The Senate voted early Tuesday morning to defeat an modification sponsored by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) to create a brand new prime marginal tax fee for the nation’s wealthiest earnings earners and use the cash to double the scale of a proposed rural hospital reduction fund from $25 billion to $50 billion.
Senators voted 22 to 78 in opposition to a movement to waive a 60-vote funds level of order in opposition to the modification.
Collins’s modification to President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” would have established a 39.6 % prime marginal fee for people with earnings above $25 million and for married {couples} with earnings above $50 million.
The quantity raised would have absolutely offset the price of increasing the reduction fund that Senate GOP leaders have proposed to assist rural and smaller hospitals across the nation which might be prone to chapter due to the steep Medicaid funding cuts within the GOP megabill.
“Rural providers, especially our rural hospitals and nursing homes, are under great financial strain right now, with many having recently closed and others at risk of closing,” Collins mentioned on the Senate flooring earlier than the vote.
“When these facilities close their doors, the people they serve are often left behind without access to health care,” she mentioned.
Eighteen Republican senators voted in help of the modification. They had been Collins and Sens. Jerry Moran (Kan.), Roger Marshall (Kan.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Dan Sullivan (Alaska), Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), Invoice Cassidy (La.), John Kennedy (La.), John Curtis (Utah), Deb Fischer (Neb.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Josh Hawley (Mo.), Jon Husted (Ohio), Bernie Moreno (Ohio), Mitch McConnell (Ky.), Roger Wicker (Miss.), Cindy Hyde-Smith (Miss.) and Todd Younger (Ind.).
A handful of members of the Democratic caucus additionally voted for it, together with Sens. Angus King (I-Maine), Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.).
Most Republican and Democratic senators voted in opposition to the modification, nevertheless.
Senate Finance Committee rating member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) known as it a “Band-Aid on an amputation.”
“It provides just a tiny fraction of the nearly $1 trillion in cuts the bill will make to Medicaid. It would be much more logical to simply not cut $1 trillion from Medicaid in the first place,” he mentioned.
