INTERVIEW: Sen. John Thune celebrates the Big, Beautiful Bill’s Senate passage after marathon Vote-a-Rama
THE LOWDOWN:
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) spoke with the Washington Reporter to talk about the GOP’s big win for America by passing the Big, Beautiful Bill through the Senate.
Thune told the Reporter that an unsung provision in the Big, Beautiful Bill Americans should be excited for is the death tax threshold increase to $15 million and “links it to inflation permanently.”
While President Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill is through the Senate hurdles, Thune warned that if the Democrats get their way and sink the GOP’s legislative battleship before it’s enacted by President Trump, the consequences would be disastrous for the average American family from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to Dallas, Texas, and beyond.
The Big, Beautiful Bill passed the Senate on Tuesday and is headed back to the House of Representatives for further deliberation before it’s sent to President Trump’s desk before the July 4 deadline.
Any staffer, reporter, and lawmaker on Capitol Hill knows that a Vote-a-Rama is serious business and a long, long night.
The Senate got that and more after an all-night marathon voting session to get President Donald Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill across the finish line to deliver for the American people. After the hours-long battle, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) spoke with the Washington Reporter to talk about the GOP’s big win for America.
Thune told the Reporter that an unsung provision in the Big, Beautiful Bill Americans should be excited for is the death tax threshold increase to $15 million and “links it to inflation permanently” — a move that the top Senate Republican said “will spare countless family farms, ranches, and small businesses from a potentially devastating tax and the headaches and expense of planning for it.”
The Big, Beautiful Bill also bolsters President Trump’s border security funding to the tune of $160 billion, which Thune said will undo the disastrous policies pushed by President Joe Biden and his administration while also securing the border in the long-term.
“We’re also looking at a historic investment in border security. $160 billion – yeah, that’s right, $160 billion – to undo the damage done by the Biden border crisis and secure our border for the long term, more Border Patrol agents, more Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and funding to complete the border wall and implement critical border technology,” Thune said.
While President Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill is through the Senate hurdles, the Senate Majority Leader warned that if the Democrats get their way and sink the GOP’s legislative battleship before it’s enacted by President Trump, the consequences would be disastrous for the average American family from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to Dallas, Texas, and beyond.
“The people who are going to get hit with a tax increase if we don’t do something are those families making less than $400,000 a year who are going to see their child tax credit cut in half, their standard deduction cut in half, their rates go back up to what they were in 2017,” Thune said.
“In my state of South Dakota, the average family’s going to pay $2,500 more, if we don’t do something to extend the tax relief that was passed in 2017,” he continued.
President Trump’s historic tax cuts are also set to be preserved and made permanent in the Big, Beautiful Bill, which Thune said will bring down tax rates for small and medium-sized businesses among other popular provisions that provided for American prosperity.
“On the business side, we’re setting the stage for economic growth by making the rest of the business tax relief from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent,” Thune said. “That means lower effective rates for small and medium-sized businesses, the job-creating 199A small business deduction, and full expensing for new equipment and for domestic research and development.”
“The Council of Economic Advisers — which accurately predicted the economic growth and higher wages in the wake of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — is predicting that GDP could rise by as much as 4.9 percent as a result of our bill,” Thune continued. “The tax portion alone would make this bill a major victory for the American people.”
The Big, Beautiful Bill passed the Senate on Tuesday with a vote of 50-50 and a tie-breaker cast by Vice President JD Vance now heads back to the House of Representatives for further deliberation before it’s sent to President Trump’s desk before the July 4 deadline he’s looking at.