Republicans made a significant step towards passing their sweeping package of tax cuts after two conservatives with lingering concerns about the measures came on board.

The two holding out joined every Republican member on the Senate budget panel to send the bill to the Senate floor for a vote as early as this week.

The Senate budget committee voted along party lines, 12 to 11, to approve the legislation that will largely benefit America’s highest earners. As they voted, protesters outside chanted “kill the bill”.

The vote followed a visit by Donald Trump to Capitol Hill on Tuesday, where he joined Senate Republicans for what he later described as a “love-fest” to rally them behind a massive tax plan.

Trump then told reporters: “I think it’s going to pass and it’s going to be very popular.”

He added: “It’s going to have lots of adjustments before it ends. But the end result will be a massive – the largest in the history of our country – tax cut.”

Senate Republicans emerged from meeting the president equally optimistic that they were close to an agreement to pass their tax plan.

During the lunch, Trump appeared to endorse several concessions that might persuade reluctant members. Among them he promised Senator Susan Collins of Maine that if the tax legislation repealed a key piece of the health insurance law, he would support a fresh bipartisan healthcare legislation to help low-income Americans continue to afford health insurance.

Senator Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine who helped stop a repeal of the Affordable Care Act, said she was satisfied to learn that “a lot of my concerns, it appears, are going to be addressed”.

Collins said she is still unhappy that the tax legislation includes a provision to repeal the healthcare law’s so-called individual mandate, which requires all Americans to purchase health insurance or face a fine. But she said Trump appears to understand that Congress would have to pass “something to offset the premium increases” that would result from the repeal of the individual mandate.

“My first preference would be to have it gone from the bill – I don’t think it should have been put in the bill in the first place,” she said. “But if it’s going to be in there we absolutely have to mitigate it’s impact.”



Before the vote, Republican senators Bob Corker of Tennessee and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin were undecided about whether they would vote for the bill.

But Corker, concerned about spiralling US debt, told reporters he had reached an agreement with Senate leadership about how the measure affects the deficit. Johnson said he still has concerns about the legislation’s treatment of businesses known as “pass-through entities” but preferred to keep the legislative process moving.

At least six Republican senators have expressed concerns about various aspects of the bill – including how small businesses are taxed and whether the cost of health insurance will rise. But the vote on Tuesday signaled that leadership was making progress in the frantic, behind-the-scenes negotiations with members.

“Think of sitting there with a Rubik’s cube trying to get to 50,” Senate leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday. “We do have a few members who have concerns and we’re trying to address them, and we know that we are not going to be able to move forward until we get 50 people satisfied. And that’s what we’re working on.”

Republicans are using a special budget process known as reconciliation that requires only a simple majority to pass, which is crucial to bypassing a Democratic filibuster.

Democrats, who have largely been excluded from the crafting of the tax plan, say the overhaul helps only the wealthiest Americans. A report released by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that the Republican tax plan would hurt Americans earning less than $30,000 while benefiting the highest earners. A report by the joint committee on taxation also found that the rich would be the biggest beneficiaries under the plan.

The House passed its own version of the tax overhaul earlier this month, without a single hearing on more than 400 pages of legislation that would cut the corporate tax rates from 35% to 20% and condense the number of tax brackets from seven to four.

But there are significant differences in the two bills. If the Senate passes its tax plan, House Republicans will come under pressure to approve the Senate blueprint. Alternatively, there would be a conference to reconcile the different plans.

Republican leaders in both chambers are determined to pass tax reform by the end of the year, after repeated failures to repeal the healthcare law have left them with no legislative achievements since Trump became president.

Earlier on Tuesday, Ivanka Trump plugged her father’s tax plan on a two-day trip to India.

Trump told a crowd of business leaders and entrepreneurs that her father’s administration was “laser-focused on passing long-overdue tax cuts”, which she said would deliver much-needed relief to working families and American businesses “of all sizes”.

Additional reporting by Michael Safi