The Senate will be voting on the “One Big, Beautiful bill” beginning Friday, according to an exclusive report from Axios.
While speaking with Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), he told the outlet he is confident the spending bill will make Trump’s Fourth of July deadline.
“I think we get on it, and then we will plow through, and we'll get into vote-a-rama and grind it out until — until whenever," the leader said. "It's just the nature of the beast at the end."
The outlet reports that if the bill is not passed by Friday, the Senate could be in for a “weekend slog” of voting. Both Thune and President Donald Trump have said the Senate can’t leave Washington until the bill is passed.
Thune declined to tell Axios if he had the necessary votes to pass the bill, but noted, “Right now, everybody's unhappy on both sides, which tells you we're probably close."
He noted the members of the GOP who are being vocal about not passing the bill will likely get in line because “Nobody wants to give up leverage until you have to finally vote on it.”
The outlet pressed Thune about how involved Trump has been in getting other members on board with the spending bill. Thune said, “He's been meeting with individual senators, been talking with him on the phone...and he's had them down in smaller groups.”
He later added, “I feel pretty confident that come the end of the week, the sense of urgency around this that [Trump has] conveyed to a lot of our members is going to be the compelling force that gets on his desk.”
The spending bill is a hallmark piece of legislation for the Trump administration.
GOP advocates claim it will lower taxes and cut government spending. Many critics of the bill, on both the left and right, believe it cuts too much into social safety nets like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.