Rand Paul’s latest comments on Trump’s megabill

Senator Rand Paul is tired of people painting him as public enemy number one when it comes to U.S. Senate opposition to President Trump’s budget package, commonly referred to as the ‘big, beautiful bill’. Paul has been a vocal opponent of the House version of the budget package since it made its way to the Senate, but he is far from the only Republican not backing the bill in its current state. 

During a Tuesday Fox News appearance, Paul, a Republican with strong libertarian convictions, told Mornings with Maria host Maria Bartiromo that he was not voting for the bill. ‘I’m enthusiastically for the tax cuts, I voted for them in 2017 I helped to formulate those tax cuts in 2017,’ Paul stated.

‘I will not be the deciding vote against this, I promise you that. If I’m the deciding vote against this, they will negotiate with me.’ ‘Right now they are not negotiating with me, because they don’t think they need me, so I will not be the deciding vote. The bill will not fail because of me,’ the Senator continued.

‘But if it is up to me, and I am the deciding vote, there will be a negotiation, but there is going to be a conservative shift to the bill if they want my vote, thats what I should do as a conservative,’ Paul concluded. At the start of June, Paul told Newsmax that if the only thing in the ‘big, beautiful bill’ was making the tax cuts permanent, he would back the legislation wholeheartedly. ‘If the bill were solely about making the 2017 tax cuts permanent, I wouldn’t be a yes; I’d be a hell yes,’ Paul noted at the time.

‘Unfortunately, that’s not the reality with this bill. It includes the largest increase of the debt ceiling ever and will have the United States borrowing $5T over the next 2 years. This bill is the opposite of conservative, and we should not pass it,’ Paul added. Republicans currently hold a majority in the Senate with 53 seats out of 100. That means Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune can afford to lose the support of up to four of his colleagues on the bill, in which case a 49-49 tied vote could be broken by Vice President JD Vance.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed their version of the government budget funding package back in May, ahead of the Memorial Day Recess. The Trump White House is keeping the pressure on senators to work out a version of the bill in their chamber, and send it back to the House for a vote, so that the president can sign it by the Fourth of July. Paul has drawn the ire of the White House several times in recent weeks.

Speaking to reporters out side of the Capitol last week, Paul shared that his invitation to the White House’s congressional picnic had been cancelled. ‘I’ve just been told that I’ve been uninvited from the [White House] picnic…every Democrat will be invited, every Republican invited, but I will be the only one disallowed. I just find this incredibly petty’, Paul said. The president then responded to Paul’s claim’s saying that the senator was welcome to attend the picnic after all.

Trump contradicted his own White House last Thursday, indicating that ‘of course’ Paul and his family could attend, via a post made on Truth Social. ‘Of course Senator Rand Paul and his beautiful wife and family are invited to the BIG White House Party tonight,’ Trump wrote last week. ‘He’s the toughest vote in the history of the U.S. Senate, but why wouldn’t he be? Besides, it gives me more time to get his Vote on the Great, Big, Beautiful Bill,’ Trump wrote in a post on his social media site Truth Social on Thursday morning.

‘It will help to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! I look forward to seeing Rand. The Party will be Great!’ Trump concluded. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is another member of the president’s team who has recently thrown arrows at Paul. ‘Well, anyone who votes against the one big, beautiful bill including Senator Rand Paul, will be voting for a tax hike of more than $4 trillion on the American people and their voters will know about it,’ Leavitt warned earlier this month.

Paul was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010, long before Trump’s foray into politics, and was easily reelected to a third term in 2022 during Joe Biden’s presidency. Paul is not up for election again until 2028. Kentucky’s other Senate seat is up as an open seat in the 2026 midterms election. The commonwealth’s senior senator and former Leader Mitch McConnell – another running Trump nemesis – is not running for another term.