Senate Majority Leader Senator Mitch McConnell walks to the Senate Floor on Capitol Hill on Dec. 1. | Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images Senate passes sweeping tax overhaul Debate spilled into the wee hours after a day of horse trading. 
 
 The Senate narrowly passed a massive tax overhaul early Saturday morning, putting Republicans on the cusp of revamping the U.S. tax system for the first time in more than three decades. 
 
 The 51 to 49 vote came after Senate Republicans frantically rewrote the multi-trillion dollar legislation behind closed doors to win over several final holdouts, and left congressional Republicans just a few steps away from sending legislation to President Donald Trump’s desk. The House passed its own plan in November. 
 
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 Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee was the only Republican to oppose the measure, in what’s also a big victory for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who repeatedly fell short in his efforts to push through an Obamacare repeal measure this year. 
 
 “I think one reason we were able to get there was because there’s widespread interest,” McConnell said in an interview with POLITICO. “Every single member of our conference wanted to get to yes, and all but one did.” 
 
 President Donald Trump praised McConnell and Senate Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch in a tweet after the bill passed, adding, “We are one step closer to delivering MASSIVE tax cuts for working families across America.” 
 
 McConnell and GOP leaders were able to score the necessary votes on Friday by acceding to demands by Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and others for expanded tax breaks for small businesses, homeowners and others. That gave leadership the breathing room to reject conflicting demands by Corker and others to rein in the cost of the plan. 
 
 Democrats harshly condemned the legislation and the way it came together. 
 
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 "Millions of Americans must be watching in stunned disbelief tonight as the Republican Senate betrays the middle class for the benefit of faceless multinational corporations," Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the tax-writing Finance Committee, said on the Senate floor shortly before the bill passed. 
 
 Democrats also ridiculed the GOP scramble to get the bill passed and the frequent rounds of horse trading required. Minority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois posted a picture on Twitter that showed hand-scribbled changes on a page from the initial version of the lengthy Republican amendment to the legislation. 
 
 “Trying to review the #GOPTaxScam but they are making hand-written changes to brand new text as we speak – can anyone else read this?” Durbin jabbed. 
 
 Debate on the legislation spilled past midnight as the Senate debated numerous amendments, including one from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) that would extend tax-advantaged “529” college saving accounts to public, private and religious K-12 schools. It was adopted on a 51-50 vote after Vice President Mike Pence broke a tie. 
 
 The Senate struck a controversial provision from Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) that would have exempted Hillsdale College, a prominent conservative institution led by a Heritage Foundation board member, from a controversial new tax on university endowments. The school also has close ties to the family of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. 
 
 House and Senate Republicans still have to settle the differences between their tax bills before Trump can sign a final bill, which would give the GOP the legislative achievement they’ve sought throughout their first year of regaining full control in Washington. 
 
 The House plans to vote Monday to formally set up a conference committee to hash out a final compromise, though some of the changes that Senate Republicans agreed to Friday also brought the two measures closer together. 
 
 “Now it’s time to take the best of both the House and Senate bills, make them even stronger in a conference committee, and finalize one piece of legislation that will dramatically improve the lives of Americans for generations to come,” Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas), chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement after the Senate vote. 
 
 However, Senate leaders haven’t publicly committed to a formal conference. 
 
 Republicans are using powerful budget procedures to evade a Democratic filibuster of the bill, which allowed McConnell to lose up to two GOP votes and still pass the bill. After struggling all week to corral at least 50 votes for the tax measure, Senate GOP leaders ended up appeasing all but Corker. 
 
 Tax Reform: Who Pays What? poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201708/2289/1155968404_5544094581001_5544019579001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true 
 
 Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) won a string of concessions for her vote, including a provision that would allow taxpayers to continue writing off property taxes, albeit with a $10,000 limit, and an expanded deduction for medical costs. 
 
 “As revised, this bill will provide much-needed tax relief and simplification for lower- and middle-income families, while spurring the creation of good jobs and greater economic growth,” Collins said. 
 
 In a particularly big victory for leadership, Johnson and Steve Daines (R-Mont.), both of whom had announced in recent weeks that they couldn’t support the bill, were won over by a proposal that would increase a tax deduction for pass-through businesses. They had complained that the Senate bill offered more tax relief to corporations than to pass-throughs, which are businesses – often small ones -- that pay taxes as individuals. 
 
 Those businesses would see a deduction included in the Senate bill for them rise from 20 percent to 23 percent, a boost financed by increasing a proposed one-time tax on multinational corporations’ offshore earnings. The multinational provision also puts the Senate bill in line with the House measure, by charging 14 percent on those companies' liquid assets and 7 percent on illiquid ones like facilities, up from the 10 percent and 5 percent the Senate had been considering. 
 
 “We’re going to have to reconcile that anyway, and might as well reconcile up front here to take care of our issue,” Johnson told reporters. 
 
 Though Johnson’s vote was likely never truly in doubt, he could have held out for more changes, which would have further handcuffed leaders as they tried to satisfy a duo of stubborn fiscal hawks alarmed that the measure would blow up federal budget deficits. A Joint Committee on Taxation report on Thursday found the proposal would add an extra $1 trillion to the federal debt over the next decade, even after considering economic growth. 
 
 Both Corker and Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) pushed for a trigger mechanism that would have forced automatic tax increases if the bill didn’t jog the economy as much as Republicans hope. The Senate parliamentarian found that such a mechanism would violate complicated procedural rules, scotching a vote on the bill Thursday night and sending Republicans scrambling for alternatives. 
 
 Corker said Friday that he had “wanted to get to yes,” thanked GOP leaders and Trump for working with him in good faith and maintained that he would take another look at whatever measure might emerge from a conference committee. But he added that while “it would have been fairly easy to alter the bill in a way that would have been more fiscally sound without harming the pro-growth policies, unfortunately, it is clear that the caucus is in a different place.” 
 
 Unlike Corker, Flake supported the bill in the end, after securing language that phases down write-offs for business investments that had been slated to abruptly expire at the end of 2022. The Arizona Republican also got a “firm commitment” by party leaders to “work with me” on “fair and permanent protections” for undocumented immigrants threatened with deportation by Trump’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. 
 
 “Having secured both of these objections, I am pleased to announce I will vote in support [of] the tax reform bill,” he said in a statement. 
 
 GOP leaders also had to make changes elsewhere in the bill to fund some of the policy promises they had made. That included dropping plans to repeal the alternative minimum tax -- a complicated batch of rules designed to prevent people from dodging taxes -- that had been a key part of Republican plans to radically simplify the code. 
 
 Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said they needed the money to finance other last-minute changes to the bill, including the expanded tax cut for pass-through businesses and the property tax deduction. 
 
 “Most members felt very strongly that we wanted a property tax exemption for individuals,” Rounds said. “The trade-off is there.” 
 
 Congressional Republicans have said in recent weeks that they don’t want to go into the 2018 midterm elections without a tax cut to show to voters. But it’s an open question just how much a victory on taxes will help Republicans politically. 
 
 The GOP proposals, which feature a large permanent cut in the corporate tax rate and temporary tax relief for individuals, have consistently polled poorly with voters. 
 
 Democrats have predicted that Republicans will end up paying a steep political price. But on Friday, Democratic leaders were mostly enraged by both the substance and process of the tax push. Most Democrats even voted against an amendment from Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), which was rejected, that would have further expanded the child tax credit while pushing the proposed corporate rate up from 20 percent to almost 21 percent. 
 
 Aaron Lorenzo, Jane Norman and Michael Stratford contributed to this report. ||||| Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., walks from the chamber to his office as the GOP overhaul of the tax bill nears a vote, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Dec. 1, 2017. (AP Photo/J.... (Associated Press) 
 
 WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans pushed a nearly $1.5 trillion tax bill through the Senate early Saturday after a burst of eleventh-hour horse trading, as a party starved all year for a major legislative triumph took a giant step toward giving President Donald Trump one of his top priorities by Christmas. 
 
 "Big bills are rarely popular. You remember how unpopular 'Obamacare' was when it passed?" Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in an interview, shrugging off polls showing scant public enthusiasm for the measure. He said the legislation would prove to be "just what the country needs to get growing again." 
 
 Trump hailed the bill's passage on Twitter, thanking McConnell and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. "Look forward to signing a final bill before Christmas!" the president wrote. 
 
 Presiding over the Senate, Vice President Mike Pence announced the 51-49 vote to applause from Republicans. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., was the only lawmaker to cross party lines, joining the Democrats in opposition. The measure focuses its tax reductions on businesses and higher-earning individuals, gives more modest breaks to others and offers the boldest rewrite of the nation's tax system since 1986. 
 
 Republicans touted the package as one that would benefit people of all incomes and ignite the economy. Even an official projection of a $1 trillion, 10-year flood of deeper budget deficits couldn't dissuade GOP senators from rallying behind the bill. 
 
 "Obviously I'm kind of a dinosaur on the fiscal issues," said Corker, who battled to keep the bill from worsening the government's accumulated $20 trillion in IOUs. 
 
 The Republican-led House approved a similar bill last month in what has been a stunningly swift trip through Congress for complex legislation that impacts the breadth of American society. The two chambers will now try crafting a final compromise to send Trump. 
 
 After spending the year's first nine months futilely trying to repeal President Barack Obama's health care law, GOP leaders were determined to move the measure rapidly before opposition Democrats and lobbying groups could blow it up. The party views passage as crucial to retaining its House and Senate majorities in next year's elections. 
 
 Democrats derided the bill as a GOP gift to its wealthy and business backers at the expense of lower-earning people. They contrasted the bill's permanent reduction in corporate income tax rates from 35 percent to 20 percent to smaller individual tax breaks that would end in 2026. 
 
 Congress' nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation has said the bill's reductions for many families would be modest and said by 2027, families earning under $75,000 would on average face higher, not lower, taxes. 
 
 The bill is "removed from the reality of what the American people need," said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. He criticized Republicans for releasing a revised, 479-page bill that no one can absorb shortly before the final vote, saying, "The Senate is descending to a new low of chicanery." 
 
 "You really don't read this kind of legislation," Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told home-state reporters, asked why the Senate was approving a bill some senators hadn't read. He said lawmakers needed to study it and get feedback from affected groups. 
 
 Democrats took to the Senate floor and social media to mock one page that included changes scrawled in barely legible handwriting. Later, they won enough GOP support to kill a provision by Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., that would have bestowed a tax break on conservative Hillsdale College in Michigan. 
 
 The bill hit rough waters after the Joint Taxation panel concluded it would worsen federal shortfalls by $1 trillion over a decade, even when factoring in economic growth that lower taxes would stimulate. Trump administration officials and many Republicans have insisted the bill would pay for itself by stimulating the economy. But the sour projections stiffened resistance from some deficit-averse Republicans. 
 
 But after bargaining that stretched into Friday, GOP leaders nailed down the support they needed in a chamber they control 52-48. Facing unyielding Democratic opposition, Republicans could lose no more than two GOP senators and prevail with a tie-breaking vote from Vice President Mike Pence, but ended up not needing it. 
 
 Leaders' changes included helping millions of companies whose owners pay individual, not corporate, taxes on their profits by allowing deductions of 23 percent, up from 17.4 percent. That helped win over Wisconsin's Johnson and Steve Daines of Montana. 
 
 People would be allowed to deduct up to $10,000 in property taxes, a demand of Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. That matched a House provision that chamber's leaders included to keep some GOP votes from high-tax states like New York, New Jersey and California. 
 
 The changes added nearly $300 billion to the tax bill's costs. To pay for that, leaders reduced the number of high-earners who must pay the alternative minimum tax, rather than completely erasing it. They also increased a one-time tax on profits U.S.-based corporations are holding overseas and would require firms to keep paying the business version of the alternative minimum tax. 
 
 Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. — who like Corker had been a holdout and has sharply attacked Trump's capabilities as president — voted for the bill. He said he'd received commitments from party leaders and the administration "to work with me" to restore protections, dismantled by Trump, for young immigrants who arrived in the U.S. illegally as children. That seemed short of a pledge to actually revive the safeguards. 
 
 The Senate bill would drop the highest personal income tax rate from 39.6 percent to 38.5 percent. The estate tax levied on a few thousand of the nation's largest inheritances would be narrowed to affect even fewer. 
 
 Deductions for state and local income taxes, moving expenses and other items would vanish, the standard deduction — used by most Americans — would nearly double to $12,000 for individuals and $24,000 for couples, and the per-child tax credit would grow. 
 
 The bill would abolish the "Obamacare" requirement that most people buy health coverage or face tax penalties. Industry experts say that would weaken the law by easing pressure on healthier people to buy coverage, and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has said the move would push premiums higher and leave 13 million additional people uninsured. 
 
 Drilling would be allowed in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Another provision, knocked out because it violated Senate budget rules, would have explicitly let parents buy tax-advantaged 529 college savings accounts for fetuses, a step they can already take but which anti-abortion forces wanted to inscribe into law. There were also breaks for the wine, beer and spirits industries, Alaska Natives and aircraft management firms. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press writers Andrew Taylor in Washington and Scott Bauer Milwaukee contributed to this report. ||||| Republican members of the Senate Budget Committee from left, Sens. Mike Crapo, Lindsey Graham, Pat Toomey, Ron Johnson, Bob Corker and David Perdue are pictured. Still, Republicans are far from sending tax legislation to President Donald Trump’s desk. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo Senate passes budget, clearing path for tax reform What matters, GOP critics say, are the few lines in the budget that direct tax-writers to start their work. 
 
 Senate Republicans on Thursday passed a budget measure that will unlock the route to a sweeping tax overhaul, giving the GOP a sorely needed victory after other pieces of their legislative agenda collapsed earlier this year. 
 
 After a significantly shortened vote-a-rama, the Senate passed the fiscal 2018 budget on a 51-49 vote. All Democrats opposed the measure, as did Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who had telegraphed his position for days. 
 
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 The budget resolution does include a decade of proposed spending cuts and entitlement overhauls. But it’s largely seen as a shortcut to reforming the tax code, which Republicans have deemed a must-do after falling short on their attempts to repeal Obamacare. 
 
 “It clears the way for committees to continue their critical work to spur steady economic growth while providing legislative tools to advance tax reform,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said earlier Thursday. He called a tax overhaul “the single most important action we can take today to help our economy reach its full potential.” 
 
 Republicans are eager to speed up the timeline on tax reform, which the White House has indicated they would like signed into law by the end of the year. Key House and Senate lawmakers privately hammered out a compromise Thursday that would likely eliminate the need for a conference committee — buying Republicans at least a week to do more tax work. 
 
 One key change allows for higher defense spending without offsets, a way to win over House defense hawks, according to amendment text obtained by POLITICO. Under the amendment, the Pentagon's fiscal 2018 budget could be increased to $640 billion — without offsets — if lawmakers reach a deal to raise the current spending caps. 
 
 The Senate's milestone vote on a budget resolution unseals a powerful procedural tool that Republicans aim to use for once-in-a-generation tax reform. Under that process, known as reconciliation, the GOP tax bill could pass without a single Democratic vote. 
 
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 Still, Republicans are far from sending tax legislation to President Donald Trump’s desk. Neither chamber has produced a bill, although Speaker Paul Ryan is eyeing an ambitious “early November” vote in the House. And preliminary discussions have shown deep divisions within the GOP over specific provisions — such as eliminating the state and local tax deduction that has drawn the ire of blue-state Republican lawmakers. 
 
 Early Friday morning, Trump tweeted his praise of the Senate's vote, writing, "Great news on the 2018 budget @SenateMajLdr McConnell - first step toward delivering MASSIVE tax cuts for the American people!" 
 
 He followed-up several hours later with tweets highlighting the absence of Democratic support: "The Budget passed late last night, 51 to 49. We got ZERO Democrat votes with only Rand Paul (he will vote for Tax Cuts) voting against. This now allows for the passage of large scale Tax Cuts (and Reform), which will be the biggest in the history of our country! 
 
 But amid wrath from voters and donors about lack of progress on the party’s agenda, Republicans have warned that the party has to pull off tax reform or risk their majorities in Congress next November. 
 
 "This is the biggest hoax hatched upon the American people ever, that this budget process even exists," Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), a member of the Budget Committee told reporters Thursday. "The only thing about this that matters is preparation for tax reform." 
 
 The strenuous Senate ritual known as a vote-a-rama is largely used to push political votes and senators could take dozens, if not hundreds, of roll calls on the most quarrelsome political issues of the day. 
 
 But Democrats signaled earlier this week that they weren’t eager to stretch out the floor fight for Republicans to take a slew of painful amendment votes. Nearly 400 amendments were submitted as of Thursday afternoon, though a small fraction ultimately made it to the Senate floor. 
 
 In a victory lap on the Senate floor after the vote, Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi said the process marked “the least amount of votes in vote-a-rama that I think we’ve ever had,” said the Wyoming Republican. 
 
 As the last tranche of votes were teed up, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) urged all senators to stay in their seats to vote quickly “without going through the ridiculous vote-a-rama that we have done in previous years.” 
 
 During the voting session that ran just under six hours, lawmakers rejected amendments from Paul and Mike Lee (R-Utah) that aimed to repeal Obamacare, as well as another amendment offered by Paul that would slash discretionary spending by $43 billion, in a 5-95 vote. 
 
 But Democrats mostly tried to put their GOP counterparts in the corner on tough political issues like plans for deficit-busting tax cuts or proposed tax breaks for wealthy Americans, or cuts in Medicare and Medicaid. 
 
 For instance, senators rejected, on a 47-51 vote, an attempt from Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) to block Republicans from adding to the deficit to pay for their tax reform plan, and an amendment from Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) to require a Congressional Budget Office score before voting on legislation. Few of the Democratic amendments attracted GOP defectors. 
 
 
 
 It will be the second budget resolution approved by the Senate this calendar year — an unprecedented move in recent congressional history. The GOP attempted the same budget maneuver in its unsuccessful attempt to repeal Obamacare with just Republican votes earlier this year. 
 
 Under the emerging plan that would avoid a House-Senate budget conference, House conservatives would have to swallow the Senate’s plan to grow the deficit. The House would also forfeit its calls for $203 billion in mandatory spending cuts, something McConnell has long ruled out. The Senate’s version proposes just $1 billion in new revenue. 
 
 Senate Republicans plan to bring in that additional $1 billion by opening up oil drilling in arctic wildlife reserves — against using the budget process to steamroll Democratic opponents. 
 
 The path to a compromise earlier looked contentious. The House’s budget writers, led by fiscal hawk Rep. Diane Black of Tennessee, drew out a legislative map that would require any tax bill to be deficit-neutral and to be coupled with billions in mandatory cuts. 
 
 Members of the Senate budget panel, by contrast, have given themselves much more flexibility. The Senate’s budget allows the GOP’s tax plan to add up to $1.5 trillion to the deficit over 10 years, which proponents say will allow for more aggressive tax cuts. 
 
 Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) has said he will not ultimately vote for a tax measure that adds to the deficit. Republicans control just 52 votes in the Senate — giving the GOP little breathing room to secure the simple majority needed to pass legislation using reconciliation, although the administration is courting moderate Democrats such as Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Joe Donnelly of Indiana. 
 
 Brian Faler and Kaitlyn Burton contributed to this report. 
 
 CORRECTION: An earlier version of this report mischaracterized how many Democratic amendments attracted GOP defectors. Few of the Democratic amendments attracted GOP defectors. ||||| A Joint Committee on taxation analysis predicts the tax bill would increase the deficit by $1 trillion, which could be problematic for lawmakers like Sen. Bob Corker, who has said he would vote against a tax bill that increased the deficit. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo Republicans rewriting tax bill hours before possible vote Senate GOP leaders are still making major changes to the plan in order to win over several hold-outs. 
 
 Senate Republicans are frantically re-writing their massive tax overhaul to win over wavering senators just hours before a potential vote. 
 
 GOP leaders had hoped to pass the bill late Thursday night or early Friday morning, but were forced to delay action after a ruling by the Senate parliamentarian threw out a crucial provision to prevent hundreds of billions in deficit spending. But in good news for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Steve Daines (R-Mont.), two holdouts, said they would back the bill Friday morning after getting assurances the bill would change to their liking. 
 
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 It’s still not clear when the Senate will vote — or what they’ll actually be voting on, as key pieces of the multi-trillion-dollar bill are being rewritten in hopes of getting a major legislative victory to President Donald Trump’s desk by Christmas. 
 
 Republicans were sent scrambling after the Senate parliamentarian told GOP senators Thursday that a key proposal for deficit hawks — a trigger to raise tax rates if sufficient economic growth did not materialize — would not pass procedural muster and would need to find something else to satisfy the bloc of deficit hawk holdouts, led by Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.). 
 
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 “It doesn’t look like the trigger is going to work, according to the parliamentarian,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) said. “So we have an alternative, frankly: a tax increase we don’t want to do to try to address Sen. Corker’s concerns.” 
 
 Corker told reporters: “My understanding is, that the parliamentarian has ruled against it so they’re just going to automatically put [tax increases] in, period.” Corker and Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said the revenue raised with tax increases — which senators say would kick in six years after the enactment of the tax legislation — would total about $350 billion, although Cornyn suggested that figure may need to go higher. 
 
 Late Thursday, Republicans huddled with leadership and tax policy staff to work on a solution. 
 
 Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who supports the current package, estimated that Republicans needed to find an additional $370 billion to $400 billion within their package to placate concerns about increased deficits. 
 
 "What we're trying to do right now is get to the point where nobody's going to get exactly what they want but enough for us to get the bill passed," he told reporters. 
 
 The sudden need to regroup came after extended drama on the Senate floor Thursday during an otherwise mundane procedural vote, when Corker, Flake and Johnson initially withheld their support on a vote to move forward with the bill. Ultimately, they aligned with their party, but it suggested real concerns remained, including friction among Republicans over whether to stick to the 20 percent corporate tax rate rate insisted on by the White House. 
 
 Johnson withheld his vote during the standoff in exchange for votes on his amendments, including one that would further increase a tax deduction for pass-through businesses to around 25 percent. 
 
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 The legislation would slash the corporate tax rate and lower rates for many, though not all, individuals. Senate Republicans have said their plan would boost the economy but not by nearly as much as some lawmakers would have hoped, a new official analysis shows. 
 
 The nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation said Thursday that the GOP plan would fall well short of covering its $1.5 trillion cost through additional economic growth; it predicted $407 billion in additional revenue would come in by boosting the economy by 0.8 percent over the next decade. 
 
 That would mean a $1 trillion deficit increase, which is problematic for lawmakers like Corker, who has said he would vote against a tax bill that increased the deficit. A Senate Finance Committee aide noted that the analysis was "incomplete" since the bill text has yet to be finalized. 
 
 Democrats have blasted Republicans for rushing the bill to the floor while considering significant eleventh-hour changes to the sprawling tax code rewrite. 
 
 “This is tax, one of the most complicated issues before us,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the floor Thursday. “These changes and the way the majority leader is handling this make it impossible for any independent analyst to get a good look at the bill and how it would impact our country.” 
 
 Yet Sen. John McCain, who gave Republicans a boost earlier in the day when he broke his long silence and said he would back the legislation, signaled he was satisfied with the process, noting the bill went through “a thorough markup in the Senate Finance Committee.” 
 
 The Arizona Republican, who helped tank the party’s Obamacare repeal efforts earlier this year, had said going through a regular legislative process was one of his major concerns. 
 
 But it was clear Senate Republicans still have myriad issues to resolve to lock down at least 50 votes to ensure final passage of the tax bill on the floor. Republicans are using powerful budget procedures to avoid a Democratic filibuster. 
 
 Other key GOP votes such as Corker, Flake and Susan Collins of Maine have yet to commit to the bill, for varying reasons. Johnson and Daines have been trying to secure even more generous treatment of small businesses after extracting a boost in an earlier round of negotiations. 
 
 Collins plans to offer a half-dozen amendments, including one that would hike the proposed corporate tax rate of 20 percent to restore a deduction for up to $10,000 for property taxes. She is among a handful of Republican senators who say they are open to raising the proposed corporate rate in order to fund other tax provisions in the bill. 
 
 The moderate senator is also seeking to extract some health care assurances because the current tax bill repeals Obamacare's requirement that everyone carry insurance or pay a penalty. She has pushed for two separate health care bills — one to stabilize the markets and another to protect pre-existing conditions and use high-risk pools — to be grafted to a short-term spending bill that would need to pass before government funding expires Dec. 8. 
 
 Conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus, a group of about 40 Republicans that frequently buck their party's leadership, rejected the notion of supporting those health care bills. 
 
 Members of the group also said they opposed amendments that would raise the proposed corporate income tax rate above 20 percent, and bristled at the idea of a delayed cut, which the Senate's bill does largely due to budgetary rules. 
 
 "It's a great strategy if you’re looking to put the Democrats in the majority and give them credit for what we did," Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said of the Senate's proposed one-year delay to a corporate tax cut. 
 
 Brian Faler, Bernie Becker and Elana Schor contributed to this report.
– It passed in the wee hours, and by a wee margin: The Senate passed the biggest tax overhaul in more than 30 years Saturday morning 51-49. Tennessee's Sen. Bob Corker was the only Republican to side against the bill. With the House having passed its bill in November, Congress is just a few steps away from getting something on President Trump's desk. He tweeted in part, "Look forward to signing a final bill before Christmas!" Politico reports the final hours before the vote were filled with "horse trading" and some ridicule from Democrats: Minority Whip Dick Durbin tweeted a photo showing a page of the bill with semi-legible handwriting scrawled in the margin, saying, "Trying to review the #GOPTaxScam but they are making hand-written changes to brand new text as we speak – can anyone else read this?" Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer swung at Republicans for releasing a revamped 479-page bill that senators didn't have time to review. GOP Sen. Ron Johnson's take, per the AP: "You really don't read this kind of legislation." Among the numerous last-minute amendments that were debated: A controversial provision by GOP Sen. Pat Toomey that would have given Michigan's conservative Hillsdale College a pass on a new tax on university endowments was axed. Politico reports the House will on Monday formally assemble the conference committee that will work to get the House and Senate measures to jibe; the Senate hasn't commented on a formal conference yet. The Wall Street Journal offers a chart that illustrates key differences between the two bills.