Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) railed against his colleague Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) Tuesday after the Alaskan senator called President Donald Trump’s budget reconciliation package “not there yet,” despite voting to approve it in the Senate moments earlier.
The Senate passed Trump’s "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" in a razor-thin vote Tuesday, the budget reconciliation package that extends corporate tax cuts and cuts spending on social safety net programs. Murkowski, while critical of the bill, ended up voting in favor of it, telling reporters that her hope was “that the House is gonna look at this and recognize that we’re not there yet.”
After its passage, the bill moved on to the House Rules Committee, where McGovern, the ranking member of the committee, laid into Murkowski over her comments.
“My question to her is, if you really believe that, then why the hell did you vote for this bill?” McGovern said. “It doesn't make any sense! Where have you been Sen. Murkowski? This Republican House is dysfunctional on steroids.”
With Trump having imposed a July 4 deadline for the bill’s passage, and with it now set for deliberation in the House, where the body will either concur with the Senate changes or make changes of their own, McGovern called for lawmakers to slow down the process, accusing its expedited journey through Congress as “legislative malpractice.”
“There's no real deadline that we're working against, none, July 4 is just an arbitrary marker that Trump made up, he wants a victory lap on Friday, just weeks after throwing himself a military birthday parade, complete with tanks rolling down Constitution Avenue, one that cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars,” McGovern said.
“He now wants to have a Fourth of July signing ceremony at the White House for this dumpster fire of a bill. We're rushing, not because the country demands it, but because he wants to throw himself yet another party. This isn't policy, it's ego management, so why not slow down?”