The White House fired back as a growing number of Republicans have piled on President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.”
The GOP rebellion has jeopardized Trump’s signature spending bill’s amid a scramble for votes to guarantee its safe passage through Congress.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the administration is confident that lawmakers will get the massive bill to the president’s desk by the 4th of July despite fiery criticism from some GOP members.
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Leavitt on Monday slammed Senator Thom Tillis as “wrong” after he blasted the megabill over the weekend in a dramatic turn.
The North Carolina Republican was one of two GOP senators to vote against advancing the bill on Saturday.
In a fiery speech on Sunday evening, the same day he announced he won’t seek reelection, Tillis slammed the bill on the Senate floor.
“It is inescapable this bill will betray the promise Donald Trump made,” Tillis said. “I’m telling the president that you have been misinformed. You supporting the Senate mark will hurt people who are eligible and qualified for Medicaid.”
He said the bill puts North Carolinians at risk with provisions that would kick 663,000 people in his state off health care plans. But the White House pushed back on the senator’s claims and argued it “protects Medicaid.”
“Well, he is just wrong, and the president and the vast majority of Republicans who are supportive of this legislation are right. This bill protects Medicaid, as I laid out for you, for those who truly deserve this program,” Leavitt said.
Her comments came after the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated over the weekend that the legislation would cut more than $1 trillion from Medicaid and leave 11.8 million more Americans uninsured by 2034, a greater number than in the House version of the bill.
The Senate kicked off a so-called vote-a-rama on Monday, where senators can propose a series of amendments to the legislation before its final passage.
It comes after the Senate worked through the weekend to finalize the legislation and make sure it adhered to Senate rules governing the reconciliation, so it only needs a majority in the chamber.
But as the Senate made changes to the massive bill that tackles Trump’s domestic agenda, House Republicans have slammed the legislation and threatened to tank it if it gets through the Senate and returns to the House for a final vote.
“The Senate’s version adds $651 billion to the deficit — and that’s before interest costs, which nearly double the total. That’s not fiscal responsibility,” the House Freedom Caucus posted on X on Monday. “It’s not what we agreed to. The Senate must make major changes and should at least be in the ballpark of compliance with the agreed upon House budget framework.”
The CBO estimated the Senate bill would increase the deficit by nearly $3.3 trillion over a decade, nearly $1 trillion more than the House-passed version of the bill.
“This is one of the most fiscally conservative pieces of legislation that has ever made its way through Capitol Hill,” Leavitt claimed on Monday.
She said the president was working the phones and would keep pushing for the bill’s passage until it happened.
