Republicans rage over Senate's ‘watered-down’ version of Trump's 'big, beautiful bill'
Republican lawmakers are becoming increasingly frustrated with the Senate as the parliamentarian continues to hack away at key provisions in President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill."
The latest ruling from the Senate parliamentarian has sent Republicans into a tailspin. It struck several Medicaid-related reforms that many conservatives fought for. Some of these provisions include limiting federal funds to states that allow illegal aliens to receive Medicaid benefits, prohibiting federal funds for "gender-affirming care," and preventing non-expansion states from increasing their current provider tax rates.
'The Senate should know better than to send a bill with this waste of taxpayer money back to the House.'
RELATED:Republican support wanes as Senate overhauls key provisions in 'big, beautiful bill'
"How is it that an unelected swamp bureaucrat, who was appointed by Harry Reid over a decade ago, gets to decide what can and cannot go in President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill? The Senate Parliamentarian is not elected," Republican Rep. Greg Steube of Florida said in a post on X. "She is not accountable to the American people. Yet she holds veto power over legislation supported by millions of voters."
"We are trying to undo the America LAST insanity from the Democrats by kicking illegals off of Medicare and Medicaid and stopping taxpayer subsidies from being used for genital mutilation of children!!" Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said in a post on X.
Although the parliamentarian is able to issue advisory rulings over which provisions are in violation of the Byrd Rule, they can be overruled, which is what Republican Rep. Keith Self of Texas is calling for.
"The rogue Senate Parliamentarian should be overruled, just like activist judges."
RELATED: Republican senator makes a stunning admission: 'I can't be somebody that I'm not'
It's not just the Medicaid provisions that have sparked outrage amongs Republican lawmakers. The Senate has hardly rolled back Biden-era green-energy subsidies that were implemented through the Inflation Reduction Act. Many Republicans in the House made it clear that aggressive cuts were nonnegotiable, yet the Senate is extending certain solar and wind subsidies through at least 2030 and in some cases through 2040.
"The American people are sick and tired of their tax dollars funding Chinese solar panels and inefficient wind turbines that are destroying our land," Republican Rep. Mary Miller of Illinois told Blaze News. "President Trump made it clear he wants no Green New Scam tax credits in the big, beautiful bill. The Senate must follow the House's lead and get it done — this is our opportunity to protect our farmland, our food supply, and our energy independence."
RELATED: SALT Republicans left seething after Senate makes major changes to the 'big, beautiful bill'
“Congress has a chance to end the left’s Green New Scam for good, but if Senate Republicans swap the House’s firm ‘placed in service’ deadline for the vague ‘construction begins’ standard, we will fail to deliver on President Trump’s promise," Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin told Blaze News. "This loophole would let wind and solar subsidies drag on for years — long after Trump’s second term — destroying American farmland and threatening our power grid."
"Americans didn’t elect Republicans to rubber-stamp Joe Biden’s radical Green New Deal scam," Self said in a post on X. "The Senate’s watered-down 'Big Beautiful Bill' wastes billions on climate schemes."
Republicans maintained that if the Senate punts this "watered-down" bill back to the House, they will likely not have the votes to pass the bill before the July 4 deadline.
"Biden's Green New Scam offers massive, unchecked subsidies to billion-dollar corporations and Chinese manufacturers, undermining American energy independence and economic freedom," Republican Rep. Mark Harris of North Carolina told Blaze News. "Yet the Senate is reportedly gutting our hard-fought House measures to stop these tax giveaways. President Trump wants them gone, and so do I. The Senate should know better than to send a bill with this waste of taxpayer money back to the House.”
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
Republican support wanes as Senate overhauls key provisions in 'big, beautiful bill'
The Senate Finance Committee put out its version of the "big, beautiful bill," and support from Republican lawmakers is already beginning to slip.
The House version of the bill narrowly passed in a 215-214 vote in May after weeks of tumultuous negotiations. The House then sent the bill over to the Senate, where the Finance Committee made key changes to several tax provisions in the bill, once again provoking various ideological factions within the GOP.
'Yeah, I will not vote for this.'
RELATED: SALT Republicans left seething after Senate makes major changes to the 'big, beautiful bill'
One of the most contested changes was lowering the SALT cap from the House's $40,000 cap back down to $10,000 in the Senate. The SALT caucus vigorously negotiated for weeks on the House side and quadrupled its original cap, which leaders have said is nonnegotiable.
As expected, SALT Republicans came out strongly against the $10,000 cap put forth by the Senate, calling the bill "insulting" and "dead on arrival." The Senate claims that the lower figure is simply a placeholder to negotiate with the House, but SALT Republicans have made clear that they won't accept anything less than $40,000.
Given their narrow House majority, Republicans can afford to lose only a handful of votes to pass the bill. Without the support from the SALT caucus, the bill would not pass the House.
"I have been clear since Day one: sufficiently lifting the SALT Cap to deliver tax fairness to New Yorkers has been my top priority in Congress," Republican Rep. Mike Lawler of New York said Monday. "After engaging in good faith negotiations, we were able to increase the cap on SALT from $10,000 to $40,000. That is the deal and I will not accept a penny less. If the Senate reduces the SALT number, I will vote NO and the bill will fail in the House."
RELATED: House narrowly passes DOGE cuts despite Republican defectors: 'The gravy train is up'
The Senate has also taken a gentler approach to rolling back green-energy subsidies first implemented through former President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act. Certain solar and wind subsidies are now going to be extended through at least 2030 and in some cases through 2040.
Fiscal hawks like Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas fought for more aggressive cuts in the House version of the bill. While the Senate softened up on green-energy subsidies, Roy is insisting on deeper cuts.
"Yeah, I will not vote for this," Roy said of the Senate's bill.
"The IRA subsidies need [to] end," Roy added. "Period."
RELATED: Democrats vote overwhelmingly to allow illegal aliens to continue voting in key district
Most critics argue the Senate's bill doesn't go far enough, but with respect to Medicaid, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri says it went too far.
The House version freezes new provider taxes, strengthens work requirements, and puts forth certain cuts to the program in order to ensure only eligible individuals are receiving Medicaid benefits. This was crucial in securing support from fiscal conservatives like Roy, who otherwise were inclined to vote against the bill in the House.
The Senate version takes these cuts one step further, capping the expansion states' charges at 3.5% by 2031. Hawley said he was "alarmed" by this provision, noting that many rural hospitals in low-income areas rely on support from the federal government.
"This is gonna defund rural hospitals effectively in order to, what, pay for solar panels in China?” Hawley said. “I’ll be really interested to see what the president thinks about this."
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
How much Green New Scam spending will survive the One Big Beautiful Bill?
Germany’s first chancellor Otto von Bismarck famously said, “Laws are like sausages. It is best not to see them being made.” That description fits President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act — with one major exception.
Unlike most legislation, the OBBB deserves a close look. But the media would rather focus on headline fodder like the SALT deduction fight and proposed Medicaid work requirements. What the media has mostly ignored is far more significant: the dismantling of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act’s climate spending, or what Trump rightly calls the “Green New Scam.”
The OBBB isn’t perfect — but it’s the best shot conservatives have to kill the Green New Scam, lock in Trump’s tax cuts, and put America’s fiscal house on firmer ground.
Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) recently claimed in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that the OBBB rolls back “the most reckless parts of the engorged climate spending,” reclaiming $6.5 billion in unspent funds. But that figure barely scratches the surface.
Goldman Sachs estimated the total value of the Inflation Reduction Act’s climate spending at a whopping $1.2 trillion. According to Grok, X’s artificial intelligence tool, the initial OBBB version would have left most of it intact.
Roughly $140 billion of that $1.2 trillion had already been spent in 2024 — much of it used to grease the palms of red-state politicians, as I’ve discussed elsewhere. Another $140 billion has been committed but not yet disbursed. The Trump administration is currently fighting in court to block that money from being spent.
But here’s the kicker: Grok’s analysis projected that between $700 billion and $900 billion of the Green New Scam funds would remain untouched under the original OBBB draft. That’s not a rounding error. That’s two orders of magnitude away from Guthrie’s $6.5 billion figure.
Fortunately, the House Freedom Caucus didn’t back down.
Led by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), the caucus demanded a bill that honored Trump’s campaign pledge to kill the Green New Scam. Roy wrote on X, “Rather than just subsidizing $350B for states with high taxes — we should pass a OBBB that FULLY terminates the Green New Scam and FULLY ends the Medicaid money laundering scam abused to hurt the vulnerable.”
He followed with this: “Writing a deficit-backed blank check (SALT) is easier than cutting spending (DOGE, Green New Scam, Post-COVID spending). Congress/swamp will always choose the easy route, but we can’t afford it.”
Roy was right. And though not completely successful, the Freedom Caucus scored a major win.
The House passed the OBBB on May 22 by a single vote, 215-214. Thanks to the Freedom Caucus, the bill cuts about $500 billion in wasteful Green New Scam spending. Half of the unspent funds have now been stripped out. The bill is now with the Senate, where its fate remains unclear.
RELATED: The Senate’s Romney-Ryan tax ideas collide with a Trump-Vance world
One strategic advantage of the OBBB lies in how it’s being passed. Like the Inflation Reduction Act before it, the OBBB uses budget reconciliation — a tool that bypasses the filibuster and requires only a simple majority. In this case, what was once a Democrat-only spending spree may now be repealed with a Republican-only rollback.
Call it poetic justice. Call it the only viable option. Either way, reconciliation makes this repeal possible — despite the fondness many subsidy-happy Republicans still have for the Green New Scam.
But the most important part of the OBBB isn’t about repealing waste. It’s about preserving growth.
The bill makes Trump’s 2017 tax cuts permanent. That alone carries a projected value of $4 trillion over the next decade and prevents a $1,700 annual tax hike on the average American family.
Republicans who block the OBBB over narrow interests risk handing Democrats a tax increase — and possibly their own walking papers in the 2026 midterms. That includes swing-district moderates who demand Green New Scam subsidies and fiscal hawks who balk at anything short of a full repeal.
The key difference? The pro-subsidy Republicans didn’t vote for those climate programs in the first place. Yet, now they’re willing to tank the whole bill to preserve them.
One Freedom Caucus member told me he remains hopeful the Senate can claw back more of the Green New Scam funds. Maybe so. But I wouldn’t bet on it.
Which brings us back to Bismarck. Lawmaking may resemble sausage-making, but at least sausages leave a good taste behind. When done right, so can legislation.
The OBBB isn’t perfect — but it’s the best shot conservatives have to kill the Green New Scam, lock in Trump’s tax cuts, and put America’s fiscal house on firmer ground.
Will Trump’s Free-Market Drug Pricing Solution Cut Out Greedy Middlemen?
An executive order instructs the HHS secretary to negotiate with drug manufacturers so that Americans pay the same low prices that others do.
www.theblaze.com