4 days ago
Rick Scott wants more cuts in Trump's signature domestic tax and spending bill
Florida U.S. GOP Sen. Rick Scott speaking in Clearwater on May 28, 2025. (Photo by Mitch Perry/Florida Phoenix)
Rick Scott has always been a deficit hawk, sometimes to his political peril, so it's no surprise that he's among a group of Republican U.S. senators seeking significant changes to President Donald Trump's 'big, beautiful bill.'
The budget and tax bill passed the GOP-controlled U.S. House of Representatives by a single vote last week.
'The package that just passed the House will take the deficit in 10 years from $37 trillion to close to $60 trillion,' Scott said Wednesday in Clearwater after holding a press conference on hurricane preparedness.
'We're already spending more than 20% of your revenues that you're going to give us, in your tax dollars, to interest. That's not sustainable.'
The Penn Wharton University of Pennsylvania Budget Model estimates that passage of the legislation as its written right now would raise the federal deficit by more than $3 trillion over the next 10 years. Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, disputes that calculation, insisting the bill 'saves' more than $1.6 trillion in mandatory spending.
Scott's concerns about federal spending led to his '12-point plan to Rescue America' that he unveiled in 2022 when he served as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
The plan called for sunsetting all federal legislation every five years, including Social Security and Medicare — a proposal so unpopular that it was opposed by then GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and mocked by President Joe Biden, ultimately leading the Florida Republican to remove those two major entitlement programs from his proposal.
Scott praised the House for passing the bill last week, and emphasized that 'I completely agree with President Trump's agenda,' which he said included securing the southern border, building up the military, and making the 2017 tax cuts, which are set to expire later this year, permanent. 'Those are all things that we ought to do,' he said.
Scott was re-elected to the Senate last year over Democratic challenger Debbie Mucarsel-Powell by 13 points, by far his largest margin of victory in his four statewide races in Florida over the past 14 years, with the three previous races all decided by a margin of one percentage point or less.
Scott said that Congress needs to continue to work on reducing federal spending.
'We had a 53% increase in spending in five years, a 53% increase,' he said. 'Population's only up 2%. There's probably a little bit of waste in there. So I think we need to go back to pre-pandemic spending.'
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been critical of the tax and spending package, noting his disappointment that the budget cuts made by Elon Musk and his 'Department of Government Efficiency' this year that were not included in the House bill.
'To see Republicans in Congress cast aside any meaningful reductions (and in fact, fully fund things like USAID) is demoralizing and represents a betrayal of the voters who elected him,' the governor said on X on Tuesday.
But as Scott noted Wednesday, under Senate rules, only mandatory spending can be placed in a reconciliation bill, which is what is what the House passed last week. DOGE cuts are considered discretionary spending.
'DOGE has shown us that there's a lot of waste in the [budget], so we've got to do both of these,' Scott said. 'If we don't, here's what's going to happen. Interest rates are not going to come down. If we keep borrowing $2 trillion every year, inflation's not going away, interest rates are not coming down. Just this year, we need to refinance over $9 trillion worth of Treasuries and sell another $2 trillion.'
Separately, the White House is expected to send its 'rescission package' to the House soon, which will include the DOGE cuts, House Speaker Mike Johnson said on X on Wednesday.
Scott says that he's going to work hard to find cuts in the tax and spending package, and is confident he'll be able to pass the legislation when it's ready to go sometime later this summer.
'We'll get a bill done,' he said. 'The goal is to get it done by the 4th of July. We have to get it done probably by the end of July because of the debt ceiling, but I think the bill will pass.'
Every Democratic member of the House opposed the spending and tax package last week, and are highlighting major cuts to Medicaid and food assistance as a reason why the public should oppose it as well.
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