Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) said Monday that the backlash Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) has faced after voting to delay President Trump’s agenda-setting domestic policy package should alarm people about the state of American politics and the Republican Party.
“There’s something here that everyone should notice: We are slipping into a strongman state where the president has such an acquiescent Republican caucus that they’re doing this crazy policy, hurting America, hurting the next generation, because Donald Trump wants it,” Merkley, the top Democrat on the Budget Committee, told CNN’s Sara Sidner. “This is very dangerous for the separation of powers, the checks and balances, and so we’re in a bigger fight here.”
The Oregon Democrat said that it isn’t only related to the bill, adding, “it’s also over preventing America from losing its architecture of its constitution, separation of powers, so that we can have government by and for the people, not government by and for the powerful.”
Tillis, 64, bucked GOP leaders and opposed Trump’s massive tax and spending package during a crucial procedural vote Saturday. He accused Senate Republicans of rushing to meet Trump’s July 4 deadline to pass the legislation without fully considering the impact on their constituents.
“What do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years, when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding’s not there anymore, guys?” Tillis said during a floor speech Sunday. “It is inescapable that this bill and its current form will betray the very promise that Donald J. Trump made in the Oval Office.”
Trump publicly lashed out at Tillis, who has been in the Senate since 2015, over his opposition to the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” The president on Saturday threatened to back Republicans who would challenge Tillis’s reelection bid in North Carolina next year, but Tillis announced Sunday that he will not seek a third term.
Merkley praised Tillis for going toe-to-toe with the president and his allies, despite it costing his future in the Senate.
“This bill at its core is families lose and billionaires win,” Merkley said. “It’s incredible, and we run up the huge, huge, massive debt — and that means we’re compromising the future generation, our children’s generation and their children, in the course of this runaway debt, all to fund tax breaks for billionaires.”