Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) pushed back against criticisms of President Donald Trump‘s ‘big, beautiful bill,’ which Trump ally Elon Musk deemed a “disgusting abomination.”
Thune suggested that analyses by people he dubbed “Washington, D.C. scorekeepers” on the president’s tax bill were previously incorrect about other pieces of legislation, using the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and the $1.5 trillion it generated as an example. Beyond what he said is the “track record” of these forecasts being incorrect, Thune also predicted that reduced taxes would lead to increased incentive to invest, creating “better-paying jobs.”
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“So there’s just a lot of analysis around this bill that isn’t accurately reflecting what will happen when all these policies are put into place,” Thune said on Fox News’s America’s Newsroom. “And by the way, it will be the biggest spending reduction in history. There’s just no question about that. It’s going to have huge savings in it, and we’re hoping to enhance that here in the Senate.”
Thune argued that Trump’s bill addresses many of the party’s priorities, ranging from modernizing the military to securing the southern border and extending tax cuts, saying that a $4.5 trillion increase in taxes cannot happen before the end of this year.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has also voiced criticism of Trump’s bill, expressing opposition to the bill raising the debt ceiling. Thune acknowledged that the nation’s debt “is unsustainably high” and that one way Congress can fix this is by increasing growth in the nation’s economy, which cannot be done without passing bills to cut spending, which he argued Trump’s bill does.
Paul’s criticism has drawn the ire of the president, who wrote on Truth Social that the Kentucky senator has “very little understanding” of his tax bill and the incoming “tremendous GROWTH” the nation will experience.
The Congressional Budget Office said on Wednesday that the “big, beautiful bill” would add $2.4 trillion to the nation’s deficit. However, the CBO score did not account for the possibility of the legislation boosting economic growth, which would create new revenues.
In addition to extending the 2017 tax cuts that Trump is seeking, the bill cuts taxes by $3.7 trillion over the next decade. Federal spending would also be cut by $1.3 trillion.