June 30 (UPI) -- The Senate is more than twelve hours into a marathon voting session Monday after Republicans advanced President Donald Trump's legislative agenda Saturday.
The so-called "vote-a-rama," a period when senators can put forth an unlimited slate of amendments and force repeated votes, is expected to go late into the night before a final vote.
In the last hour, the Senate was advised that there were still 10 more amendments to vote on. Lawmakers have already completed 20 amendment votes during their marathon negotiation session.
"We will put 51 points on the floor. There's obviously a lot of, you know, massaging that's going on, a lot of negotiating still happening, but we're going to make it happen." Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma told CNN. "We're going to deliver votes and the president's going to sign this."
Republicans hold a 53-seat majority and have sought the legislation through the budget reconciliation process, which enables the GOP to move ahead with only a simple majority required to advance the measure, rather than the 60 votes needed to move forward with most legislation. The president has said he wants both the Senate and the House to pass the bill so he can sign it by July 4.
This leaves Senate Democrats few methods to battle the bill, but they can use a vote-a-rama to at least put Republicans on the record in regard to issues that could come back to haunt them when midterm elections take place.
Speaking from the Senate floor Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said that should the agenda pass, "we will continue to make sure today, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, that the American people know exactly what happened here."
"I just put up an amendment to the Republicans' big, ugly bill that says something simple: If people's healthcare costs go up, the billionaire tax cuts vanish," Schumer announced Monday.
"The Republicans tried to shout me down. And then they voted it down," Schumer added. "The American people will not forget."
Schumer also accused Republicans of "hiding from us all kinds of things."
"They are doing all kinds of deals with other members: backroom deals, side deals. We have to see them. And they can't keep them secret from us or the American people," Schumer told reporters. "And we can't move, we can't get things done the way we're supposed to unless they show us how they're changing the bill, because they're changing in numerous ways."
The so-called "big, beautiful bill" moved forward over the weekend, after tweaks were made to get Republican holdouts on board. However, there are still GOP members who appear locked into "no" votes. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., posted to X Sunday that he will not vote for the legislation because he believes it would raise the national deficit. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., is also planning to vote against it.
While both Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, voted to advance the bill over the weekend, Collins told NBC News on Monday, that she could still vote against it on final passage.
"There are going to be a gazillion more amendments tonight," Collins said Monday afternoon.
And Murkowski has voiced concerns about Medicaid cuts. Over the weekend, she voted for Democratic amendments on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and Medicaid to protect rural hospitals.
Republicans argue any Medicaid cuts in the bill are to protect taxpayers who should not be paying for those who can work, but choose not to.
"This is good for America. This is good for the American people. It's good for working families," Senate majority leader John Thune said from the Senate floor Monday. "We need to get this done so this country is safer, stronger and more prosperous -- not only for today, but for future generations of Americans."
The Congressional Budget Office announced Sunday that it estimates the legislation would increase the deficit by around $3.3 trillion over the next decade.
Tillis has said the Senate's version of the bill "contains significant changes to Medicaid that would be devastating" to his state.
"The Senate's Medicaid approach breaks promises and will kick people off of Medicaid who truly need it," he wrote in a post on X.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Monday that Tillis' claim that the bill breaks Trump's promise to protect Medicaid is "wrong."
"This bill protects Medicaid," Leavitt said. "As I laid out for you, for those who truly deserve this program: the needy, pregnant women, children, sick Americans who physically cannot work."
"The one big, beautiful bill is the ultimate codification of the Make America Great Again agenda -- that's why Democrats are lying through their teeth in a last-ditch effort to stop it," Leavitt added.
Tillis' defection whittles the GOP's majority down to a very slim majority, and should one more Republican vote against the legislation, it would take a tie-breaking vote from Vice President JD Vance to push it to back to the House, where it would then need to approve the Senate's changes before it can reach the president's desk for his signature.
