President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” received its official price tag on Wednesday when the nonpartisan scorekeeper said the full House legislation would add $2.4 trillion to the deficit.
The whopping cost of the package focused on Trump’s domestic agenda is further fueling the Republican civil war after Elon Musk threw a grenade in the middle of GOP negotiations when he called the legislation a “pork-filled disgusting abomination.”
Some Senate Republicans signaled they agree with Musk just as the chamber is working on its version of the legislation passed in the House nearly two weeks ago.
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The Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of the bill’s impact over a decade will play a major role as Senate Republicans draft their legislation to stay in line with the Senate rules governing reconciliation.
Senator Rand Paul has been leading the GOP revolt against the legislation and has slammed it for raising the debt ceiling and deficit.
“The best analogy for Congress is they’re like bad profligate spending teenagers, so they need less of a credit line, not a bigger credit line, and it needs to be shorter because they’re not to be trusted,” Paul said Wednesday. “They’re not good with money.”
While he voiced agreement with Musk’s takedown of the bill, he said they have not communicated directly, only over social media.
While Republicans have called for extending the 2017 tax cuts, they’ve split over what else to include and how to pay for it. The analysis found that the legislation would cut taxes by $3.6 trillion over a decade.
Even before the latest scorecard dropped, senators like Ron Johnson had been calling for the bill to be split into two and for spending to be examined line by line.
However, other Senate Republicans have expressed concerns with the legislation slashing health insurance for low-income Americans. It’s been a sticking point for some, like Senator Josh Hawley.
The analysis found that 10.9 million people would become uninsured over a decade due to the changes in Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act.
It found that 7.8 million would lose coverage due to the stricter work requirements and eligibility restrictions in the bill.
Republican leaders had been arguing that the legislation would not cut Medicaid but would save money by restricting undocumented immigrants from state programs. However, the legislation found only 1.4 million people in state-funded health programs without satisfactory immigration status or citizenship verification.
The White House has been ramping up its attacks on the CBO over its analysis even before the final score of the House bill was released, as the office scored individual pieces of the legislation and some GOP members balked at the bill’s impact on the deficit.
Despite Musk blasting the bill and conservatives calling for the massive changes, Senate GOP leadership is forging ahead with their efforts in the hopes of getting a bill to the president’s desk this summer.
