GEOFF BENNETT: Welcome to the "News Hour."

President Trump's massive domestic policy bill overcame a major hurdle today.

Vice President J.D.

Vance broke a tie in the U.S. Senate today to pass the legislation after lawmakers worked through the night and made last-minute changes.

AMNA NAWAZ: The bill shrinks Medicaid and extends trillions in tax cuts, and it's the most expensive budget bill Congress has ever considered.

But its future is still uncertain, as House Republicans raise new concerns.

The president wants this to cross the finish line by July 4.

Lisa Desjardins watched today's votes unfold in the Senate.

She's here now to fill us in on what we know and what we yet don't about this bill's future.

Lisa, good to see you.

LISA DESJARDINS: You too.

AMNA NAWAZ: So Republican senators barely got this bill through today.

How did they do it?

LISA DESJARDINS: By the skin of their teeth and the decision of one senator.

Remember, there are key votes here.

Let's look at them.

Republicans could only lose three.

So here are the key votes, and you see Susan Collins, no, Rand Paul, no, Thom Tillis, no.

Lisa Murkowski was the decider.

She ended up voting yes.

I am told that Murkowski liked the tax cuts in this bill.

She likes the defense spending.

But she was and still is very concerned about the Medicaid cuts.

So what happened in some last-minute drama that I witnessed over the Senate chamber, the last minute changes to the bill really influenced her.

So let's look at what they did here today.

Out of the bill now, a Medicaid boost for Alaska and Hawaii that came out at the last minute.

We thought Murkowski might vote no because of it.

But in the bill, some SNAP or food stamps carve-outs for Alaska and Hawaii.

Also in this bill, they doubled how much money it would go to rural health care.

That helped Murkowski.

Also notably out was a new tax on solar and wind.

That was going to hurt those industries, and that is out of the bill.

But I found out also in the last few minutes that there is indeed also a deduction for whalers for their equipment.

That will help Alaska as well.

So all of this came together for Murkowski.

She was asked afterwards about this vote, and she defended it as representing her state.

SEN. LISA MURKOWSKI (R-AK): I advocated for my state's interests.

I will continue to do that, and I will make no excuses for doing that.

Do I like this bill?

No.

There are Americans that are not going to be advantaged by this bill.

I don't like that.

LISA DESJARDINS: That from my colleague from NBC Ryan Nobles and Frank Thorp.

She said that it was a hard decision, and she still wants the bill to change.

AMNA NAWAZ: So that's Murkowski's view, one senator's view.

What about other senators you talk to?

How do they see it?

LISA DESJARDINS: Can I tell you, for Republican senators, this is almost like a near brush with political death or maybe just passing a critical exam.

But all in all, they really saw this, and we talked to them afterwards, as a sweep-in bill that may come with some political risk, but that they think will be critical for the future.

SEN. MARKWAYNE MULLIN (R-OK): This is definitely moving us where we need to go to make sure that the agenda of getting this economy back on track stays on track.

SEN. JOHN HOEVEN (R-ND): It's all those things that are just priorities for the Trump agenda.

And, again, it's about making America strong and getting America back on track.

And this is what people voted for.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): And it will be a centerpiece of the next election, right?

If we're right, we should do well.

If they're right, maybe not so well.

Eventually, our homework will be graded, and our work product will be graded by the American people.

LISA DESJARDINS: Big bill, big risk, big rewards.

Opponents, as we have been reporting, see big dangers in this bill.

That includes Republicans and Democrats.

It's a spectrum, concerns about health care provisions, about energy, also about the tax cuts.

And when we talked to them today, we saw there was some common concern also about the red ink.

SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY): Without question, this is not a fiscally conservative bill.

And if you're someone who thinks the debt is a problem, I don't see how you can vote for this.

SEN. MARTIN HEINRICH (D-NM): It's unprecedented numbers, millions of people who are going to lose their health care so that a few people can have a tax break.

And the same can be said with the incredible amount that this is going to add to the national debt.

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA): They're going to take a trillion out of our health care system and our hospitals cannot survive that.

And it's going to end up hurting all of us -- oh, excuse me, all except the billionaires.

LISA DESJARDINS: This was a big win for new Senate Republican Leader John Thune, but this is not over yet.

AMNA NAWAZ: It's not over yet.

The president wants it done by July 4.

Is that possible?

LISA DESJARDINS: I will tell you, it is hard to see how they get there.

And the reason why is I have spoken to House Republicans who tell me they are a no on this bill.

Publicly, we already have two, including Representative Ralph Norman, who sits on the Rules Committee.

He said he cannot support this.

They wanted to vote on this tomorrow.

The next 12 hours are going to tell us a lot.

But even Speaker Johnson has indicated he's in doubt about that timeline.

We're going to have to watch it closely.

AMNA NAWAZ: I know you have been breaking out specific pieces of the bill to take a closer look.

You took a deep dive into military spending.

What should we know?

LISA DESJARDINS: Listen, we have been talking about all the trillions in this bill.

A billion dollars is still a lot of money.

And when I read this bill, I saw billions and billions going to the Defense Department.

That's something Republicans like.

But it's something that's important to watch because a lot of this funding is usually day in, day out funding.

It's almost like an emergency grant to the Defense Department.

So I want to take a look at what the defense funding is in this bill, more than 200 projects I saw.

You see some of them there, billions for new submarines and ships, missile defense.

There's a big category called readiness that is not defined.

It really just seems like billions that the Pentagon can spend as they want, A.I., war games, weapons, F-22s, which the Pentagon has often said they don't want to spend money on.

Congress is again saying they must, and $1 billion on border enforcement, in total, $150 billion.

This is a very large, maybe one of the largest sort of supplemental appropriations for the Defense Department.

But, again, Republicans love it.

But when this time of budget cut is coming, it's important to know what they're doing here is trying to protect the Pentagon from future budget cuts in this bill that's not a military bill.

AMNA NAWAZ: There's also this question about whether or not Social Security could be affected.

That would be against the Senate rules for this bill.

Where does that concern come from?

LISA DESJARDINS: This is an indirect problem.

Now, just coming from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

And let me explain how this works.

So Social Security income right now for some folks are tied -- the taxes on those benefits go back into Social Security.

But this bill cuts tax rates.

And it also would mean that fewer people are at income levels that have to pay these taxes into Social Security, if that makes sense from those benefits.

So, anyway, what happened is the experts there did the analysis and found that the tax base lowers so much that the amount going into Social Security would also fall by enough that it would make the fund insolvent a few months sooner and make cuts go up.

This is something we're following closely.

I'm waiting for Republicans to answer my questions about it.

AMNA NAWAZ: I know you're going to continue after until you get some answers.

Lisa Desjardins, another busy day on Capitol Hill.

Thank you so much.

LISA DESJARDINS: Yes.

You're welcome.