Big, Beautiful Bill Finds Its Opponents
Domestic policy bill gets lambasted: “The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country!” wrote Elon Musk on X, referring to the version drafted by Senate Republicans.
This is basically Groundhog Day: The last time Musk critiqued his former BFFs in the Trump administration, it was over…the House version of the same bill (and its impact on the deficit). Things got dirty: Musk suggested that Trump was implicated in the Jeffrey Epstein files, while Trump basically said that Musk is a drug addict.
On Saturday, the newer version of the legislation “cleared a key procedural vote, 51–49,” per CNN. “Trump has demanded to sign the bill on the Fourth of July, but the measure must still go back to the House if it passes the Senate. Saturday’s vote allows the Senate to begin debating Trump’s bill, teeing up a final passage vote in that chamber as soon as Monday.” Holdouts will need to be dealt with: Republican Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Rand Paul of Kentucky both broke with their party and voted against the bill, but for different reasons—Paul because it raises the debt ceiling, and Tillis because he thinks the cuts to Medicaid are too steep.
Tillis also announced this weekend that he would not seek reelection after crossing Trump. “As many of my colleagues have noticed over the last year, and at times even joked about, I haven’t exactly been excited about running for another term,” he explained in a statement. “That is true since the choice is between spending another six years navigating the political theatre and partisan gridlock in Washington or spending that time with the love of my life Susan, our two children, three beautiful grandchildren, and the rest of our extended family back home,” he said. “It’s not a hard choice.” (Trump had already threatened to primary Tillis, and Democrats have long viewed his seat as a possible flip, so it’s not altogether shocking that he’s out after his term is up.)
“A new analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that 11.8 million more Americans would become uninsured by 2034 if the bill became law,” reports the Associated Press. “It also said the package would increase the deficit by nearly $3.3 trillion over the decade.” The bill would also extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, codify his signature “no taxes on tips” measure, reverse billions’ worth of green energy tax credits, and impose more work requirements on food stamps and Medicaid.
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