The lowest-income households in the United States would lose $1,600 a year in federal resources under the domestic-policy package House Republicans passed last month, Congress’ nonpartisan scorekeeper predicts.

At the same time, resources would be increased by $12,000 for the highest-income households under the legislation, according to the analysis the Congressional Budget Office published Thursday. For middle-income households, the bill is projected to increase resources by $500 to $1,000 a year, an increase of less than 1 percent of their income.

Democrats are indicating they will use the new numbers to back up their chief attack on President Donald Trump’s signature legislative target. The rich would get richer and the poor would get poorer, they warn, if congressional Republicans succeed in sending the bill to Trump’s desk this summer.

The package would cause “one of the largest transfers of wealth from working families to the ultra-rich in American history,” said Pennsylvania Rep. Brendan Boyle, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, in a statement. “It’s shameful.”

The distributional study of the bill reflects the impact of tax changes, including extensions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and an increase in the state-and-local-tax deduction claimed by many upper-income households, as well as cuts to social safety-net programs such as Medicaid and food aid.

The loss of resources to the lowest earners in the U.S. amounts to almost 4 percent of total income for those households, while the increase for the highest earners would equal more than 2 percent of their income.

Tax cuts would be the biggest driver of gains for households set to benefit from the package Republicans are trying to clear before they leave town this month for a July 4 holiday break. On the other side of the equation, safety-net cuts would mostly drive the loss of benefits for the poorest.

President Donald Trump is bullish about wanting a “big, beautiful bill” on his desk in just three weeks. But to meet that goal, he’ll have to help settle a tricky tax fight.

Trump will huddle with Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Finance Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) at the White House this afternoon — the day before Senate Republican leaders want Crapo to release the bill text for the tax policy portion of the megabill. A likely discussion topic: Crapo’s pledge in a GOP conference meeting Wednesday to make three business tax cuts permanent.

The challenge isn’t about rounding up GOP support for larger tax deductions for research and development, debt interest and capital expensing. It’s how to pay for them all. The House-passed package already extends the three deductions through 2029, but making them fully permanent would cost an additional $450 billion.

At the same time, House fiscal hawks are demanding that any additional tax cuts be offset with dollar-for-dollar spending cuts. To achieve that, Senate Republicans will likely suggest watering down Trump’s campaign pledges to eliminate taxes on tips and overtime pay.

But the White House is making clear behind the scenes that would be a no-go.

“We’re not willing to entertain any scaling back of our signature promises,” a Trump administration official told POLITICO.

GOP senators are eyeing another potential savings avenue: Lowering the state and local tax deduction cap that the House had quadrupled to $40,000 as part of a crucial compromise with blue-state Republicans. Those SALT Republicans are now threatening to torpedo the bill if that’s changed — and House GOP leaders appear to be taking them seriously.

“Obviously, it was very heavily negotiated in the House and we don’t want to see it lower,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told POLITICO on Wednesday.

There’s another reason Trump has every incentive to urge Thune and Crapo not to meddle with the House’s hard-fought tax provisions: He doesn’t want to slow down the process with any more “ping-pong[ing]” of the legislation between the two chambers, the administration official told POLITICO.

As the White House works to convince the Senate Republicans to lay off the revisions, Senate leaders are working toward issuing final bill text June 23, followed by a vote-a-rama the back half of that week, according to Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla). That would go a long way in allowing the House to meet the GOP’s self-imposed July 4 deadline.

Thune is quietly threatening to keep senators in town into that recess week to make it happen. But some GOP senators are openly questioning whether they can wrap their version of the tax and spending package by that date, let alone pass the whole thing.

If the Senate is able to adhere to its own timeline, it’ll come down to whether Speaker Mike Johnson can get his members to swallow the Senate’s changes — and there’s no guarantee how quickly that will happen.

What else we’re watching:

— Rescissions gets a floor vote: Johnson is pushing ahead with a vote Thursday on a package to rescind $9.4 billion in funds Congress already approved for global aid and public broadcasting. House Republicans can afford only three defections if they have full attendance and all Democrats oppose as expected.

— Crypto bill teed up: The Senate majority leader is one step closer to passing one of Trump’s biggest priorities outside of the megabill after landmark cryptocurrency legislation cleared another procedural hurdle in a bipartisan vote Wednesday. Senators are on track to adopt new base text for the stablecoin regulatory framework and begin voting on the underlying measure bill later this week.

— A new SNAP proposal: Senate Agriculture Republicans on Wednesday evening unveiled a new plan to slash the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. But it’s far less aggressive than what was included in the House-approved megabill, making it potentially more palatable for at-risk and moderate Republicans.

Rachael Bade, Jasper Goodman and Grace Yarrow contributed to this report. 

The Senate has rejected resolutions seeking to block multi-billion-dollar arms sales to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates over the objections of Democrats who say President Donald Trump will personally benefit from separate deals with these countries.

The Senate voted 39-56 on Wednesday against each of the joint resolutions of disapproval, which would have halted a $1.9 billion sale of MQ-9 Reaper drones to Qatar and $1.3 billion Chinook helicopter sale to the UAE.

The votes broke down largely along party lines. But joining the Republicans were five Democrats: Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.); Catherine Cortez-Masto (D-Nev.); Andy Kim (D-N.J.); Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.); and Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.). Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) voted present.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who forced the votes, argued on the Senate floor that allowing the sales to proceed would effectively sanction what Democrats say is Trump’s brazen corruption. He and allies cited Trump’s solicitation of a $400 million luxury jet from Qatar for his use as Air Force One and a $2 billion Emirati investment in a Trump-affiliated cryptocurrency venture.

The administration has said it accepted the jet in accordance with the law, while Trump himself has defended the acquisition, calling it a goodwill gesture by Qatar and a cost-saving stopgap due to massive delays in the Air Force’s effort to replace the current fleet with two Boeing planes. Still, lawmakers have questioned the cost of making the foreign jet secure and functional enough to serve as Air Force One.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in Senate testimony Wednesday, refused to disclose the cost or delivery timeline of a luxury Qatari jet being retrofitted for use as Air Force One, sparking bipartisan Senate criticism. Lawmakers have raised concerns over transparency, cost, and reports the plane may be transferred to Trump’s presidential library.

Murphy, in a floor speech Wednesday, argued that Congress approving the arms deals amounted to Congress “greasing the wheels” of presidential corruption. Allies also pointed to the UAE’s purported role in Sudan’s ongoing civil war and both countries’ authoritarian governments.

“Trump would not be moving forward with these arms sales if he wasn’t getting what he wanted personally from these two countries,” Murphy said. “American foreign policy should not be for sale.”

Republicans largely dismissed the resolutions as political theater and defended the arms sales as important to strengthening Middle Eastern partners.

Senate Foreign Relations Chair Jim Risch (R-Idaho) argued the sales support two major allies of the U.S. Qatar is a major non-NATO ally and hosts the largest U.S. base in the Middle East, and the UAE, a military partner that fought alongside U.S. forces, is in the Abraham Accords, and opposes Iran and its proxies.

“These proposed sales will support the national security objectives of the United States by improving the security of two allies that continue to be important forces for stability in the Middle East,” he said.

Sen. Rand Paul says he and his family have been uninvited from the White House picnic for members of Congress, accusing the administration of targeting him over his opposition to some of President Donald Trump’s policies.

“I think I’m the first senator in the history of the United States to be uninvited to the White House picnic,” Paul told reporters on Wednesday. “I just find this incredibly petty. I mean — I have been, I think, nothing but polite to the President.”

Paul said he found out that he has been taken off the guest list when he reached out about picking up tickets but was told instead was told that he and his family would not be allowed to attend. He specified he did not know if the President or a White House staffer had made the call to uninvite him but said the “level of immaturity is beyond words.”

Paul, a libertarian-leaning Republican from Kentucky, generally supports Trump but has been willing to criticize the administration’s policies on areas like spending and tariffs. He’s also the Senate GOP’s one “no” vote right now Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.”

Paul also accused White House staff of “running sort of a paid influencer campaign against me for two weeks on Twitter.”

“We know they’re being paid because … someone has told us that the White House called them from the White House, and offered them money to attack me online,” he said.

Paul also appeared to take a veiled swipe at Trump’s senior adviser Stephen Miller, saying there are White House staffers who “are basically going around casually talking about getting rid of habeas corpus.”

A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo told fellow Republicans in a Wednesday briefing that three major business tax provisions will be made permanent in the GOP’s megabill, senators who attended said, while a key break for individual taxpayers will be scaled back.

The pledge to restore larger tax deductions for research-and-development costs, business equipment purchases and interest on debt fulfills a major priority for Crapo and members of his panel, who consider them a major driver of economic growth.

But making the breaks permanent is costly, and it will require tradeoffs that could cause political problems as GOP leaders seek to finish work on the bill in the coming weeks. Crapo said one such move will be scaling back a House-brokered deal on the state-and-local-tax deduction.

GOP Sens. Steve Daines of Montana and John Hoeven of North Dakota, who have both pushed for the business tax cuts, confirmed Crapo’s remarks. “Yes, he did” guarantee business tax permanency, Hoeven said. “I’ve been adamant from the start, and he’s been adamant from the start.”

The House-passed version of the bill restores the trio of tax incentives through 2029; making them permanent would likely add hundreds of billions of red ink to the bill.

Permanency is mainly a Senate priority; President Donald Trump has signaled he’s fine with a short-term extension of the business tax cuts. To help offset the additional costs, Crapo is targeting a hot-potato House priority in the SALT deduction.

He told GOP senators he plans to cap SALT at a lower level than the $40,000 deal Speaker Mike Johnson cut with his own members. Blue-state GOP lawmakers are already raising warning bells over the plan, which Senate Majority Leader John Thune first outlined to POLITICO.

Crapo didn’t give a precise SALT number in the meeting, attendees said, but some GOP senators have floated going down to $20,000 while others are floating that they should offer the House the same $30,000 that Johnson initially offered to his holdout members.

“The House did $40,000; we’re going to do something less,” Hoeven said. “We know there’s a potential $350 billion there, but we haven’t settled on a number.”

The move on SALT is a blow to Johnson and other House Republicans who have urged Thune to make as few changes as possible to the House bill. While the Senate bill is likely to mirror large swaths of the House language, Crapo’s presentation is the most significant indication yet that the Senate will alter some of the most politically sensitive areas of the bill.

“I’m very, very concerned about what they might do on the SALT number and a number of provisions in the bill,” Johnson told reporters after the Senate meeting broke. “They need to hopefully modify it as little as possible.”

Responding to Crapo’s comments, Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) said, “I can guarantee you: any bill that passes here will have a SALT provision of $40,000 or more.” Rep. Nicole Malliotakois (R-N.Y.) warned Senate Republicans are “running the risk of this entire bill imploding” if they alter the House SALT deal, adding that “they will be responsible for the largest tax hike on the American people.”

Crapo and Thune will meet with Trump at the White House on Thursday to walk him through the tax plan, said two people granted anonymity to describe the private plans. Crapo is also expected to brief the Senate GOP in greater depth early next week.

In addition to the tax language, Crapo is responsible for drafting the bill’s Medicaid provisions, and he gave considerably less detail about what changes he is eyeing there, senators said. Many of the GOP senators who have concerns about the bill’s handling of the program are not on the Finance Committee.

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who is seeking to protect rural hospitals in her state, told reporters after the meeting she’s “making some suggestions” on Medicaid tweaks but did not elaborate. Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota added that “some of the Medicaid stuff is going to have to be scrubbed” and suggested it would be subject to further changes.

Lisa Kashinsky and Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report. 

Landmark Senate cryptocurrency legislation cleared another procedural hurdle on Wednesday, inching the upper chamber closer to a vote on final passage following weeks of delays and hiccups.

The upper chamber voted 68-30 to move forward on a substitute amendment that includes an array of changes to the original bill Republicans agreed to last month in order to win over the Democratic support necessary to pass the legislation.

The bill, led by Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), would create the first-ever U.S. regulatory framework for digital tokens known as stablecoins that are pegged to the value of the dollar.

Hagerty said on the Senate floor the legislation “takes a common-sense, bipartisan approach to regulating stablecoins.”

Democrats have been divided over the bill. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the party’s leader on the Senate Banking Committee, has led the opposition, saying on the floor Wednesday that the legislation “is riddled with loopholes and contains weak safeguards for consumers, national security and financial stability.”

Eighteen Democrats broke with Warren and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to advance the motion Wednesday — including Sens. Andy Kim of New Jersey and John Hickenlooper of Colorado, who voted “no” on the last procedural motion on the bill. Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.) flipped to a “no” on Wednesday after supporting the previous procedural motion.

The vote sets the Senate up to adopt the new base text and then begin voting on the underlying bill later this week. It looks increasingly unlikely that Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) will allow further votes on amendments.

Thune has tried for weeks to strike a deal on amendments that would allow the chamber to proceed more quickly to a vote on final passage, with votes on provisions offered by members. But a push by Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) to attach controversial legislation that aims to crack down on credit card swipe fees has complicated the path forward, with supporters of the crypto bill fearing that it would become a poison pill to the underlying legislation. Marshall was seen speaking on the Senate floor Wednesday to Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who co-leads the credit card legislation.

If no amendment deal or time agreement comes together — which looks likely — the Senate could vote as soon as Monday on final passage of the bill.

Thune said on the Senate floor Wednesday that “it’s time to move forward and pass this legislation.”

“The version of the GENIUS Act that we will invoke cloture on today reflects months of hard work and negotiations from members on both sides of the aisle,” he said.

House Republicans will vote to make difficult changes to the GOP megabill Wednesday in an attempt to keep the bill on track in the Senate.

The House Rules Committee teed up a provision Tuesday night that would scrub the House-passed bill of problems the Senate parliamentarian flagged as threats to the measure’s filibuster-skirting power.

The proposals getting axed include:

— Cracking down on the fraud-plagued employee retention tax credit created during the pandemic. House Republicans were relying on this for $6.3 billion in savings to offset spending in the bill.

— $2 billion for Pentagon military intelligence programs and $500 million to develop missiles. Losing this particularly irked many House GOP lawmakers.

— Allowing mining in a protected wilderness area in the Midwest. The contentious provision would have reversed then-President Joe Biden’s move to protect the Boundary Waters area.

— Part of the policy ending increased food aid for households that also qualify for heating and cooling assistance. Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) previously complained about this.

— Extending a policy requiring federal agencies to procure a certain amount of biofuels or bio-based products.

By cutting these items, the bill retains its ability to pass the Senate with a simple majority, rather than 60 votes. While Senate Republicans are still mulling their own tweaks to the bill and could seek to restore some of the measures now on the chopping block, these changes need to be fixed now before the Senate votes on it.

More policies could still get slashed. In the coming weeks, expect Senate Republicans to start getting their first “Byrd bath” rulings from the parliamentarian on additional GOP proposals under challenge from Democrats.

To help avoid a tough whip effort Wednesday, House GOP leaders are embedding the fixes in the procedural measure they’re using to set up debate on the $9.4 billion rescissions package — legislation that even the most conservative Republicans support. That won’t be the case when the bill comes back from the Senate in a few weeks, as leaders hope.

What else we’re watching:

— GOP tensions over the MAHA report: Key farm-state Republican senators had a heated meeting with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other Trump administration officials Tuesday over the Make America Healthy Again report, which criticized pesticide use, four people tell POLITICO’s Grace Yarrow. Critics of the report are concerned it paints U.S.-produced foods as unsafe to consume. Expect the Trump administration to meet with more GOP lawmakers and agriculture groups over the coming weeks before releasing a final list of MAHA-related policy recommendations later this summer.

— Trump admins on the Hill: Trump administration officials will testify before various House and Senate committees Wednesday. That includes Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and HUD Secretary Scott Turner.

Jennifer Scholtes, Meredith Lee Hill and Katherine Tully-McManus contributed to this report.