'Out of control whining': GOP reprimanded for double standard over Trump bill
NBC News reporter Ryan Nobles noted that House Republicans once spent considerable time complaining that they were unable to read legislation from Democrats and the administration of former President Joe Biden. Now that they've been caught not reading President Donald Trump's budget bill before voting for it — and it's causing them problems.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) made news on Tuesday when she confessed in an X post that she had no idea that the House budget bill had a provision in it "that strips states of the right to make laws or regulate AI for 10 years."
"I am adamantly OPPOSED to this and it is a violation of state rights, and I would have voted NO if I had known this was in there," Greene wrote.
"We have no idea what AI will be capable of in the next 10 years, and giving it free rein and tying states' hands is potentially dangerous," she continued. "This needs to be stripped out in the Senate."
She wasn't the only one who voted to approve a bill without knowing what was in it.
Rep. Mike Flood (R-NE) also confessed he didn't know about a provision that would block the federal courts from holding Trump and his administration in contempt of court.
"I am not going to hide the truth. This provision was unknown to me when I voted for that bill, and when I found out that provision was in the bill, I immediately reached out to my Senate counterparts and told them of my concern," Flood told a town hall meeting in his district.
The audience booed.
Nobles said that this had been a problem when Republicans felt they couldn't read Democrats' proposed bills, but it doesn't appear to be one for the GOP today.
"What's even more remarkable about that, Katie, is that it was House Republicans, in particular, that whined about that — just out of control whining about it during the Biden administration. You recall the two big pieces of legislation that President Biden pushed through under reconciliation, the CARES Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. Those were all massive bills that had a lot of reading attached to them, and they were passed relatively quickly once they got agreement on some of the finer points.
"And Republicans argued over and over again that there wasn't enough time to read these bills, let alone process them," recalled Nobles.
Republicans then argued that the bills should go through "regular order" and the various committees for markup.
"So, here they are in a very similar situation, a thousand page bill that has all these different elements attached to it, many of which have nothing to do with each other, but yet are all packed into this one package because Donald Trump wants to get every single agenda item done in one fell swoop, because he doesn't trust the idea of breaking them apart."
He noted that it was something Republicans claimed they weren't going to do anymore.
"And yet we're still doing it in this version of Congress," he closed.
See the clip below or at the link here.
- YouTube youtu.be