Senate Republicans 'blindsided' by Trump spending bill: 'No one was expecting this'

After President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill" narrowly passed in the U.S. House of Representatives, 215-214, and went to the U.S. Senate for consideration, it didn't take GOP senators long to start fighting over the particulars.

Some GOP senators are worried that the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act of 2025, in its current form, will significantly add to the United States' deficit. But others are concerned about the megabill's draconian cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

According to The Hill's Alexander Bolton, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (D-South Dakota) is "facing strong pushback from members of the GOP conference over the (Senate) Finance Committee's piece of President Trump’s tax and spending bill, which largely ignores GOP senators' concerns about Medicaid cuts and the quick phaseout of clean-energy tax credits."

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Bolton, in an article published on June 18, reports, "Senate Republicans who raised red flags over Medicaid spending cuts the House passed say they were blindsided by the Senate's version of the bill, which would cut Medicaid by several hundred billion dollars beyond what the House proposed. They are warning that the Finance Committee's language will cause dozens of rural hospitals to close in their home states, require lower-income Americans to pay more for medical procedures and shift costs onto the states."

One of the GOP senators who is sounding the alarm is the ultra-MAGA Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri.

Hawley told The Hill, "I had no idea that they were going to completely scrap the House framework like this. This totally caught me by surprise. And I've talked to other senators, and that's what I've heard consistently from everybody I've talked to. No one was expecting this entirely new framework."

While Hawley believes that the Medicare cuts in the House version of the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act go too far, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Florida) and Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) think they don't go far enough.

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Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), meanwhile, is worried by the proposals she sees coming from the Senate Finance Committee.

On Tuesday, June 17, Murkowski — known for being a moderate conservative — told reporters, "I'm still not satisfied with where we are on Medicaid."

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Read Alexander Bolton's full article for The Hill at this link.