Hours after announcing his retirement, Republican Sen. Thom Tillis went to the Senate floor and slammed the GOP’s plans for drastic Medicaid cuts — warning Republicans they are about to “make a mistake on health care and betray a promise” if their sprawling domestic policy bill passes.
“It is inescapable this bill will betray the promise Donald Trump made,” Tillis said. “I’m telling the president that you have been misinformed. You supporting the Senate mark will hurt people who are eligible and qualified for Medicaid.”
Tillis, who opposed the bill on a procedural vote Saturday night and then announced Sunday he would not seek reelection, said he could not vote for the Senate’s bill because of provisions that he said would kick some 663,000 residents of his state off their health care plans. He called on the Senate GOP to jettison its “artificial” July 4 deadline and rewrite the bill.
“I respect President Trump, I support the majority of his agenda, but I don’t bow to anybody when the people of North Carolina are at risk, and this puts them at risk,” Tillis told reporters after he left the floor.
The two-term senator who has been known for working across the aisle said he had done his own research on how changes to so-called state directed payments and a new cap on medical providers taxes would affect his state — contacting state legislative leaders, the state’s Democratic governor, Josh Stein and hospital groups.
Tillis said he also talked to CMS Director Mehmet Oz and presented his findings that showed the best-case scenario was a $26 billion cut in federal support.
“After three different attempts for them to discredit our estimates, the day before yesterday they admitted that we were right,” Tillis said on the floor. “They can’t find a hole in my estimate.”
In his remarks to reporters, he said Trump is “getting a lot of advice from people who have never governed and all they’ve done is written white papers,” adding that he has “people from an ivory tower driving him into a box canyon.”
Tillis, who was elected to the Senate in 2014, compared Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” to the Affordable Care Act: “The effect of this bill is to break a promise. And you know, the last time I saw a promise broken around health care, with respect to my friends on the other side of the aisle is when somebody said, ‘If you like your health care, you can keep it.’”
The Senate is now working through up to 20 hours of debate, before a marathon voting series of amendments scheduled to start Monday morning. Tillis said he might return to the floor to speak against the bill.
Trump lambasted Tillis Saturday night after he voted against opening debate on the megabill, and Tillis said he’d already told Trump at that point he was likely to retire.
“Pretty much what I said on the floor is what I said to the president last night and I stand by it,” Tillis told reporters after the speech, adding later that he told the President he “probably needed to start looking for a replacement.”
“I told him I want to help him,” Tillis added. “I hope that we get a good candidate that I can help and we can have a successful 2026.”
