Senators React to Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill,’ Narrowly Passing

TIME

In the end, Democrats were unable to stop Republicans from getting their tax-cuts-and-spending plan across the finish line on Tuesday. But, in conversations with strategists close to the Democratic leaders, they had a pretty clever consolation spin: this bill is the most hated piece of major legislation since at least 1990, and Republicans have no plan to fix that.

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00:00This is a historic direction that we're moving for President Trump and

00:03the American people that elected us to run the government in a different direction than

00:07the Biden administration had put us in.

00:09So in November, we heard loud and clear, and this is delivering on those promises.

00:14As President Trump would say, promises made, promises kept.

00:17I told them all along that I would consider voting for it if we separated out the debt

00:21ceiling or reduced it.

00:22A couple of weeks ago, I offered to extend the debt ceiling for three months,

00:26which is about $500 billion.

00:28I offered that again, and there was a time in which they had to make a decision dealing

00:33with me and reducing the debt ceiling or giving pork and subsidies to Alaska.

00:40They chose to add more pork and subsidies for Alaska to secure that vote.

00:45You talked to your House colleagues.

00:46Do you think there could be some that will vote against this?

00:48I think they're going to look at it and see that it's much less conservative than it started

00:52out to be, and it's going to add much more to the debt.

00:55And so I think without question, this is not a fiscally conservative bill.

01:00And if you're someone who thinks the debt is a problem, I don't see how you could vote

01:03for this thing.

01:04It's going to be hundreds of millions of dollars.

01:07It's not just Alaska anymore because of the parliamentarian rule.

01:10They have literally turned it all upside down.

01:12And there's absolutely no doubt that governors, if they want to save money for their states,

01:17should start committing errors.

01:19They should start giving SNAP to people.

01:21I guess this is the Republican theory.

01:23Give SNAP to people that don't deserve it.

01:25Get a higher error rate.

01:27And then you get two years off of your cuts.

01:31Just explain it any other way than that.

01:33In one fell swoop, Republicans passed the biggest tax break for billionaires ever seen,

01:40paid for by ripping away health care for millions of people and taking food out of the mouths

01:48of hungry kids.

01:50This is not a big, beautiful bill at all.

01:54That's why I moved on the floor to strike the title.

01:58It is now called The Act.

02:01That's all it's called.

02:03But it is really the big, ugly betrayal.

02:07And the American people know it.

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