Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul said that he is “not persuadable” after a reporter asked about pressure from President Donald Trump getting the party on board with his omnibus spending package. If more than three Republicans in the Senate defect, Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” cannot pass.
On Friday’s Chris Jansing Reports on MSNBC, congressional correspondent Julie Tsirkin reported that, while the House GOP is falling in line, the Senate remains a dicey question mark with some serious hold-outs like Paul.
The president is pushing hard for the bill to pass quickly enough for him to sign it into law on the Fourth of July, but there is internal resistance against many of the provisions in the current form of the legislation. Earlier on Friday, Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, for example, called the bill “inadequate” and “completely unacceptable” on Fox News. Johnson also said on Thursday that he “couldn’t care less” if Trump is upset about it.
Paul sounded a similar note in his response to reporters about pressure from Trump.
Tsirkin asked Paul, “Senator, some of your House colleagues said the same thing, that they’re not going to support the bill because it adds too much to the deficit, but then they ended up voting for it. Do you think the president could put pressure on you and others?”
“I’m not persuadable to go
TSIRKIN: Well, Chris, bad news for Speaker Mike Johnson, who earlier in the day yesterday told us that the Senate is going to pass this with minimal changes. That’s not true. And of course, the president still expects this bill to hit his desk before July 4th. That’s the holiday that he wants to sign it on. And of of course we have the debt ceiling that is also attached to this bill that many senators don’t want to vote for. That includes Senator Rand Paul. I pressed him, Senator Josh Hawley, two that have been opposed to elements of this for, quite frankly, different reasons. And that’s part of the challenge here. Take a listen.HAWLEY: The Senate’s going to want to put its own stamp on this. We’ll write our own version of the bill. I talked to the president about this last night, and his instructions were pretty clear. Don’t cut Medicaid.PAUL: This will be the greatest increase in the debt ceiling ever, and GOP owns this now.TSIRKIN: Senator, some of your House colleagues said the same thing, that they’re not going to support the bill because it adds too much to the deficit, but then they ended up voting for it. Do you think the president could put pressure on you and others?PAUL: I’m not
persuadable to go against the principles of conservative government.TSIRKIN: There you go, that’s of course bad news they can only afford to lose three votes in the Senate.
Watch the clip above via MSNBC.