‘This Is Theft!’ McGovern Gives Barn Burner Speech Slamming GOP For Trying to Pass Tax Bill ‘Under the Cover of Night’

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), the ranking Democrat on the House Rules Committee, pulled no punches in the very early hours of Wednesday morning in excoriating his GOP colleagues for holding a hearing on the Trump-backed “big, beautiful bill” at 1 am.

“This is a farce, an outrageous insult to the people of this country, to bring up a 1,000-page bill at 1 o’clock in the morning. A bill that’s still being written, by the way, by Republicans, as we speak, in a backroom somewhere, for God’s sake,” McGovern began, asking Republicans, “What the hell are they so afraid of?”

“And then to try to jam it through Congress in the middle of the night when nobody is watching is just unbelievably cynical. This is why people hate Washington,” raged McGovern, ahead of offering a blistering takedown of the bill’s contents:

You’re slashing benefits from children, from seniors living on fixed incomes, from veterans who served this country and now rely on food assistance just to get by. And why? And why. So that the top 0.1 percent, people making over $3.5 million a year, can pocket $314,000 a year in new tax giveaways.

I mean, you are literally taking food off kids’ plates to buy Elon Musk another yacht. I guess he’s getting a good return on his campaign donations, but I just find this whole thing disgusting. And look, at the end of the day, this is simple. It is simple, it’s about whose side you’re on. You guys wrote this bill for the top 0.1%. You wrote it for the billion-dollar corporations who offshore jobs and dodge taxes. You wrote it for the big oil and big pharma CEOs who rip people off. You wrote it for the rich and famous, for the people who never ever have to worry about where the next meal is coming from or how to take care of their elderly parents.

So you guys pick a side, okay? You pick the billionaires. I get it. You want to betray the people who voted for you, you want to sell them out because Trump told you to. But guess what? Democrats are picking a side too. And we are siding with the vast, vast, majority of Americans who you are going to screw over with this bill. We are siding with the 14 million parents and grandparents who are going to get kicked off health care if this monstrosity passes. We’re siding with struggling families who are already having a hard time buying groceries and the farmers whose incomes will drop because you’re gutting the nutrition programs that create demand for the food that they grow and the rural grocery stores that they support and the nurses who will lose their jobs when you start closing down rural hospitals.

That’s who we’re siding with and that’s who we choose to fight for. I’ve seen a lot in my time in Congress. I’ve seen my fair share of bad bills, but this one, this one? This takes the cake. This is not policy. This is theft! It is a direct transfer of wealth from the working and middle class to the ultra wealthy, and it’s being done on purpose and under the cover of night.

During the hearing, McGovern also tried to shame his colleagues:

Is that really what you came here to do? I don’t understand this. I don’t understand the cruelty. And let me say this to every Republican member who votes for this. You own it. You own it. You own every hospital that closes, every child that goes to bed hungry, every senior who loses care, and every American family forced to choose between groceries and rent, between their heating bill and their child care, between their kid’s birthday party and their parents’ long-term care.

So you guys can force us to debate this bill in the dead of night. You can do it while the country sleeps. But the American people will wake up tomorrow morning, and I guarantee you they will wake up to how terrible your agenda is. They will remember this moment. They will remember who stood with the billionaires and who stood with them.

Watch the clips above.