With the Senate parliamentarian removing provisions and the chamber itself unable to get on the same page, there is no way I thought the big, beautiful bill would get through.
However, the Senate put some work in this weekend, and the bill advanced, but not without some theatrics.
The Senate has continued its voting marathon in the hopes of passing all provisions and getting the bill to the House for a vote by Wednesday, so that Speaker Mike Johnson can send the package to Trump for his signature on July 4.
The clock was ticking big league for the Senate to get the big, beautiful bill passed, but somehow, Senate Majority Leader Thune (R-SD) got the bill to its next step over the weekend.
While there were rumors the bill could hit the floor on Monday, after Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) required every page of the bill to be read aloud before voting could begin.
Debate on the full bill wrapped up on Sunday, and now they only need to get through the process of adding amendments, which Dems will surely drag out, before the bill heads back to the House.
Schumer continues to push back against the bill, however, stating, "Republicans can use whatever budgetary gimmicks they want to try and make the math work on paper, but you can't paper over the real-life consequences of adding tens of trillions to the debt.”
Johnson has very few votes to spare in the House if he is going to get this bill passed once it comes back to the House, but Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) has been pretty adamant that he did not plan to support the legislation.
However, this week, he cracked a bit, stating what it would take to get him on board.
Massie revealed, “I can tell you the conservatives in the house are getting antsy with every change that happens in the Senate, and there’s a concern that maybe they need to just skinny this thing down and try to do just a few things.”
He continued, “The first one should be just the absolute essentials to the president’s priorities, which would be, secure the border and extend the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.” He then added, “It would be a lot of speculation to say that’s where we’re going to end up. But if we did end up there, and there was a repeal of the Green New Deal subsidies, I could be for that, possibly -- I’d have to see the total budget impact in the House.”
With the Senate working through the weekend and continuing to push this legislation through procedural hurdles on Monday, Johnson is now hoping to have the bill ready by Wednesday, July 2.
Trump has been stating for weeks that he wanted this bill on his desk to sign on Independence Day, and while it did not look good, suddenly, that situation has changed rather dramatically.
House GOP Policy chair Kevin Hern (R-OK) stated, "The president has been very clear that it's time to get this bill out of Congress and over to his desk. We're going to celebrate Independence Day with a big, beautiful signing ceremony and finally deliver this tax relief to American families."
There is a lot of this bill that I like, most of it, actually, but there is still the idea of no tax on tips, with which I firmly disagree, and I still don’t see how this bill does not add trillions to our national debt by the time Trump leaves office. At this point, if I were in office, I would still be a no, which means Trump would be spitting venom at me.