President Donald Trump has given Senate Republicans his blessing to “make the changes they want” to the sweeping “big, beautiful bill” passed by the House of Representatives last week, even acknowledging that some changes “will be fairly significant.”
Immediately after the reconciliation budget bill promoted by Trump narrowly made it through the House Thursday in a 215-214-1 vote after some pushback from multiple members of the Freedom and SALT (state and local tax) caucuses, Republican senators began talking revisions.
The bill will “undoubtedly” be the subject of multiple revisions before it makes it to the Senate floor, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) stated, according to Politico.
“There’s some changes that we want to make,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) told Axios in the publication’s “Hill Leaders” newsletter. “But we don’t want to change it so much that it doesn’t look the same.”
During a Sunday appearance on Fox News, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) stated that the bill’s “math doesn’t work,” arguing that it increases the nation’s deficit.
Speaking to reporters on Sunday evening, Trump said, “I want the Senate and the senators to make the changes they want. It will go back to the House and we’ll see if we can get them. In some cases, the changes may be something I’d agree with, to be honest.”
“We’ve had a very good response from the Senate and I don’t know how Democrats can’t vote for it,” the president continued. “I think they [Senate Republicans] are going to have changes. Some will be minor, some will be fairly significant.”
Regarding his July 4 goal of getting the bill locked into place, Trump said, “I think it’s going to get there,” adding that Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) “have done a fantastic job.”
Johnson does not want the Senate to make major changes to the package, telling Fox News’ Shannon Bream earlier on Sunday, “I encourage them to modify the package that we’re sending over there as little as possible, because we have to maintain that balance, and it’s a very delicate thing.”
Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram.
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