‘The Senate Should Rip It to Pieces’: Conservatives Torch Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill
(AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
While much of the GOP celebrated the House of Representatives’ passage of President Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” on Thursday morning, some conservative dissenters have made their displeasure known.
The sweeping legislation, which the president has pitched as the signature initiative of his second term, carries forward the 2017 Trump tax cuts, but does not cut spending and raises the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction cap, which conservatives lowered 8 years ago during the first Trump administration.
As a result of those perceived shortcomings, two House Republicans, Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Warren Davidson (R-OH), voted against the bill.
“I’d love to stand here and tell the American people, we can cut your taxes and we can increase spending and everything’s going to be just fine. But I can’t do that because I’m here to deliver a dose of reality,” said Massie on the House floor. “This bill dramatically increases deficits in the near term, but promises our government will be fiscally responsible five years from now. Where have we heard that before? How do you bind a future Congress to these promises? This bill is a debt bomb ticking.”
Davidson made similar arguments on X.
“Don’t bankrupt America! Sadly, the big bill grows debt and deficits this Congress, but promises future Congresses will cut spending,” he wrote in one post.
“Deficits do matter and this bill grows them now. The only Congress we can control is the one we’re in. Consequently, I cannot support this big deficit plan. NO,” he added in another.
National Review‘s Charles C.W. Cooke minced no words while expressing how he felt about the final version of the bill.
“The Senate should rip it to pieces,” submitted Cooke after the bill passed Thursday morning.
RedState’s Bonchie expressed similar disappointment.
“The perfect encapsulation of the current GOP is not being able to pass a reconciliation bill that lowers the deficit, but bending over backwards to make sure New Yorkers get to pass their tax burden onto people in Alabama,” he mused. “At least we can stop pretending, I guess.”
“No, but you see this is why we need Trump, because otherwise the ‘GOPe’ and the ‘RINOs’ and the ‘establishment’ do [checks notes] exactly what Trump just did,” replied Cooke facetiously.
“It’s funny how the GOP is only fiscally conservative when they don’t have control of Congress,” mused business commentator Carol Roth, who was retweeted by conservative radio star Erick Erickson.
The Wall Street Journal slammed the GOP for caving on the SALT deduction in an editorial, calling it a “folly” that Senate Republicans ought to cut “down to size.”
And conservative economist Joel Griffith observed that “The ‘Big, Beautiful, Bill’ adds another entitlement (government-funded ‘Trump Accounts’), provides a Blue State bailout ($40k SALT deduction), & exempts large amounts of income from payroll tax as programs near insolvency.”
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