‘We’re All Going to Die’: GOP Struggles to Defend Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill

Donald Trump’s demand for a sprawling legislative package of expensive tax cuts and big spending reductions is running into trouble as even his strongest Republican allies are having trouble defending it.

Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa leaned into tongue-in-cheek gallows humor last week, telling an audience “Well, we all are going to die,” in response to concerns that kicking millions off Medicaid would lead to more deaths. House Speaker Mike Johnson, meanwhile, is simply repeating the inaccurate statements that the White House keeps putting out, asserting—very wrongly—on Sunday that “we're not cutting Medicaid,” and last month claiming that the bill’s deepest cuts would target migrants in the country without proper documentation. “The numbers of Americans who are affected are those that are entwined in our work to eliminate fraud, waste and abuse. So, what do I mean by that? You got more than 1.4 million illegal aliens on Medicaid,” Johnson said on CNN on May 25. And just this week, he told NBC another disproven assertion: “I am telling you this is going to reduce the deficit.”

It all points to how openly frustrated Republicans on Capitol Hill are about walking a plank of their own making. Trump’s demands to take on his second-term agenda in one bite has boxed in his party and they’re plenty steamed about the blatant lack of an off-ramp. As one Hill aide put it to me, it’s like watching what can most generously be called an “Ostrich Strategy”—head in the sand, hoping no one notices the reality happening above ground.

“The fissures are there for anyone who dares see them.” Sen. John Hawley of Missouri on Monday said the President had told him not to cut Medicaid benefits, despite the House-passed version doing exactly that with Trump’s enthusiastic endorsement. The so-called Medicaid Moderates like Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska have already balked at the House’s version, which the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says would boot roughly 10 million people from current coverage.

But other Republicans, like Sens. Rick Scott of Florida and Mike Lee of Utah, have a very different complaint—that the bill doesn't cut enough.

Ultimately, this is going to come down to a simple truth in politics: the biggest bullhorn wins. With an ambitious timeline of getting the “big beautiful bill” to the White House for the President’s signature by the July 4 holiday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune has to work fast. The House bill as it arrived cannot pass, meaning the Senate needs to take up the shell and do a pretty hefty rewrite. Working with a 53-vote GOP majority in a 100-member chamber, Republicans are working under a rule loophole that will allow them to get to the finish line with a bare majority, and a tie-breaking vote from Vice President J.D. Vance if needed. That means Thune can lose just three of his own, and there are at least five nos at the moment, with a few others hinting that they want their seat at the rewrite table.

Republicans have ownership of the House, Senate and White House. That doesn’t mean they have control over every corner of them.