MAGA rep who called debt ‘existential threat’ pressed over support of megabill

Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) was pressed Tuesday by CNN on his support for President Donald Trump’s costly budget reconciliation bill, estimated to add trillions of dollars to the deficit, given that he previously campaigned on lowering the nation’s debt.

Trump’s bill, dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, is projected to add $3.3 trillion to the deficit over 10 years, per the Congressional Budget Office, and was estimated to add $2.4 trillion in the House version before it was amended in the Senate, a version Fine voted in support of.

Appearing on CNN's "News Central," Fine was pressed by Brianna Keilar to make sense of the contradiction.

“How does that cost estimate, which is huge, of this bill that you’re backing square with your promise to save the country from fiscal irresponsibility?” Keilar asked.

“Look, we have a 100-yard game that we have to win to save the country, and you can't do it all in one bill,” Fine said.

“I believe we're on the one-yard line right now, I think this bill takes us to the 11-yard line, it gets us a new first down, but we still have 89 yards to go, and I think one of the mistakes my colleagues are making is they're treating this One Big Beautiful Bill as the only big beautiful bill that we will have ever done.”

Back in January, Fine called the nation’s then-$35.3 trillion debt the “greatest existential threat to the United States,” and vowed to prioritize reducing it if elected. Unsatisfied with Fine’s explanation, Keilar pressed him on how he could rationalize racking up trillions in debt as an apparent fiscal hawk.

“So why start by adding to (the debt)?” Keilar asked.

“Well, because I'm not convinced that it does,” Fine pressed back. “The last time the CBO scored tax cuts, they were wrong by $1.5 trillion.”

Keilar quickly shot down Fine’s example, pointing out that the budget projection he was referring to came from 2018, when the CBO projected tax receipts for 2018 to 2024, a projection that did not consider the impending COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, a number of Republicans have already seized on the discrepancy to delegitimize the CBO’s projections on the megabill.

“That's because they made the estimate without considering the pandemic and other things as well; we can't predict a pandemic,” Keilar said. “It's a nonpartisan organization.”

Watch the video below or use this link.