Senate Takes Up ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’

At first, it felt like a familiar story. Musk’s tweet echoed a campaign he waged in December over a stopgap spending measure to avoid a government shutdown. His complaint then, that the continuing resolution contained several measures unrelated to keeping the government open, was a major factor in its demise. A revised version of the bill later passed and was signed into law by President Joe Biden.

This time, however, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act—which, unlike December’s continuing resolution, can bypass the 60-vote threshold in the Senate to overcome a filibuster—did not fall apart so quickly. Senate Majority Leader John Thune quickly challenged Musk. “All the modeling that we’ve seen suggests that the changes that are being made in the tax policy—particularly making permanent bonus depreciation, interest deductibility, R&D expensing—are going to lead to significant growth,” he said at a scheduled press conference shortly after Musk panned the bill. “And you couple the growth with the biggest spending reduction in American history, and you will see a reduction, not an increase, in the deficit. So we have a difference of opinion. He’s entitled to that opinion. We’re going to proceed full speed ahead.”

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, who has asked the Senate to change as little as possible in the bill, was more blunt the next day. “I think he’s flat wrong,” he said at a press conference. “I think he’s way off on this.” Though he said he did not take personally the fact that Musk had a different view of legislation, Johnson claimed he walked him through the bill and Republicans’ yet-to-be-announced plans after this reconciliation battle. He said Musk was “encouraged” by the conversation but then did “a 180” on it.

Just because congressional GOP leadership has bucked Musk does not mean the bill will get through the Senate easily. Like their House counterparts last month, GOP senators are divided over the bill: Fiscal hardliners want steeper spending reductions while others are concerned such cuts would impact social programs many of their constituents depend on.

Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin came out against the bill—which the Congressional Budget Office has estimated will add $2.5 trillion to the national debt—even before the House passed it, arguing it did not cut enough spending. He wants to return to pre-pandemic levels. Speaking to reporters Tuesday, he said Congress will not accomplish such a goal “in one bill passed quickly” and said the GOP would need “a couple bites of the apple.” TMD asked him whether he would vote for the current bill if there was a prospect of getting spending cuts in pieces of legislation down the line, but he did not answer directly. He noted that he did not want to raise the statutory debt ceiling so high that President Donald Trump could avoid dealing with it the rest of his term. The House’s version contains an increase of $4 trillion to the debt ceiling, which could last until 2027, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center, though that would be well before the end of Trump’s term.

“We’re not going to default on our debt, but I don’t want to relieve that pressure for President Trump’s entire term,” the Wisconsin senator told TMD. “Again, I want to convince him this gives him leverage to accomplish the return to a pre-pandemic level spending that he wants to do, or balance the budget. He’s the one that made the promise that he was going to balance the federal budget. Well, I’m going to lay out the numbers in terms of what’s going to be required there.”

Increasing the debt limit has also been a bugaboo for Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, whom Trump criticized specifically Tuesday morning. Paul noted later that day that he would vote for the bill without that provision. “I’ve offered to vote for the bill if they were to take the debt ceiling off of it,” he said. The next day, he indicated he would be okay with a smaller increase to the debt limit, noting he offered an amendment two weeks ago that would raise it only by $500 billion but that it did not have enough support. “This is something I believe in so firmly, I’m not going to compromise on that,” he told reporters. “I would compromise on a very short-term one.”

On the other side of the issue are those who worry about the bill’s provisions dealing with Medicaid. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri was also an early opponent of the bill. He has expressed worry over its freezing of provider taxes, which states use to help fund their Medicaid programs, as well as a provision that would require some Medicaid recipients with incomes above the poverty line to pay up to $35 for each medical service. He wrote on X on Monday that he spoke to Trump, who “said again, NO MEDICAID BENEFIT CUTS.” Exactly what that means for the legislation is unclear. Hawley has opposed the House bill in its current form, while Trump supports it. Asked what changes to the bill he expected due to Trump’s commitment, Hawley did not offer many specifics.

“We’ve got to, number one, make sure that the Senate doesn’t do anything new on Medicaid that endangers benefits in states like mine,” he told reporters. He added that he wanted to ensure there were no “rural hospital closures in my state.”

Sen. Jim Justice of West Virginia has similar concerns. “I believe we will cut the deficit. If we can make strides forward in that, yay-yay. We will not be able to cut our way out of this mess. There’s no way. At the end of the day, you’re going to have to mind the store and get rid of as much waste as you can, and don’t cut into the bone, if you’re smart.”

The Senate GOP hopes to resolve those issues soon, given Republicans’ self-imposed July 4 deadline for Trump to sign the bill. But it may also run into further trouble in the House. Musk’s Tuesday posts have galvanized spending hawks in the lower chamber who were already not in love with the bill.

Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, who used to chair the fiscally hawkish House Freedom Caucus, tweeted that he expected “MASSIVE improvements from the Senate before it gets back to the House.” Fellow caucus member Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina expressed similar agreement with Musk and called for more reductions. “He’s right. It wasn’t enough,” Norman told TMD of the cuts the House bill makes. “And he’s right. The debt’s going to kill us. That’s why we’ve got to get it right.”

Of course, both Perry and Norman voted for the bill when it passed the House, so why would they do so if they agreed with Musk’s criticisms? For Norman, he said he had to consider the parts of the bill he liked, such as the tax cuts.

“The good outweighed the bad,” he said.

• Writing in the New York Times, Jeremy W. Peters reports on Alex Shieh, a conservative student journalist at Brown University whose recent reporting drew the ire of administrators. “Thousands of administrative employees at Brown University woke up this spring to an email with pointed Elon Musk-like questions about their job responsibilities,” Peters wrote. “Please describe your role, it asked. What tasks have you performed in the past week? How would Brown students be affected if your job didn’t exist?” Peters explained that Shieh and his fellow student journalists “agreed to do an article on the increase in administrative positions at the university, an issue throughout academia that critics say illustrates how colleges have strayed from their core educational functions. … Mr. Shieh said that he was trying to make a universal point about the cost of higher education. ‘It’s not inherently conservative to want to make education more affordable,’ he said. The vast majority of the people who received the email ignored it. Some complained to the university. A few replies seemed to forget the Queen’s English.”
• On the 36th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, Yang Jianli reflects in Foreign Policy on why 36 years have gone by without a similar uprising. “It was the bloody end to a nationwide democracy movement that brought together workers and students, the most promising push for political reform in the history of the People’s Republic of China,” Jianli wrote. “But despite the courage of many individual Chinese who fought for democracy and the solidarity of their international supporters, there has not been a comparable movement since—and it’s hard to imagine one arising anytime soon.” There’s no single, blanket answer, he observes. “Several interlocking factors—domestic, international, technological, and sociological—have suppressed the conditions necessary for such a movement to reemerge. One of the most effective strategies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been its informal ‘bread-for-freedom’ policy. Following the brutal crackdown of 1989, the CCP understood that outright repression alone could not maintain legitimacy. Economic growth was essential. By delivering unprecedented levels of material prosperity—lifting millions of people out of poverty, building modern infrastructure, and creating urban middle classes—the CCP made a Faustian bargain with the Chinese people: economic opportunity in exchange for political obedience.”

Politico: [Louisiana GOP Sen. John] Kennedy Grills [Commerce Secretary Howard] Lutnick Over Trump’s Tariff Goals

Kennedy asked Lutnick on Wednesday if the administration would accept a zero-for-zero trade deal with a country like Vietnam, one of the 60-plus trading partners facing double-digit tariff increases in early July if it does not reach an agreement first with the Trump administration. Lutnick soundly rejected the idea, saying Vietnam is being used as a pathway for China to send products to the U.S.: “Absolutely not. That would be the silliest thing we could do.”

…

“Why are you negotiating trade deals then?” Kennedy replied. “You just said that if a country came to you and offered the ultimate reciprocity, no tariffs, no trade barriers, you would reject that.”

Associated Press: [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth Orders the Name of Gay Rights Activist Harvey Milk Scrubbed From Navy Ship

USA Today: Trump Agrees With Longtime Rival [Massachusetts Sen.] Elizabeth Warren on Need To Abolish the Cap on U.S. Debt

Considering that three years have gone by since we last saw new episodes of Netflix’s Stranger Things, you may be forgiven in assuming the series has concluded. But the Duffer brothers’ adventure into the paranormal will air its fifth and final season later this year, staggering the release of the finale’s episodes among three dates: Thanksgiving Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Eve. 

What do you think: Will Republicans meet their self-imposed deadline to get the reconciliation bill on the president’s desk by July 4?