Gordon L. Weil
If you oppose him, it isn’t like swimming against the tide. It’s like swimming against a tsunami.
The One Big Beautiful Bill, President’s Trumps hoped-for
legislative triumph, will happen in some form.
He probably doesn’t care what form, so long as it happens. If you get in his way, you may be drowned.
Two senators opposed the bill for the right reason. It would deprive hundreds of thousands of
people in both of their states of Medicaid, health care for people who
otherwise cannot afford it. Trump has
promised to protect Medicaid, but the only way he could get the tax cuts he
wanted had to come at its expense.
Thom Tillis, the Republican senator from North Carolina,
could not accept that 663,000 people from his state would lose health care
coverage. Trump’s response was to attack
him and threaten to have a MAGA candidate challenge him in the GOP primary next
year.
Tillis stuck to his position and said he would not run for
reelection. His move might be interpreted
as giving in to threats, but he made it clear that he was tired of the loss of bipartisanship
in Congress. He preferred to walk away
from political extremism, just as had Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe. There must be more to life than constant
conflict.
That made Tillis’ decision the right thing to do and for the
right reason.
He will leave after serving two terms in the Senate. If time in government is meant to be public
service rather than building a career in politics, his decision amounted to a self-imposed
term limit.
Susan Collins, Maine’s Republican senator, voted against the
OBBB, mainly because of its harmful effect on 400,000 Maine people. She tried to amend the bill to deal with the problem,
but was soundly defeated with only a few poor states helping her. After that, because she’s up for re-election
next year, her vote in opposition was a good political move.
Trump had little chance of opposing Collins, so she could afford
to take a stand against him. At 72, she should be retiring after five terms, but,
unlike Tillis, she wants to stay. Supporting
him would have made her more vulnerable to a Democratic challenger.
Tillis did the right thing for the right reason. While hoping for a political reward, Collins also
did the right thing. Alaska’s Lisa
Murkowski, usually a Collins ally, was bought off by adding even more debt to
the deal.
A word must be written about Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, the third
GOP senator to break with the president.
He opposes increasing the federal debt, which the OBBB not only did, but
used dishonest accounting. He stuck to
principles closely identified with him and refused to be swept under by Trump’s
tidal wave. He showed integrity.
In the end, that’s what it boils down to. The disastrous and dishonest OBBB, a jumble of
conservative causes piling up more debt, led some members of Congress who could
have resisted Trump and forced through a better bill to abandon their integrity.
