'I read summaries': GOP rep admits he's only skimmed bill he's voting on
WASHINGTON – Asked if he had read the version of President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” the U.S. Senate sent back to the House — amid reported GOP consternation about its contents — one senior Republican congressman admitted he hadn't.
“Have you been able to read the entire bill?” Raw Story asked.
“My view is that, of course, what we have to do is trust the leadership,” Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) said.
“I do, and I trust the president. And hey … in my view, that's just the way you handle it.
“And I'm aware of, certainly, many of the highlights, and we've been reading the highlights, and we get summaries of the bill. And so, of course, I read all the different summaries … good and bad. There are things in there I like, things I don't like.”
The Republican bill contains tax and spending cuts widely predicted to wreak havoc on Americans who depend on Medicaid and other government support programs, while significantly growing the national deficit.
Last month, House Republicans passed their own sweeping version of the bill after a series of late-night sessions where leadership fought hard to unite the conference and overcome concerns from various factions of today’s divided GOP
Afterwards, many Republicans courted public ridicule when they admitted they had not read the bill they voted to advance.
The Senate also endured all-night sessions to come up with its version of the bill, which passed after the Vice President was called in to break a tie on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, Raw Story asked Wilson: “You're not worried with all the midnight and 4 a.m. changes?”
“I have faith in Virginia Foxx, OK,” Wilson said, referring to the North Carolina congresswoman who chairs the House Rules Committee. “And I have faith in [House Speaker] Mike Johnson.”
Raw Story pressed: “You don’t think a politician would lie to you?”
Wilson said: “No, no, no, I wouldn't. No. No, not them.”
“Not Johnson, Trump?”
“No, no,” Wilson insisted, adding with a conspiratorial twist that “sadly,” he felt “vindicated” by Democratic opposition to the bill, given he had “warned that there would be illegal aliens covered by Obamacare and by healthcare issues, and they voted again yesterday [in the Senate] to do that, and so from the beginning I said, ‘That's just wrong, but I know what they're doing. They're trying to bring in new voters.’”
‘The goal is always to get it done’
Wilson was not alone in seeming unconcerned about not knowing the full content of the massive bill — or in expressing a lack of concern about how soon it might get past the House, in light of leadership’s long-held aim of having it on President Trump’s desk by July 4.
Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), an influential Trump ally eyeing a run for governor, said: “We're gonna get this done. Today, next week, it'll happen.
“The goal is always to get it done. You know, I don't really get too caught up in the timelines that are laid out there. Even the president's not caught in timelines. Yeah, let's just get it done.”
Does Donalds think this is a good bill?
“Yes, most of the policy I completely agree with. Some of the stuff of extending the green tax credits, it's just not good policy,” Donalds told Raw Story. “The energy that those credits perpetuate are not sustainable for the electric grid, not sustainable for the power consumption.”
Democrats and other critics of the bill have said it will deal a huge blow to U.S. renewable energy production, in favor of GOP-aligned fossil fuel interests.
Raw Story asked Donalds if such a huge, sweeping bill might inevitably contain things he or any other Republican might not like?
“There was a lot of deliberation early on about how we were going to proceed, to bring it all together,” Donalds said. “But, yeah, that's moved to now. Just got to get it done.”
Democrats have promised to use the Big Beautiful Bill as ammunition in the run-up to midterm elections next year, particularly as it continues to poll extremely badly with American voters.
‘The whole ball game’
Rep. Richard Hudson (R-NC) is chair of the National Republican Campaign Committee, which is gearing up to help the GOP defend its majority in next year’s midterms.
He said he wasn’t worried about Democratic attacks, telling Raw Story: “77 million Americans elected Donald Trump to enact this specific agenda: border security, tax cuts, economic agenda, energy policy. This is the whole ball game.”
Repeating the party line, Hudson said cuts to Medicaid in the Big Beautiful Bill only targeted “waste, fraud and abuse” – a claim most analysts do not accept.
Raw Story asked if Hudson had any concern that the GOP might be setting itself up for its own version of the 2010 Tea Party sweep when Democratic support for an unpopular climate bill, among other missteps, cost the party the majority in those midterm polls.
“The difference is, the American people didn't want the climate bill, it was unpopular,” Hudson told Raw Story, insisting: “This is the agenda that 77 million Americans voted for. It's a big difference.”
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