CNN
—
President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” – which he on Thursday dubbed the “ultimate codification” of the MAGA agenda – is a paradox that shows how power works in a broken political system in which he’s the single greatest force.
As it stumbles through the Senate, the bill – which extends vast tax cuts, hikes border security funding and includes historic cuts to Medicaid – is perpetually on life support as chunks keep getting culled to fit the chamber’s budgetary rules.
Growing numbers of Republican lawmakers required to pass the measure hate it.
The public doesn’t want it – according to a Quinnipiac University poll released earlier this month, voters oppose the measure by 53% to 27%. The survey is no outlier.
Who can really say what is left in the bill after days of Senate wrangling? It’s barely recognizable from the one the House passed. That’s trouble for Speaker Mike Johnson, who is under great pressure to get whatever the Senate produces back through the House before Trump’s July Fourth deadline.
As Republicans race to pass the bill, those in swing seats may be casting a vote that they can’t avoid but that could cost them their jobs. It’s possible the measure could become one of those presidential vanity projects that lose the House majority, if Democrats flip the chamber in next year’s midterm elections.
But despite its many liabilities, you can take this to the bank: Something will pass, even if some White House priorities get pared back. And Trump will declare whatever lands on his desk one of the most important pieces of legislation in US history.
The MAGA agenda measure has become imperative to Trump’s prestige. It’s too big and beautiful to fail. Trump is even more sensitive to such markers of success than most presidents. And recent history suggests his hold over the GOP base may cause most holdouts to cave in the end.
The president has strong-armed vast political change already, using expansive executive power in a blitz that has triggered multiple court challenges. But legislation is the way to make reforms stick. And his description of the bill as the “codification” of the MAGA project is about right.
The measure is critical to boosting funding and manpower for the president’s mass deportation plans. It also withdraws swaths of benefits for certain categories of migrants.
It includes one of Trump’s favorite campaign promises: the exemption from taxes for overtime and tips. In another nod to the president’s populist origins, the White House has argued that the bill supports Main Street over Wall Street, touting support for family farms, housing affordability and new Trump investment accounts for newborns. The administration says that the typical family with two kids would have a take-home pay raise of between $7,600 and $10,900 and claims the bill would save or create roughly 7 million jobs.
But as is the case with most big budget bills, all this relies on creative mathematics, rosy assumptions of growth and low inflation. And like Trump’s tax bill in his first term, this measure is a feint that reveals the limits of his populism since it rewards higher earners handsomely. And the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the House version of the bill would boost the deficit by $2.4 trillion.
Michigan Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Thursday that Trump was trying to disguise a transfer of wealth to the rich with populist flourishes. “He’s thrown in some little pieces here and there that will be, I think, really important but, man, he is preferencing the very wealthy in this bill, and he’s trying to hide it by becoming the middle-class hero. We need to call him out on that.”
Politically, the White House is eyeing a potential purple patch for the president. If it can add the measure to what it claims is the obliteration of Iran’s nuclear program and a pledge by NATO members to up their defense spending to 5% of GDP, it would create an undeniably full second-term legacy for the president.
Trump held a White House event Thursday that was meant to heap pressure on GOP critics of the legislation, but ended up sounding more like a victory lap, punctuated with Trump’s characteristic digressions about his obsessions: former President Joe Biden, “crooked elections” and the participation of transgender women in sports.
At times, it was almost as if Trump thought the bill had already passed: He hailed “one of the most important pieces of legislation in the history of our country and that’s everybody saying that, virtually everybody.” And he added, “The ‘One Big, Beautiful Bill’ to secure our borders, turbocharge our economy and bring back the American Dream – it’s met with tremendous approval and reception.”
Celebration and anger at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue
The mood of celebration at the White House contrasted with the growing acrimony on Capitol Hill as Republicans clashed with Republicans. Democrats are powerless bystanders in the fight. But they are watching and waiting to blast the GOP for throttling Medicaid and making the rich richer in next year’s midterm elections.
Trump’s demand for a “big, beautiful bill” signing by America’s birthday is now in peril. The timeline, which was already ambitious, took a hit with the latest decision by the Senate’s top rules official that a multibillion-dollar slice of the measure was not allowed under reconciliation – the intricate process used to pass a bill with a simple majority, in this case with only GOP support.
More bad news for GOP Majority leader John Thune: Thursday’s ruling concerned one of the most politically explosive aspects of the bill – a change to taxes that states can impose to pay for Medicaid coverage. This comes against the backdrop of the bill’s Medicaid spending cuts of hundreds of billions over a decade.
Several prominent GOP senators, including Josh Hawley of Missouri and Susan Collins of Maine, who faces a tough reelection bid next year, have warned they won’t vote for the bill if it contains these tax maneuvers. They say the measure could be devastating to rural hospitals, especially in many red states.
This latest roadblock left Thune racing for a fix. But every modification to the bill could make it potentially an even more bitter pill for House lawmakers, especially conservative budget hawks, who say they are ready to defy Trump.
”Everything is challenging, but they’re all speed bumps,” Thune told reporters on Thursday. “We have contingency plans, plan B and plan C. We’ll continue to litigate it,” he said.
In normal circumstances, this wouldn’t be too much of a problem. It’s a rule of thumb on the Hill that bills often look like they are coming apart at the seams right up to the moment that they make it to their final votes.
But Trump’s craving for a July Fourth celebration is making things much harder. Thune would have to get the bill out of the Senate by the weekend. Then Johnson would have to rally his tiny, restive majority to jam it through, using the carrot of getting lawmakers home to the kids in time for the fireworks.
The speaker could try to appease anger among his members over Senate changes to the bill by entering a conference with the other chamber to negotiate. But that could take days or weeks, meaning that Trump’s plans for a bill-signing by America’s 249th birthday would be spoiled.
But some Republicans, who often talk a good game on opposing the president but end up caving under the MAGA heat, say the classic strategy of pressuring members with a bill that the president demands won’t work this time.
Rep. Eric Burlison of Missouri told CNN’s Manu Raju that it was not responsible for leadership to agree a deal behind closed doors and then put it to a vote. “That’s what Washington is good at, is kind of jamming people last-minute, giving you something you haven’t had time to read, haven’t had time to get reflection or input from your district,” he said, adding, “It’s not ideal.”
‘We don’t need grandstanders’
The Trump-era Republican Party has made a brand of breaking the rules in Washington – it’s why it’s so popular with grassroots conservatives, whose frustration the president has harnessed to his benefit.
Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville hit out at the current parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough for a series of decisions that made the “big, beautiful bill” a bit smaller this week, in an X post reverberating with MAGA applause lines
“The WOKE Senate Parliamentarian, who was appointed by Harry Reid and advised Al Gore, just STRUCK DOWN a provision BANNING illegals from stealing Medicaid from American citizens. This is a perfect example of why Americans hate THE SWAMP,” Tuberville wrote.
The president, meanwhile, has little patience for anything that slows the bill – an amalgam of MAGA priorities being shoved through as one massive potential law because of fears that the Republican House majority is so brittle it will bear only a limited number of critical votes.
“We don’t want to have grandstanders,” he said Thursday. “They do it to grandstand, that’s all. Not good people. They know who I’m talking about. I call them out, but we don’t need grandstanders.”
