Rand Paul doubles down slamming bill, saying he won't support 'a $5T increase to our deficit'

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President Donald Trump on Tuesday blasted Sen. Rand Paul after the Kentucky Republican criticized the massive Trump-backed budget bill over its provision to raise the debt ceiling by trillions of dollars. The Morning Joe panel discusses.  For more context and news coverage of the most important stories of our day click here: https://www.msnbc.com/

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00:00Meanwhile, as President Trump ramps up pressure on Senate Republicans now to back his massive

00:06spending bill, he is calling out one vocal holdout.

00:09That's Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky.

00:11Trump posted on social media yesterday that the senator has very little understanding

00:16of the bill, later adding the people of Kentucky can't stand him.

00:22Paul later responded to the president saying he will not support a bill that raises the

00:26debt ceiling by trillions of dollars.

00:28The senator has said he believes four Republicans are opposed to the package as it stands.

00:35Republicans have a slim majority in the Senate and can only afford to lose three votes on

00:43the bill.

00:44John Bresnahan, what do we know about how the Senate will respond to this, especially given

00:50the impact it will have on people who rely on things that are going to be cut if this

00:56passes?

00:57Yeah, right.

00:58Rand Paul is right right now.

00:59There's probably enough votes to stop this bill.

01:02If you take Rand Paul, you take Ron Johnson, who would not vote for this bill as it is.

01:07You take some of the conservatives.

01:10And then there's moderate senators like Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska or Susan Collins of

01:16Maine.

01:17They have problems.

01:17There's other senators have big problems with the Medicaid portions of this bill.

01:21So I think there's, you know, they're going to have to change this bill.

01:25The question is, and Mike Johnson was talking about it, is like, if you change this bill,

01:31this bill only passed by one vote in the House.

01:33If you change this bill in the Senate to get it through somehow, you lose that.

01:37If you tack to the middle in the Senate, you lose the right in the House.

01:41And that's a huge problem.

01:42That's where Trump would have to be, you know, just knocking heads on it.

01:46But they have problems on it.

01:48I mean, they've got major work to be done in the next couple of weeks, especially if they're

01:52thinking two things.

01:53One, they want to get done by July 4th, and they got the debt limit at mid-July.

01:57And that's a huge, that's the backstop of everything.

02:00That's the ticking time bomb on this legislation.

02:02Yeah, Mark Caputo, I'm going to channel Joe a little bit, who would say these guys who've

02:06called themselves their entire lives small government conservatives who cast a vote in support

02:12of this bill, given what it does to the debt and the deficit.

02:15There's just no way you can call yourself a small government conservative and vote for

02:19this.

02:19And yet many of them are doing just that.

02:21So it does, Elon Musk's criticism, as part of your reporting, does give cover to people

02:26like Rand Paul and Ron Johnson and others to maybe be a little more emboldened to come

02:30out and say, yeah, what Elon said is right.

02:32This is, we can't pass this.

02:34So do you think that perhaps Elon Musk's public criticism has helped to torpedo this thing?

02:40I think it's certainly given credit or cover to the critics that you said.

02:44But let's also be clear about the history of the Republican Party, certainly back to George

02:50Bush II, George W. Bush.

02:53They've been massive deficit spenders and expanders of government at the same time as presenting

03:00themselves as these fiscal hawks.

03:02The difference with the Trump era Republican Party is that this is the first party that has

03:08said, Medicaid, you know, it's pretty good.

03:10Medicare, pretty good.

03:11Social Security, pretty good.

03:13Don't touch entitlements.

03:14And that's where you come to this very precarious position for Republicans when they're in charge

03:20of Congress, because they basically got three issues that they're weighing.

03:25They have tax cuts, which all Republicans essentially have to vote for as part of their

03:29dogma.

03:30You've got deficit reduction.

03:32And you've got Medicaid that they want to continue.

03:35And in the end, the deficit reduction is the thing that's going to crater.

03:39And that is where Elon Musk is 100 percent right.

03:42This does cause higher deficits and bigger debt.

03:45And there's just no way for the White House to figure its way out of that.

03:48What Donald Trump is going to have to do is he's going to have to twist arms.

03:52He's going to have to do a little bit of subtle begging, promising, cajoling, the full

03:57bag of tricks he's going to have to pull out in order to get this passed.

03:59In the end, it's still a Republican Congress.

04:02He's still the Republican leader.

04:03He's still popular in the party.

04:05It does look, judging by the past, that'll probably get it done.

04:09But just how he does it, it's really hard to see right now.

04:11Yeah, so often in the Trump era, it comes down to the personal.

04:14Donald Trump weighing and leaning on some of these guys to get their votes and them not

04:19willing to cross him.

04:21One of those members of Congress, Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, voted to pass the sweeping

04:25domestic policy bill last month, is now coming out against the legislation.

04:30In a social media post yesterday, Taylor Greene appeared to admit she hadn't read the text

04:35carefully enough and that she missed parts of the bill that stripped states of the right

04:39to regulate or make laws concerning artificial intelligence for the next 10 years.

04:44She says she is opposed to that and will vote against the final version of the bill unless

04:50the Senate removes that provision.

04:52So, important to read carefully, I guess, is the lesson here, John.

04:56Willie, the jokes write themselves.

04:57I mean, this is typical of, well, maybe of Marjorie Taylor Greene, but it's reflective

05:02of just how hurried this process was.

05:04It was so rushed and some of it was done in the middle of the night.

05:08We heard Democrats complain about that.

05:10And now we're learning that some members of Congress didn't even read through the whole

05:14bill, they or their staff, and missed important provisions.

05:17And now Marjorie Taylor Greene is suggesting that this is a real sticking point.

05:20So, not only is it a poor reflection of how they got here, but it also, again, points

05:25to the challenges that lie ahead.

05:27That, like, if the Senate's going to make real changes, well, Marjorie Taylor Greene is

05:31saying, if you don't make this change, I won't vote for it.

05:33But we also know some other Republicans in the House speaker are saying that if they do

05:37make the Senate, it makes too many changes, we won't vote for it.

05:40So, yes, to Mark's point of a moment ago, President Trump remains very popular in the party.

05:45He has an iron grip, it seems, on both houses of Congress.

05:49It's hard to imagine too many Republicans will defy him.

05:52A few do.

05:53We see Thomas Massey, a congressman of Kentucky, do it all the time.

05:56But very few do.

05:58So, the odds are he'll get this through.

05:59But there's a lot of hurdles he's going to have to clear, particularly in that accelerated

06:03timetable, July 4th, one month from today.

06:07Wow.

06:07John Bresnahan, before we go, where do you see this going today?

06:10Well, I think, look, there's the two big meetings.

06:15There's the meeting with Trump at the White House with these finance committee Republicans,

06:18and then the Senate Republicans themselves are sitting down and going to talk.

06:23I think they've got a lot of work to do, as everybody's talked about.

06:26I mean, I do think they'll get this done at the end of the day, because literally they've

06:30done nothing else in this Congress.

06:32If they don't pass this, they have nothing to run on in 2026.

06:35They've done nothing.

06:36So, they get this done, I think, at the end of the day.

06:38Will they have to scale it back?

06:40Or, I don't know.

06:41But I do think this is a big day for Republicans, Senate Republicans.

06:45They've got to get some forward momentum.

06:48The Musk thing, the Musk up yesterday really dented them.

06:52They've got problems on their right.

06:53They've got problems in their center.

06:55So, you know, I do think this is, you know, Trump is going to have to really get in there

07:00and tell guys that I want this.

07:02And we wrote about this morning.

07:04You already see Thune, Senate Majority Leader Thune, going to Trump, going to his Trump

07:08card very early in this process.

07:10It's more like Mike Johnson than you would have ever seen Mitch McConnell do.

07:14So, I think you'll see just Trump will just batter these guys.

07:17But I think this starts in earnest today.

07:19He's really going to have to get these guys if they want to pass something along this line.

07:24All right.

07:25Co-founder of Punchbowl News, John Bresnahan, and White House reporter for Axios, Mark Caputo.

07:30Thank you both very much for coming on this morning.

07:33And you're...

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