Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ Faces Uncertainty in Senate
Fiscal hawks want the bill to slash more spending, even suggesting they go over the budget line-by-line. What a concept! That’ll never happen.
Senate Republicans have expressed concerns over the House’s “One, Big, Beautiful Bill,” aimed at tackling President Donald Trump’s wishes.
The Senate will change the bill.
Maybe Senate Republicans will add in more spending cuts! I’m not holding my breath, even though Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) wants it to happen:
The frequently cantankerous Wisconsin senator is pushing his fellow Republicans to deliver huge spending cuts as part of their party-line domestic policy bill — and vowing to block President Donald Trump’s top legislative priority if his demands, which are shared by a small cadre of fiscal hawks, aren’t met.
As the megabill moves through the House, Johnson’s increasingly vocal warnings are an early indicator for Senate GOP leaders and the White House that they’ve got major headaches awaiting across the Capitol. Senate Republicans can only afford three defections on the expected party-line vote.
“I think there’s enough of us that would say, ‘No, that’s not adequate,’” Johnson said in an interview where he described his insistence on returning the federal government to “pre-pandemic” level of spending.
The Republicans swore $2 trillion in cuts. Did anyone believe them? Not me.
Of course, they’re having problems hitting $1.5 trillion in cuts.
Johnson and other fiscal hawks in the Senate want it to go further than $2 trillion.
Johnson wants the Senate to perform an obviously important task: investigate the federal budget “line-by-line.” What a concept:
“Elon Musk is showing us how to do this right?” he said. “You expose, ‘Whoa, what are we doing spending money on that?’” he said.
But Johnson hasn’t yet found buy-in for that idea from colleagues who have been burned by one too many deficit-cutting commissions that ultimately sputtered. The response he’s gotten, he said, is “we don’t have time to do it.”
“Well, okay then, I don’t have the support for the bill,” Johnson said.
Johnson has another radical idea: break “up the bill into two or three or more pieces.”
But Johnson has been one of many to fall in line with the party. See, this is why George Washington pleaded with people not to form political parties!
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) will likely side with Johnson. Here’s me:
Other GOP senators don’t like the bill, mainly with the Medicaid portion of the House bill…even though it pretty much only tightens who can receive it. You know, only American citizens.
The senators also have an issue with the bill limiting the “states’ flexibility to use health care provider taxes to increase the federal share of Medicaid spending — a strategy many states use to draw more Medicaid dollars from Washington.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said: “The provider tax in particular, that could have a big impact in my state and lead to reduced coverage, so I’ve got some concerns. I think we need to look really, really carefully at that. I continue to maintain my position we should not be cutting Medicaid benefits.”
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) will also pay close attention to the medical part:
Tillis says he’s open to scaling back some of the health care subsidies under the Affordable Care Act that were increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, when federal spending exploded. But he doesn’t want to cut the federal health care safety net to below where it was before the pandemic.
“We just got to make sure that what we had pre-COVID as a safety net still exists and people have access [to health insurance] in the marketplace,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do before, I think, the details are settled.”
Tillis says he wants to dig in to the projection that more than 8 million people could lose their insurance.
“We’re looking at that,” he said. “If it’s that many, we have to look at what’s happened — if that’s just the expansion population, if that’s work requirement.”
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Before everyone starts hyperventilating let’s see what they come up with first 😂
More spending.
My guess is that if the Pharma EO just signed, is in the bill, it will immediately be removed because 98% of the senators received $50-100 k from pharma lobbyists for their tax free reelection coffers.
Cut some and continue executive action to downsize the government, reduce harmful regulations and force other nations to trade fairly. All of these actions will stimulate the economy and hopefully increase GOP numbers in the House and Senate in ’26 and ’28.
With the wind at their backs Trump or his successor can then dramatically cut spending, pass a voter integrity bill to mandate id for federal elections, require voter rolls to be verified, eliminate mail in voting except for absentee voting with for military, overseas and valid medical reasons and require paper ballots for audit and verification.
More posturing than a runway model during fashion week.
But it’s “Big and Beautiful,” at least according to Trump.
We know you prefer Cori Bush.
Pre-Scamdemic? Not good enough, try Antebellum spending levels, not adjusted for inflation. However many dollars we were spending before Fort Sumter is the cap.
In short, some states bought into the “We can expand Medicare spending because for every dollar we spend, we get an additional dollar from the Feds, so that’s two dollars to help (fill in name of troubled group) and if you don’t agree to the increases, we’ll paint you as evil murderous fiends and use that endlessly against you in the next election.” Yes, they did that in Kansas, and the Dem governor was right there with pom-poms, cheering it on.
mark levin said that 77%(?) of the budget is untouchable b/c it relates to social security in one form or another
that would then also indicate what the real problem is….the welfare state
thats not the government holding your money for YOU
thats the government holding your money for their own interests
payouts to welfare for lifers…illegals….etc etc
you’ve accepted it even as self described pro americans
there is nothing pro american about paying for others peoples habits/issues
we help the needy by donating to charities and would and in fact do so without any write-off on the taxes when applicable
helping people via the government is a local issue,,or should be
give social security to the locals
then let them vote on the scheme
this goes back to why we should be on the gold standard
despite what “teachers’ have taught americans about that “evil” notion
Stealing defeat from the jaws of victory … you can always count on it.
I think the $2T or $1.5T cuts refer to a ten year time line. Trump inherited a $2T annual budget deficit. If my understanding is correct, those cuts are almost just a rounding error in the size of the problem.
“See, this is why George Washington pleaded with people not to form political parties!”
You may as well plead with apples to fall upwards.
People who design governments need to understand that the first law of human governance and the second law of thermodynamics are in fact the same law.