{"id":73410,"date":"2025-07-18T19:13:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T19:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/73410\/"},"modified":"2025-07-18T19:13:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T19:13:12","slug":"republicans-keep-voting-for-bills-they-say-they-dont-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/73410\/","title":{"rendered":"Republicans keep voting for bills they say they don’t like"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 Two weeks after he cast a decisive vote to pass a sweeping domestic policy bill<\/a> that cuts Medicaid by about $1 trillion, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., introduced a bill<\/a> to repeal some of those cuts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow is the time to prevent any future cuts to Medicaid from going into effect,\u201d Hawley said in a statement. <\/p>\n

It sparked mockery from the normally mild-mannered Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., who posted on X:<\/a> \u201cJust so I\u2019m clear\u2026 he\u2019s introducing a bill\u2026.to repeal the bill\u2026 he voted for\u2026.two weeks ago?\u201d<\/p>\n

Hawley said he feared the party’s megabill would cause long-term harm if the Medicaid cuts are fully implemented, but still voted for it because it will deliver more hospital money<\/a> for Missouri in the first four years.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t get everything you want in one piece of legislation. I like a lot of what we did. I don\u2019t like some of it,\u201d he told reporters after unveiling his own measure on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The move represents a trend in Congress during President Donald Trump’s second term. Republican lawmakers across the ideological spectrum keep casting votes in favor of bills even while warning that they\u2019re deeply flawed and may require fixing down the road. In some cases, lawmakers explicitly threaten to vote \u201cno\u201d on bills before eventually folding and voting \u201cyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t unusual for lawmakers to back legislation they call imperfect. But this year, that contrast has become more stark. It comes as Trump has solidified his grasp over the GOP base<\/a>, resulting in lawmakers growing increasingly leery of crossing him and risking their political futures. <\/p>\n

Nowhere has that dynamic been more pronounced than with the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus<\/a>, whose members have repeatedly threatened to oppose bills before acquiescing under pressure<\/a> from Trump. With Trump’s megabill, they complained about red ink: It’s expected to add $3.3 trillion to the national debt over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the Senate did is unconscionable,\u201d Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., said in a Rules Committee meeting, vowing that \u201cI\u2019ll vote against it here and I\u2019ll vote against it on the floor.\u201d He ultimately voted for that bill, unamended, after conservatives were told Congress would consider future bills to lower the debt.<\/p>\n

In the House, a faction of swing-district Republicans voted for clean energy cuts in the “big, beautiful bill<\/a>” while voicing their hope that the Senate would undo them. That didn\u2019t happen, and nearly all of them voted for the legislation<\/a> regardless. <\/p>\n

Across the Capitol, after Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, cast another key vote to approve the megabill, she said she \u201cstruggled mightily with the impact on the most vulnerable in this country, when you look to Medicaid and SNAP,\u201d and called on the House to make changes. They didn\u2019t. The House passed it as written and sent it to Trump to become law.<\/p>\n

“Do I like this bill? No. But I tried to take care of Alaska\u2019s interests,\u201d Murkowski told NBC News<\/a> after the Senate vote earlier this month.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I know, I know that in many parts of the country, there are Americans that are not going to be advantaged by this bill. I don\u2019t like that,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

In another case, Rep. David Valadao, R-Calif., who represents a battleground district with a high share of Medicaid recipients<\/a>, threatened to vote against the entire Senate bill if it maintained the steeper cuts to the program.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will not support a final bill that eliminates vital funding streams our hospitals rely on, including provider taxes and state directed payments,\u201d he said in a statement<\/a>, urging the Senate to \u201cstick to the Medicaid provisions\u201d in the earlier House version of the bill; \u201cotherwise, I will vote no.\u201d<\/p>\n

Valadao\u2019s request was ignored. Five days later he voted for the Senate bill when it returned to the House, securing final passage. (His office didn\u2019t respond to queries about the contradiction.)<\/p>\n

In the end, just three Republicans who expressed concerns about Medicaid voted against the bill: Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who had just announced he wouldn\u2019t seek re-election<\/a>, as well as Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick R-Pa., who are set to face tough races in next years midterms. <\/p>\n

And Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who consistently voted against the megabill throughout the process over deficit concerns, is now facing the threat<\/a> of a Trump-backed primary challenge. <\/p>\n

A similar trend occurred on the $9 billion package of spending cuts<\/a> to NPR, PBS and foreign aid that passed Congress this week and was sent to Trump\u2019s desk. In the run-up to the votes, multiple Republicans expressed serious concerns with the substance of the bill, its deference to the executive branch and the damage it could do to bipartisan dealmaking on government funding if one side can undo the parts it doesn\u2019t like on a party-line basis.<\/p>\n

\u201cI suspect we\u2019re going to find out there are some things that we\u2019re going to regret. Some second and third order effects. And I suspect that when we do we\u2019ll have to come back and fix it,\u201d said Tillis, before voting in favor of the bill.<\/p>\n

Tillis told NBC News that he was \u201ctrying to have a positive view about how this rescission is going to be implemented\u201d and that if he\u2019s unsatisfied it will change his attitude to future rescission bills.<\/p>\n

Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., the chair of the Armed Services Committee, said he was troubled that Congress wasn’t detailing which programs were cut and deferring to the White House.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt concerns me \u2014 as perhaps approaching a disregard for the constitutional responsibilities of the legislative branch under Article I,\u201d said Wicker, who voted for the bill. \u201cAnd in this situation it will amount to the House and Senate basically saying: We concede that decision voluntarily to the executive branch.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014 Two weeks after he cast a decisive vote to pass a sweeping domestic policy bill that…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":73411,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[51,50,52],"class_list":{"0":"post-73410","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114875832971057978","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}