Wall Street stocks retreated on Tuesday as markets tracked congressional debate on US President Donald Trump's tax cut proposal while monitoring US Treasury yields.

Major indices spent the entire session in negative territory as the S&P 500 finished lower after six straight positive sessions.

"The main driver is a consolidation day," said Briefing.com analyst Patrick O'Hare. "The market has just been so red hot."

The Dow Jones finished down 0.3 percent at 42,677.

The S&P 500 shed 0.4 percent to 5,940, while the Nasdaq also fell 0.4 percent to 19,142.

Trump visited Capitol Hill on Tuesday, where he faces challenges to unify a House Republican caucus that includes lawmakers from high-tax Northeastern states seeking a bigger tax deduction and members who are worried about increasing the deficit.

Investors have also been fixated on higher yields in the Treasury market. Moody's highlighted the deficit last week in a downgrade of the US credit rating.

Among individual companies, Tesla gained 0.4 percent as CEO Elon Musk said the company's sales performance had improved in most markets after a difficult first quarter. Musk also expressed bullishness over the potential for autonomous driving and humanoid robotics to lift Tesla.

Google parent Alphabet fell 1.5 percent as it touted new artificial features at its annual developers' event. CEO Sundar Pichai said, "New AI mode is a total reimagining of search with more advanced reasoning." (AFP)