Exclusive: Thune vs. the polls on the "big, beautiful bill"
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Senate Majority Leader John Thune admits Democrats "have done a good job out-demagoguing" President Trump's "big, beautiful bill," he told Axios in an exclusive interview on Tuesday.
Why it matters: Republicans know they are down at halftime, with the polls looking ugly on the overall package. But parts of it are very popular, and Thune (R-S.D.) thinks they can run up the score after the final bill is passed.
- "Congress doesn't do comprehensive well," Thune told Axios.
- Democratic arguments about "slashing Medicaid" or "letting billionaires have tax cuts" are just "the early arguments that people are hearing," Thune said.
- He called it hard to effectively talk about a bill this big.
🥵 Some Senate Republicans are feeling the heat: Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) warned Tuesday that changes to Medicaid could earn the GOP a level of backlash that Democrats felt on Obamacare, Punchbowl News reported.
- But Thune thinks the GOP will be fine, once there is a final law to talk about. "You're going to be talking about all the individual components of this that are incredibly popular — and they are," he told Axios.
What to watch: Thune is betting most Americans do not have a good idea of what is in the bill. (To be fair, Congress is still figuring out the details.)
- He predicts specific measures — border or national security or energy or tax related — will surprise voters, in a good way.
- "People say, 'Oh, oh, I didn't realize that. I really like that. This is in there? I didn't know that.' And I think you're gonna hear a lot of that," he said.
Zoom in: Some of these potentially, popular details are still being worked on, with Trump feeling free to publicly weigh in.
- Trump said he hates the provisions that would more slowly roll back some of the energy tax credits, calling it a "SCAM" on Truth Social on Saturday.
- Thune said he talked to Trump about the concerns on Sunday. "He was really, really — This is something he feels passionate about," Thune said.
- "Our number and the House number will be very close," Thune said of the energy tax credit parts of the bill.
Zoom out: Thune is sticking to the July 4 deadline, even as House and Senate Republicans publicly fight over the details and pieces of the bill get struck down by Senate rules.
- "Absent deadlines, things drag," Thune said of his commitment to July 4.
- Thune is optimistic about pending decisions on whether the tax and Medicaid policies are allowed in the package, saying they had "pre-vetted" most of it with the parliamentarian and so were "80- 90% there."
