Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) excoriated Republicans in the early hours of Wednesday during a House Rules Committee hearing on President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” which the GOP had conveniently scheduled for 1 a.m.
“This is a farce, an outrageous insult to the people of this country, to bring up a 1,000-page bill at 1 o’clock in the morning,” McGovern said in the hearing. “A bill that’s still being written, by the way, by Republicans, as we speak, in a backroom somewhere, for God’s sake.”
The bill is central to Trump’s domestic agenda: It would extend tax cuts he signed into law in 2017 that are set to expire at the end of this year, and pump hundreds of billions of dollars into his mass deportation campaign and newly announced “Golden Dome” missile defense system.
The legislation would offset those tax cuts and expenditures by pushing millions of Americans off Medicaid, however, and by curbing eligibility for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which helps about 42 million people buy food each month.
“And then to try to jam it through Congress in the middle of the night when nobody is watching is just unbelievably cynical,” McGovern, the ranking Democrat on the House Rules Committee, said Wednesday. “This is why people hate Washington.”
