Fla. Sen. Rick Scott calls for more budget cuts to restore ‘fiscal sanity' into Trump's ‘big, beautiful' bill

New York Post

3 days ago

A top Senate Republican said Sunday that more spending cuts are needed to infuse 'fiscal sanity' into President Trump's proposed 'big, beautiful' budget bill.
Florida Sen. Rick Scott, who serves on the Senate's Budget Committee, told WABC 770 AM radio's 'Cats Roundtable' that his fellow GOPers in the House did not do nearly enough to control spending or help rein in America's explosive debt when they passed the bill last month.
He said he and other Senate Republicans will work with the president and House GOPers to remove bloat and confront the debt bomb in a final spending bill.
5 Senator Rick Scott says more spending cuts are needed to infuse 'fiscal sanity' into President Trump's proposed 'big, beautiful' budget bill.
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'The House worked their tail off. Unfortunately, the House bill cuts the spending over the next 10 years by something like 1.7%. There's a lot more we have to do,' Scott told show host John Catsimatidis.
Scott, a two-term senator who previously served as Florida's governor, said the bill passed by the House includes many good things such as renewing the 2017 Trump tax cuts and boosting spending for border security and the military.
'But we have to bring more fiscal sanity to the table,' he said. 'In the next few months, we'll probably hit $37 trillion in debt. And we're running over $1 trillion a year on interest expense.'
'If we leave it just the way it is, we're going to be close to $60 trillion worth of debt in 10 years. We'll never be able to pay for anything else we care about.'
He said Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, have shown where spending can be slashed.
'We've got to go line by line through the budget and do everything we can to save money,' Scott said. 'I'm committed to getting this bill done. I believe every Republican I know wants to get this bill done. But we also will want to create some fiscal sanity.'
5 Elon Musk accompanying Scott as they walk through the U.S. Capitol on March 05.
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The proposed One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which is intended to be Trump's signature legislative achievement of the year, features more than $1.5 trillion in spending cuts over a 10-year period but is projected to add between $3 to $4 trillion to the debt during that time frame, according to various estimates.
Deficit concerns have prompted backlash from GOP fiscal hawk such as Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who have expressed opposition to the mega-bill in its current form because of its impact on the deficit.
Other Republican critics, such as Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), have voiced reservations over the Medicaid reforms in the mammoth bill.
5 Speaker of the House Mike Johnson speaks to the media after the House narrowly passed a bill forwarding President Donald Trump's agenda on May 22 in Washington, DC.
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5 Sen. Rand Paul has expressed opposition to the mega-bill in its current form because of its impact on the deficit.
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Last month, Scott told conservative pundit Charlie Kirk, 'Absolutely I'd vote no' on the bill in its current form and, 'If they brought it to the floor right now, there's not a chance it would get to 51 votes.'
Republicans hold a 53-47 edge over Democrats in the Senate.
Trump has warned that Republicans who threaten to vote against his spending plan are playing into the hands of Democrats. He singled out Paul on Saturday.
'If Senator Rand Paul votes against our Great, Big, Beautiful Bill, he is voting for, along with the Radical Left Democrats, a 68% Tax Increase and, perhaps even more importantly, a first time ever default on US Debt,' Trump wrote on Truth Social.
5 Trump has said Republicans who threaten to vote against his spending plan are playing into the hands of Democrats.
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On a different segment of the Sunday radio show, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) defended the bill passed by one vote in his chamber and vowed that the Senate and House and the White House would agree on a final package by July 4.
In response to criticism from Senate budget hawks such as Scott, the speaker insisted the House made historic cuts.
'No other government has ever cut this much in a single piece of legislation,' Johnson said. 'You're talking about more than $1.5 trillion. It's by a factor of two the largest cut that Congress will have ever made.
'Is it enough? No, it's not,' he acknowledged. 'We have $36 trillion in federal debt. But it's important to remember that we did not get into that financial situation overnight. It took many decades.
'It's going to take more than a flip of a switch to turn it around … It's like a large vessel on the sea. It doesn't turn on a dime. You need like a mile of open ocean to do it.'
Johnson said the House bill was a 'dramatic shift in the right direction.'