President Trump is unsure whether Republicans will get his marquee One Big Beautiful Bill Act to his desk by the self-imposed Fourth of July deadline.
“I don’t know. I mean, I can’t tell you that,” Trump told Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” in a pre-taped interview when asked about the timing of the bill’s passage. “I’d like to say, yes. But the problem is if we’re two days late or five days late, everybody says, ‘Oh, you had a tremendous failure.’”
“It’s very important. If we don’t have it, there’s a 68% tax increase. If we have don’t it, you know, the debt ceiling extension is very important,” he added.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act features Trump’s legislative agenda, including the extension of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, bolstered border security, beefed-up defense spending, energy policy reforms, spending cuts and more. All of that is stuffed into one reconciliation bill to sidestep the 60-vote threshold needed to break a Democratic filibuster.
The massive bill also increases the debt limit, ahead of the projected August to September debt ceiling deadline in which the US would run the risk of default.
GOP leadership had publicly planned to put the megabill on Trump’s desk by Independence Day. On Saturday evening, Senate Republicans advanced the mammoth agenda bill, kicking off the time-consuming procedural process to pass it.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has vowed to keep the upper chamber in town through the Fourth of July if needed to get the spending bill across the finish line.
Despite starting the process, sharp divisions within the Senate GOP remain. Once it clears the Senate, it will then have to go through the House again before it can reach Trump’s desk. One of the core divisions is over how much spending Republicans should cut.
“You also have to get elected. When you do cutting, you have to be a little bit careful, because people don’t like necessarily cutting if they get used to something,” Trump said of the fiscal hawks demanding deeper cuts.
“And what I wanna do is do it through growth. We’re gonna have growth like we’ve never seen before.”
During his wide-ranging interview, Trump also spoke of how he plans to handle the $9 trillion US debt burden that is set to mature this year and faulted Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell for not lowering rates.
“We’re going turn it short term because we have a stupid person at the Fed if he would lower the rates,” Trump said of the looming debt obligation. “But I don’t want to have to pay for 10 years debt at a higher rate.
“And then we’re to get somebody into the Fed who’s going to be able to lower the rate.”
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