US senators were inching Sunday towards a vote on Donald Trump’s “big beautiful” spending bill, a hugely divisive proposal that would deliver key parts of the US president’s domestic agenda while making massive cuts to social welfare programs.<\/p>\n
Trump is hoping the “One Big Beautiful Bill” will help seal his legacy, extending his expiring first-term tax cuts at a cost of $4.5 trillion and beefing up border security.<\/p>\n
But Republicans eyeing 2026 midterm congressional elections are divided over the package, which would strip health care from millions of the poorest Americans and add more than $3 trillion to the country’s debt.<\/p>\n
The Senate formally opened debate on the bill late Saturday, after Republican holdouts delayed what should have been a procedural vote.<\/p>\n
Senators narrowly passed the motion to begin debate, with two Republicans joining 47 Democrats in voting against it — drawing sharp rebukes from Trump.<\/p>\n
The US president has pushed his party to get the bill passed and on his desk for him to sign into law by July 4, the United States’ Independence Day.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, however, he seemed to cast doubt on that timeline, and accused the opposition Democrats of delaying proceedings for political reasons.<\/p>\n
“There are a lot of bad people in the Democrat Party,” he told Fox News in an interview aired Sunday, berating his political opponents for not backing an increase to the debt ceiling.<\/p>\n