00:00Meanwhile, as President Trump ramps up pressure on Senate Republicans now to back his massive
00:06spending bill, he is calling out one vocal holdout.
00:09That's Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky.
00:11Trump posted on social media yesterday that the senator has very little understanding
00:16of the bill, later adding the people of Kentucky can't stand him.
00:22Paul later responded to the president saying he will not support a bill that raises the
00:26debt ceiling by trillions of dollars.
00:28The senator has said he believes four Republicans are opposed to the package as it stands.
00:35Republicans have a slim majority in the Senate and can only afford to lose three votes on
00:43the bill.
00:44John Bresnahan, what do we know about how the Senate will respond to this, especially given
00:50the impact it will have on people who rely on things that are going to be cut if this
00:56passes?
00:57Yeah, right.
00:58Rand Paul is right right now.
00:59There's probably enough votes to stop this bill.
01:02If you take Rand Paul, you take Ron Johnson, who would not vote for this bill as it is.
01:07You take some of the conservatives.
01:10And then there's moderate senators like Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska or Susan Collins of
01:16Maine.
01:17They have problems.
01:17There's other senators have big problems with the Medicaid portions of this bill.
01:21So I think there's, you know, they're going to have to change this bill.
01:25The question is, and Mike Johnson was talking about it, is like, if you change this bill,
01:31this bill only passed by one vote in the House.
01:33If you change this bill in the Senate to get it through somehow, you lose that.
01:37If you tack to the middle in the Senate, you lose the right in the House.
01:41And that's a huge problem.
01:42That's where Trump would have to be, you know, just knocking heads on it.
01:46But they have problems on it.
01:48I mean, they've got major work to be done in the next couple of weeks, especially if they're
01:52thinking two things.
01:53One, they want to get done by July 4th, and they got the debt limit at mid-July.
01:57And that's a huge, that's the backstop of everything.
02:00That's the ticking time bomb on this legislation.
02:02Yeah, Mark Caputo, I'm going to channel Joe a little bit, who would say these guys who've
02:06called themselves their entire lives small government conservatives who cast a vote in support
02:12of this bill, given what it does to the debt and the deficit.
02:15There's just no way you can call yourself a small government conservative and vote for
02:19this.
02:19And yet many of them are doing just that.
02:21So it does, Elon Musk's criticism, as part of your reporting, does give cover to people
02:26like Rand Paul and Ron Johnson and others to maybe be a little more emboldened to come
02:30out and say, yeah, what Elon said is right.
02:32This is, we can't pass this.
02:34So do you think that perhaps Elon Musk's public criticism has helped to torpedo this thing?
02:40I think it's certainly given credit or cover to the critics that you said.
02:44But let's also be clear about the history of the Republican Party, certainly back to George
02:50Bush II, George W. Bush.
02:53They've been massive deficit spenders and expanders of government at the same time as presenting
03:00themselves as these fiscal hawks.
03:02The difference with the Trump era Republican Party is that this is the first party that has
03:08said, Medicaid, you know, it's pretty good.
03:10Medicare, pretty good.
03:11Social Security, pretty good.
03:13Don't touch entitlements.
03:14And that's where you come to this very precarious position for Republicans when they're in charge
03:20of Congress, because they basically got three issues that they're weighing.
03:25They have tax cuts, which all Republicans essentially have to vote for as part of their
03:29dogma.
03:30You've got deficit reduction.
03:32And you've got Medicaid that they want to continue.
03:35And in the end, the deficit reduction is the thing that's going to crater.
03:39And that is where Elon Musk is 100 percent right.
03:42This does cause higher deficits and bigger debt.
03:45And there's just no way for the White House to figure its way out of that.
03:48What Donald Trump is going to have to do is he's going to have to twist arms.
03:52He's going to have to do a little bit of subtle begging, promising, cajoling, the full
03:57bag of tricks he's going to have to pull out in order to get this passed.
03:59In the end, it's still a Republican Congress.
04:02He's still the Republican leader.
04:03He's still popular in the party.
04:05It does look, judging by the past, that'll probably get it done.
04:09But just how he does it, it's really hard to see right now.
04:11Yeah, so often in the Trump era, it comes down to the personal.
04:14Donald Trump weighing and leaning on some of these guys to get their votes and them not
04:19willing to cross him.
04:21One of those members of Congress, Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, voted to pass the sweeping
04:25domestic policy bill last month, is now coming out against the legislation.
04:30In a social media post yesterday, Taylor Greene appeared to admit she hadn't read the text
04:35carefully enough and that she missed parts of the bill that stripped states of the right
04:39to regulate or make laws concerning artificial intelligence for the next 10 years.
04:44She says she is opposed to that and will vote against the final version of the bill unless
04:50the Senate removes that provision.
04:52So, important to read carefully, I guess, is the lesson here, John.
04:56Willie, the jokes write themselves.
04:57I mean, this is typical of, well, maybe of Marjorie Taylor Greene, but it's reflective
05:02of just how hurried this process was.
05:04It was so rushed and some of it was done in the middle of the night.
05:08We heard Democrats complain about that.
05:10And now we're learning that some members of Congress didn't even read through the whole
05:14bill, they or their staff, and missed important provisions.
05:17And now Marjorie Taylor Greene is suggesting that this is a real sticking point.
05:20So, not only is it a poor reflection of how they got here, but it also, again, points
05:25to the challenges that lie ahead.
05:27That, like, if the Senate's going to make real changes, well, Marjorie Taylor Greene is
05:31saying, if you don't make this change, I won't vote for it.
05:33But we also know some other Republicans in the House speaker are saying that if they do
05:37make the Senate, it makes too many changes, we won't vote for it.
05:40So, yes, to Mark's point of a moment ago, President Trump remains very popular in the party.
05:45He has an iron grip, it seems, on both houses of Congress.
05:49It's hard to imagine too many Republicans will defy him.
05:52A few do.
05:53We see Thomas Massey, a congressman of Kentucky, do it all the time.
05:56But very few do.
05:58So, the odds are he'll get this through.
05:59But there's a lot of hurdles he's going to have to clear, particularly in that accelerated
06:03timetable, July 4th, one month from today.
06:07Wow.
06:07John Bresnahan, before we go, where do you see this going today?
06:10Well, I think, look, there's the two big meetings.
06:15There's the meeting with Trump at the White House with these finance committee Republicans,
06:18and then the Senate Republicans themselves are sitting down and going to talk.
06:23I think they've got a lot of work to do, as everybody's talked about.
06:26I mean, I do think they'll get this done at the end of the day, because literally they've
06:30done nothing else in this Congress.
06:32If they don't pass this, they have nothing to run on in 2026.
06:35They've done nothing.
06:36So, they get this done, I think, at the end of the day.
06:38Will they have to scale it back?
06:40Or, I don't know.
06:41But I do think this is a big day for Republicans, Senate Republicans.
06:45They've got to get some forward momentum.
06:48The Musk thing, the Musk up yesterday really dented them.
06:52They've got problems on their right.
06:53They've got problems in their center.
06:55So, you know, I do think this is, you know, Trump is going to have to really get in there
07:00and tell guys that I want this.
07:02And we wrote about this morning.
07:04You already see Thune, Senate Majority Leader Thune, going to Trump, going to his Trump
07:08card very early in this process.
07:10It's more like Mike Johnson than you would have ever seen Mitch McConnell do.
07:14So, I think you'll see just Trump will just batter these guys.
07:17But I think this starts in earnest today.
07:19He's really going to have to get these guys if they want to pass something along this line.
07:24All right.
07:25Co-founder of Punchbowl News, John Bresnahan, and White House reporter for Axios, Mark Caputo.
07:30Thank you both very much for coming on this morning.
07:33And you're...
Comments