President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill" has yet another problem in addition to the controversy and protest it's garnered over the last several weeks, wrote Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) on X Monday: it doesn't really exist.
At least, it doesn't exist as a remotely finished product under the time frame the GOP is scrambling to get it passed.
"As GOP starts vote-a-rama on their Beautiful-for-Billionaires Betrayal Bill, they still don't have complete bill text," wrote Whitehouse. "Yup, still NO BILL - they're still corralling members and negotiating with parliamentarians. What a mess."
The rough outline of the bill, as currently formulated, would cut more than $1 trillion from Medicaid, food assistance, and green energy credits, while extending and deepening the GOP's 2017 tax breaks for the ultra-rich, slightly raising taxes on the bottom majority, and beefing up border security funding.
It would add around $2.4 trillion to the deficit, although Republicans continue to deny and downplay analyses forecasting this.
Once the bill gets through the amendment process in the Senate, should it pass, it will move back to the House for a revote, as it is set to dramatically change from the original blueprint passed by that chamber.
Once the House takes it up again, it could run into another wave of problems, as both the far-right House Freedom Caucus and a key faction of swing-district Republicans were granted various assurances and promises about the final product that did not make it into what the Senate is considering.