Top Democrat needles Republicans for not reading the ‘big, beautiful bill’
A top House Democrat is needling Republicans who helped pass President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” through the lower chamber last month but have since voiced regrets upon learning of certain provisions they didn’t know were included in the 1,037-page package.
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), the vice chair of the House Democratic Caucus, suggested the Republicans — who have long accused Democrats of ramming massive legislation through Congress before lawmakers can learn what they’re voting for — are hypocrites for seemingly doing the same with Trump’s domestic agenda.
“Now we see some Republican members who are opposed to it because — guess what? — they didn’t read the bill,” Lieu said Wednesday during a press briefing in the Capitol.
With a late push from Trump, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) muscled the president’s domestic wish list through the House in the early hours of May 22, following a marathon overnight debate. The vote was 215 to 214, with one conservative skeptic voting “present.”
Supporters have hailed the legislation as transformative, providing tax cuts for most Americans, cracking down on immigration and expanding domestic petroleum production.
But in the weeks since the bill was passed, several Republicans have said they’ve come to regret their support after learning of specific language in the package.
Rep. Mike Flood (R-Neb.) turned heads last week during a town hall in his district, where he acknowledged that he was unaware of a provision in the legislation that would restrict the power of federal judges to hold government officials in contempt when they violate a court order.
“I am not going to hide the truth: This provision was unknown to me when I voted for that bill,” Flood told a jeering audience, adding that he would have opposed the package if he was aware of the language sooner.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), one of Trump’s most vocal congressional allies, piled on this week, saying she also would have voted against the package if she had known it included a 10-year moratorium on states regulating the artificial intelligence (AI) industry. She noted that it violates the federalist philosophy that’s been a central tenet of conservatism for decades.
“Full transparency, I did not know about this section on pages 278-279 of the [bill] that strips states of the right to make laws or regulate AI for 10 years,” Greene wrote Tuesday on the social platform X. “I am adamantly OPPOSED to this and it is a violation of state rights and I would have voted NO if I had known this was in there.”
Lieu, who has been a leader in Congress’s bipartisan effort to examine the societal impacts of artificial intelligence, is no fan of Greene. But on this issue, he said he’s behind her 100 percent.
“I agree with Marjorie Taylor Greene once every hundred years. This is that time,” Lieu said.
“I agree that this 10-year provision is extreme. It’s going to cause unnecessary harm. And, look, I think the federal government is fine doing preemption when we preempt with something. You can’t just preempt with nothing,” he added. “This is a bad provision, and I hope the Senate will take out this 10-year moratorium.”