WASHINGTON—The Senate passed sweeping revisions to the U.S. tax code past midnight Saturday after Republicans navigated a thicket of internal divisions over deficits and other issues to place their imprint on the economy. 
 
 The bill, which included about $1.4 trillion in tax cuts, would lower the corporate rate to 20% from 35%, reshape international business tax rules and temporarily lower individual taxes. It also touched other Republican goals, including opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling and repealing... ||||| Tweet with a location 
 
 You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| 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. 
 
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 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.
– 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.