It's a potentially tumultuous three-week sprint for senators preparing to put their own imprint on the massive Republican package that cleared the House late last month by a single vote. The senators have been meeting for weeks behind closed doors, including as they returned to Washington late Monday, to revise the package ahead of what is expected to be a similarly narrow vote in the Senate.
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00:00You know, I think it's one of the most important debates of our time, and this is a debate over
00:04whether or not a country can have $36 trillion in debt, whether we can have interest payments
00:09over a trillion dollars. I think it's an important debate to have. I don't make it personal at all.
00:14I like the president, supported the president. In fact, I'm for the tax cuts. I am for a lot
00:19of the bill, but I can't in good conscience give up every principle that I stand for
00:24and every principle that I was elected upon, and that's that we can't accumulate more debt.
00:29$2 trillion in debt this year is too much. If you're going to borrow $5 trillion, it means they're
00:34going to get to that limit within the next year or two. They're planning on spending $5 trillion
00:38they don't have, and I'm just not for that. But there is a way around all this. They could get
00:43my vote, and I could vote for the package if they take out the debt ceiling and vote on that separately.
00:49It's the largest increase in the debt ceiling ever, and they will say, well, it doesn't spend any money.
00:54It's not really adding to the debt. They will get to their $5 trillion limit. The question is sooner or
00:59later, but we're giving them the ability to borrow $5 trillion more. I'm not for borrowing
01:04$5 trillion more. I'm for borrowing a smaller amount over a shorter period of time. They
01:09have promised they're going to be better. At some point in time, they're going to change
01:12their ways, and they're going to begin lessening spending.
01:15My biggest concern is the permanence of a lot of the tax policy pieces, to say, how do we
01:20actually look at things expiring, and what's the right date that they should expire, or should
01:25they expire at all? It's a lot better for individuals and small businesses when they're planning to
01:30be able to know for capital expenses and such, that that's not going to expire in the future.
01:34So if they've got a capital expense, they've got a plan for six years from now, they can
01:37actually plan for that and not wonder what the tax policy will be when they get there.
01:41So I think that's the biggest piece that we've got to be able to resolve.
01:43There still may be things that the Senate needs to tweak, and it could include the way that Medicaid
01:51is manipulated by the states to get them more money than was originally designed under the
01:59Medicaid program. So I think the focus in the Senate is going to be whether we can adequately
02:04address our concerns about Medicaid. If we can, I think we can get the magic 50.
02:12We have to do our work in the Senate, but something always has to be in the back of everybody's mind,
02:20and that is that this bill only passed the House by one vote, and whatever changes we make,
02:26it's got to go back there for approval. Senators, July 4th is still a reasonable
02:30timetable to get this to the President's desk?