Trump pressures GOP senators to support his big bill as Musk calls it an ‘abomination’
The president met with Senate Majority Leader John Thune at the White House earlier this week and has been calling senators for one-on-one chats, reports The Associated Press.
On Tuesday, Elon Musk posted on X, “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”
In another X post, Musk said, “In November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people.”
Musk previously said he’d help defeat Republican lawmakers considered insufficiently loyal to Trump, but now he’s suggesting voting them out if they advance the president’s legislative priority, says AP.
Musk’s business interests will take a hit if lawmakers approve Trump’s bill, which would slash funding for electric vehicles and related technologies, AP notes.
One group of senators, including Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Mike Lee of Utah, wants deeper spending cuts because the bill as written is projected to increase federal deficits, says The New York Times. Paul also opposes the measure’s $4 trillion increase in the debt limit, a boost that the Treasury Department says is needed to avert a federal default as soon as July.
Another group of senators, including Josh Hawley of Missouri, Jim Justice of West Virginia and Susan Collins of Maine, has expressed concerns about a provision in the bill that would limit strategies that states have developed to tax medical providers and pay them higher prices for Medicaid services, the Times says. The senators worry that the change could adversely affect rural hospitals in their states.
A third group, including Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and John Curtis of Utah, are concerned about the legislation’s almost total repeal of clean energy tax credits created by legislation passed by the Biden administration.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska also has raised concerns about both the Medicaid cuts and the repeal of the clean energy tax credits, the Times says.
Meanwhile, a separate Times article says some House Republicans regret voting for the bill, saying they were unaware of some of its provisions. The bill passed by just one vote.
For example, Rep. Mike Flood of Nebraska says he hadn’t known the bill would limit judges’ power to hold people in contempt for violating court orders.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia says she’d been unaware that the bill would block states from regulating artificial intelligence for a decade.