that Thune and Trump have committed to support Scott’s proposal to lower the 90 percent federal matching share for new Medicaid enrollees in expansion states.

“We have been working behind the scenes,” Johnson told reporters who flipped his initial “no” vote on beginning debate on the GOP megabill to “aye” to allow it move forward.

Johnson said conservatives got an agreement from leadership to vote on an amendment “that we’re confident of.”

“At a certain point we just don’t allow single working-age, able-bodied childless adults to sign onto ObamaCare expansion and get that 9-1 match,” he said.

Johnson said that states receive a much lower federal matching share for disabled childre