Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and Vice President Vance struck a deal Saturday night with a group of Senate conservatives who want bigger Medicaid spending cuts to save President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” from stalling.

The deal hatched in Thune’s office late Saturday evening paved the way for Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) to flip his “no” vote on proceeding to the bill to “aye” and for Sens. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) to also vote for the bill.

Without their votes, the 940-page bill to boost spending on border security, immigration enforcement and the military and to cut an array of taxes could not have advanced on the Senate floor. It advanced 51-49.

The vote to proceed to the sprawling budget reconciliation package remained open on the Senate floor for more than three and a half hours, stuck for a long time at 47 yes's and 50 no’s.

For much of that time, the four conservatives — Johnson, Scott, Lee and Lummis — huddled off the Senate floor to negotiate a way to add new language to the bill to further cut federal Medicaid spending.

The language in the revised Senate bill is projected to reduce Medicaid spending by $930 billion over the next decade,........

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