BURSTSenate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) received a warning from the chamber’s presiding chair after he ripped Republican colleagues for supporting a bill he said would “devastate” their states and lacking the “backbone to speak the truth” about how much the legislation would hurt their constituents.
“Our colleagues on the Republican side lack the courage of their convictions to do the right thing for the American people. It’s outrageous,” Schumer thundered on the floor.
Schumer was speaking on the Senate floor ahead of the chamber's vote-a-rama, an unlimited series of amendment votes on President Trump's "big, beautiful bill." It will culminate with a vote on final passage.
Schumer said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who warned the bill would be devastating to his state by cutting nearly $40 billion in federal Medicaid spending in North Carolina alone, is “one of the few truth-tellers on the other side.”
The Democratic leader charged that “Republicans are doing something that has never been done before in the Senate by deploying fake math and budgetary hocus-pocus to make it seem like their billionaire giveaways don’t cost anything.”
At that point, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), who was presiding over the Senate as chair of the chamber, interrupted Schumer to remind him of Rule 19, which states that a senator shall not impute to another senator any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming of a senator.
The rule also directs senators not to speak offensively toward a U.S. state.