Faced with changes the Senate made to the “one big, beautiful bill” that added fewer deficit reduction measures and more spending, House Republicans had to negotiate a “sidecar bill” to rein spending back into control, Rep. Andy Harris, who chairs the House Freedom Caucus, said on Newsmax Saturday.
“The major sticking point was that when the bill passed out of the House, it was pretty reasonable. It balanced. It wasn’t going to cause an increase in the deficit,” the Maryland Republican commented on Newsmax’s “Saturday Agenda.”
“We had to negotiate an agreement that would reverse some of which the Senate did, without sending the bill back to the Senate,” he added. “That didn’t happen until the wee hours of Thursday morning, literally 1:30 in the morning. We came to the agreement, and we passed the ‘one big, beautiful bill.'”
President Donald Trump’s administration understood that the Freedom Caucus’ main concern was with the deficit increase coming with the Senate’s changes to the bill, which he said “really had problems.”
But Trump and the administration didn’t want o return the bill to the Senate, where holdout Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who at the last minute agreed to vote for the bill, would have “made it even worse,” said Harris.
But with the sidecar deal, “everyone in the Freedom Caucus was on board because we got significant deficit reduction as part of that deal,” he said.
Meanwhile, Harris called the claims that have been made about Medicaid reforms “shameful.”
“One of the members from my delegation in Maryland talked about a 4-year-old losing Medicaid,” he said. “There is no way a 4-year-old is going to lose Medicaid.
“The bottom line is: If you’re an adult and you are part of the Obamacare Medicaid expansion and you choose not to work, yeah, you’re not going to get the Medicaid benefit. You are going to have to find a different way to get your health insurance coverage. You probably go to Obamacare, but you’re not going to get it free under Medicaid.”
Further, illegal immigrants who receive Medicaid won’t get that anymore, because “hard-working Americans are not going to be paying the freight,” he said.
“If you’re one of the millions of people who choose not to work but expect to get Medicaid, yeah, you’re not going to get the benefit,” Harris added. “But if you’re one of the elderly, disabled, pregnant women, or children, it doesn’t touch the system, which is exactly what Medicaid is for.”
Harris also predicted further prosperity for the United States under Trump, pointing to the achievements that have come in the first six months since he took office.
“We’re not even one-eighth of the way through his term, and he has accomplished what takes most presidents a full term to do,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of growth with American businesses.
“You will see my prediction over the next few weeks. You will see the stock market skyrocket, as you have American companies and other foreign companies now investing in America because of the ‘one big, beautiful bill.'”
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