(The Center Square) – Several U.S. House Republicans say they won’t vote for the budget reconciliation bill if changes are, or aren’t, made in the Senate.
U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said he voted for the “Big Beautiful Bill Act” because he supported many provisions in it but primarily because it cut what he called “Green New Scam” subsidies included in the Inflation Reduction Act.
“We fought like hell to get 60% of the ‘Green New Scam’ basically terminated,{” Roy said. “The president campaigned on terminating all of it, but this weak-ass Congress and Senate are going to not do that because ‘we can’t disrupt the existing flow of the $400 billion of subsidies going into the pockets of all those big companies’ raking in the money … while you guys subsidize their getting rich and your grid gets weaker. This congress is going to do that,” he said, expressing alarm that those restrictions may not stay in the Senate version of the bill.
The K St. lobby is working hard to keep them in, he said, knowing wind and solar projects don’t produce enough energy to be economically viable without subsidies.
“My message to the Senate,” he said, “you backslide one inch on those IRA subsidies and I’m voting against this bill. I want the White House to hear it. I want the Senate to hear it.
“The God-forsaken IRA subsidies are killing our energy, killing our grid, making us weaker, destroying our landscape, undermining our freedom. I’m not going to have it. … if you mess up the Inflation Reduction Act, green new scam subsidies, I aint voting for that bill.”
U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, also said she wouldn’t vote for the bill if the Senate doesn’t take out an artificial intelligence provision. She said she regretted voting for the bill not knowing the provision was in it.
Posting a section of the bill on X, she said, it “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.
“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. This needs to be stripped out in the Senate.”
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, disagrees, arguing, “It’s a terrific policy, it’s something I have vocally advocated,” NOTUS reported.
U.S. Rep. Mike Flood of Nebraska also said he wouldn’t have voted for the bill had he known a provision to block federal judges from enforcing contempt citations if a bond wasn’t previously ordered was in it. Republicans who support the measure argue it’s intended to discourage frivolous lawsuits.
U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said at a hearing last month that a judge “can set the security at whatever level he wants. What’s typically happened in these cases is he’s just waiving it. Nobody’s putting it up. And they’re getting this injunction that applies nationwide, which is the concern.”
At a raucous townhall meeting in Seward, Flood told constituents, “I do not agree with that section that was added to that bill. I do believe that the federal district courts, when issuing an injunction, it should have legal effect.
“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,” he said, adding that he was “going to very clearly tell the people in my conference that we cannot support undermining our court system and we must allow our federal courts to operate and issue injunctions.”
Cruz disagrees, arguing at a Senate committee hearing that federal judges issuing nationwide injunctions were engaging in “judicial tyranny.”
“One unelected district judge sitting in a courtroom in San Francisco, Boston, or Baltimore can now issue a nationwide injunction that ties the hands of the president of the United States for all 330 million Americans. That’s not law, that’s judicial tyranny.”
Since January, there have been more than 40 universal injunctions issued against the Trump administration’s policies. To put that in perspective, he explained, “In the first 150 years of the Republic, zero nationwide injunctions were issued.”
During 100 years of the 20th century, 27 nationwide injunctions were issued; under presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, 32 were issued; during the first Trump administration, 64 were issued, Cruz said. Since January, more injunctions have been issued than during the 20th century and under the Bush, Obama, and Biden administrations combined.
“This is not normal. This is not justice. This is an orchestrated campaign of judicial obstruction,” Cruz said.
