Washington, D.C. – On Thursday, U.S. Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) joined Fox Business’ “Kudlow” to discuss President Trump’s Big, Beautiful, Bill being sent over to the Senate and where the process stands now. Highlights below.
Sen. Mullin’s full interview can be found here.
On Senate input in the Big, Beautiful, Bill:
“As you know, Larry, we’ve been talking about the reconciliation literally since the November election, and everybody’s had their opportunity to have input. Ron Johnson has had his opportunity to have input, Lindsey Graham, I’ve had my input. Rick Scott, Mike Lee, Susan Collins, Mitch McConnell, even John Thune, everybody has had their opportunity to have input in this bill. And we’re going to continue the one bill, one Big, Beautiful, Bill. President Trump has made the play call. He said, this is what he wants. We’ve debated it, the House has now passed it, they’ve given it to us.”
On the framework of the Big, Beautiful, Bill:
“Why would we tear down the frame that the House has already built? Why don’t we take it? If we’ve got to repaint the interior walls, that’s fine, but at the end of the day, we’re going to vote on reconciliation that the American people want. And it may not be a perfect bill, but we’ve negotiated it, we’ve talked about it, we’ve had conferences on it, we’ve talked about it in our committees.”
On every Senator having two choices:
“When it goes to the floor, every member is going to have two choices, and that’s it… You’re going to either vote for the bill and say, I’m going to move forward with what the American people want and move into the Trump era policies, or I’m going to say… we’re going to stay put… we’d rather stay with Biden era policies, because that’s your choices. That’s it, A or B. And we can’t allow perfection to get in the way of good, because this is a better bill than what we’re currently working with.”
On the Byrd Rule and restrictions the Senate must comply with:
“The American people are getting impatient too. We’ve already got constituents who want us to pass this thing tomorrow. What people have to understand is our two chambers operate completely different. So, we have to deal with the Byrd Rule over here, what I call the bird bath. It’s got to come over here, it’s got to get scrubbed.”
“We’ve got almost 1,100 pages that we have to go through, line by line. And here’s why that’s important. Because if we were to bring this bill to the floor as it is, and the parliamentarian rules that it doesn’t fit underneath the Byrd rule. It can’t fit underneath reconciliation. Reconciliation was reconciled in 1990 which basically said, we can do reconciliation with a slim majority as long as it fits within the Byrd Rule, which is taxes and government spending. And we can do it with a simple majority of 51.”
“If it doesn’t fit inside the Byrd Rule, we have to go through the appropriation process, which says we’ve got to have 60. So, we have to go through it before we can get started. And I think if President Trump really leans in this, which I’ll be talking to him tomorrow at the White House about it, I think if he really leans in on it, we can maybe do it before July 4th. But July 4th is a tough target if the Senate doesn’t work fast but Larry, I think we can get it done for the American people.”
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