GOP Sen. Thom Tillis passes on reelection bid after stoking Trump’s ire by voting against ‘big beautiful bill’

https://nypost.com/2025/06/29/...-big-beautiful-bill/

North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis stunningly announced Sunday that he won’t seek reelection after drawing President Trump’s wrath over the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, leaving a vulnerable GOP seat up for grabs.

Just before his sudden announcement, the Republican senator had rankled Trump by voting against advancing the marquee Trump legislation because of his concerns about the Medicaid provisions in the megabill.

“In Washington over the last few years, it’s become increasingly evident that leaders who are willing to embrace bipartisanship, compromise, and demonstrate independent thinking are becoming an endangered species,” Tillis said in a statement Sunday.

“It’s not a hard choice, and I will not be seeking re-election.”

After GOP Sen. Susan Collins’ seat in Maine, Tillis was widely viewed as the next most vulnerable incumbent senator.

Trump had fumed against Tillis on Saturday over his vote against advancing the act and threatened to back a primary challenge against him.

“Looks like Senator Thom Tillis, as usual, wants to tell the Nation that he’s giving them a 68% Tax Increase, as opposed to the Biggest Tax Cut in American History!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“Thom Tillis is making a BIG MISTAKE for America, and the Wonderful People of North Carolina!” he added. “Numerous people have come forward wanting to run in the Primary against ‘Senator Thom’ Tillis.”

quote:

North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis stunningly announced Sunday that he won’t seek reelection after drawing President Trump’s wrath over the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, leaving a vulnerable GOP seat up for grabs.

“As many of my colleagues have noticed over the last year, and at times even joked about, I haven’t exactly been excited about running for another term. That is true since the choice is between spending another six years navigating the political theatre and partisan gridlock in Washington or spending that time with the love of my life Susan, our two children, three beautiful grandchildren.”

Good. If he's not firmly committed he shouldn't run. Too many of these folks hang on because they like the power, the perks, the adulation.

I’m glad Tillis decided not to run. He hasn’t been a friend of the average conservative. I just hope the powers to be put up a credible candidate.

Senate Version Of Trump Tax Bill Adds $3.3 Trillion To Deficit, $500BN More Than The House; Debt Ceiling Raised By $5 Trillion

The Senate version of President Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill (BBB) will add nearly $3.3 trillion to US deficits over a decade, according to the latest estimate from the Congressional Budget Office, half a trillion more than the $2.8 trillion in deficit expansion under the House version of the same bill.

The CBO score for the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill reflects a $4.5 trillion decrease in revenues (i.e. tax cuts relative to the pre-TCJA baseline) and a $1.2 trillion decrease in spending through 2034, relative to a current law baseline.

The Senate bill, by Republican request, was also scored as saving $508 billion over a decade relative to a current policy baseline. The party’s lawmakers have sought to use the accounting maneuver to permanently extend President Donald Trump’s 2017 income-tax cuts, and score them as costing nothing.

While this approach is expected to pass, it effectively dooms the US to debt collapse as every subsequent administration will use the same tactic from now on and pretend that trillions in incremental spending every 4 years are really just an extension of the baseline. Meanwhile, the US is set to hit $40 trillion in debt in less than 2 years.

What does this mean? It means that Senate Republicans slapped a price tag on their tax package that is nearly 90% lower than the version that recently passed the House. They didn't bring the price down by changing the policies in the One Big Beautiful Bill. Instead, the Senate simply changed the way they did the math.

Senate Republicans are using a new method to estimate the costs of their tax package that ignores the price of continuing any tax policy in effect when the bill is passed. That method of accounting, called the "current policy" baseline, lets the Senate advertise President Donald Trump's tax package at one-tenth of its impact on the nation's finances as estimated by Congress's usual way of counting costs. If the costs were estimated in the traditional way, the Senate's proposed tax package would add $4.2 trillion to the national debt, according to preliminary estimates from the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

"This would be the biggest and maybe most economically costly gimmick in American history," said Marc Goldwein, vice president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, in a post on X.

As a result, Senate Republicans have moved forward with a plan to mask the $3.8 trillion cost of extending expiring tax cuts. GOP senators voted Monday in favor of the plan to count the extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts as costing nothing, over objections from Democrats and despite concerns raised by economists about the US debt trajectory.

Republicans argue that using this accounting method, known as “current policy,” would allow them to include more tax cuts in Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill.”

The cost of extending Trump’s first-term tax cuts, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, totals $3.8 trillion. The other tax provisions in the bill cost nearly $693 billion, and only that smaller figure is considered in the official price tag for the bill.

Use of the current policy baseline is unprecedented for the reconciliation process the Republicans are using to approve the massive legislation with a simple majority. The cost of a bill is normally measured according to what effect it would have on the federal budget under current law. But the Republicans want to revise the process by assuming that current policies remain in place indefinitely.

The reason for this accounting gimmickry is that the bill’s staggering cost - which ends up adding substantially to the deficit instead of cutting it as some had expected as recently as weeks ago - has been a big problem for fiscal conservatives. It has faced several obstacles in the Senate as lawmakers have demanded conflicting changes. Then a number of spending cuts included in the package were changed as they did not comply with Senate rules for the reconciliation process.

https://www.zerohedge.com/mark...more-house-cbo-finds

Why no one thought they should fire the parliamentarian before this is nuts.

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:
Why no one thought they should fire the parliamentarian before this is nuts.

Unless you didn't actually want any of this stuff to go through and needed a convenient scapegoat for it. Buncha fuckin' spineless, useless people. That's the Republican brand I know: professional losers.

Other than pork, is there any reason to support the Senates form of the bill?

^^^^^^^

And of the pork, the HPA and SHORT didn’t get to platter? Geez…if they’re going to keep burning millions at least give us a 2A win!

I'm surprised that President Trump didn't have VP Vance add the HPA and Short Act back in.

Maybe the HPA and Short Act were sacrificial fodder?

Can HPA and Short act come back in via reconciliation between house and senate bill?

Maybe I'm missing something, but I was very disappointed when the proposed budget increased the national debt by $3.3 - $5 Trillion. I was expecting a reduction in the national debt.

quote:

Originally posted by bob ramberg:
Maybe I'm missing something, but I was very disappointed when the proposed budget increased the national debt by $3.3 - $5 Trillion. I was expecting a reduction in the national debt.

I was as well

quote:

I was expecting a reduction in the national debt.

https://x.com/TheRabbitHole84/.../1939820341922341227



https://x.com/elonmusk/status/...-political-firestorm



Tesla has long benefited from the $7,500 EV tax credit, which the BBB plan aims to eliminate. While this move has been widely anticipated, it could ultimately work in Tesla's favor, hitting rivals like Rivian, Lucid, and legacy automakers far harder, as many still rely heavily on such subsidies to stay afloat.

Tesla shares are down 4% in premarket trading, currently hovering around $303 per share. On the year, shares are down 21%, as of Monday's close.

As for Trump's threat about "no more rocket launches, satellites" — referring to Musk's company SpaceX — good luck following through on that. SpaceX is the reason the U.S. is leading the global space race.

https://www.zerohedge.com/poli...-political-firestorm

Senate just passed the BBB, now it goes back to the House, maybe we'll get the HPA back in..

JD Vance had to cast the winning Vote

https://x.com/TrumpWarRoom/status/1940081583022658035

I'm not too worried about any fallout from medicaid cuts as the vast majority of those impacted vote Democrat to begin with. As far as Trump going back on his promise to not touch social benefit programs, too bad.

quote:

Originally posted by HRK:
Senate just passed the BBB, now it goes back to the House, maybe we'll get the HPA back in..

I think the way the reconciliation works is that the House votes on it as is. If they modify it, then it has to go back to the Senate again, and they have to vote again, not only on the revised bill but on overriding the Parlimentarian. Considering the Senate weren’t willing to do it before, it’s unlikely they would do it now, at least for this. The reality is that compared to all of the other things Senators and Reps are fighting about being in, or not being in, HPA/SHORT are very, very low on the list.

RINO Murkowski was the last GOP holdout. I wonder what concession the leadership had to make to push her over to the Yay side. She could have played McCain 2.0, and JD Vance wouldn’t have mattered.

quote:

RINO Murkowski was the last GOP holdout. I wonder what concession the leadership had to make to push her over to the Yay side.

She is absolutely sleazy.