Tillis denounces Trump 'big, beautiful bill' hours after surprise retirement announcement

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., denounced President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill," just hours after making the surprise announcement that he would not run for a third term in 2026. 

Tillis voted against a motion to proceed with the spending package on Saturday and then announced his retirement on Sunday, citing political polarization and a desire to spend more time with family.

He then took to the Senate floor later Sunday to warn that "Republicans are about to make a mistake on healthcare and betraying a promise" on Medicaid should the package clear the upper chamber. 

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"It is inescapable that this bill in its current form will betray the very promise that Donald J. Trump made in the Oval Office or in the Cabinet room when I was there with finance. He said, ‘We can go after waste, fraud and abuse’ on any programs," Tillis said. "Now, those amateurs that are advising him, not Dr. Oz, I'm talking about White House healthcare experts, refuse to tell him that those instructions that were to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse, all of a sudden eliminates a government program that's called the provider tax. We have morphed a legal construct that admittedly has been abused and should be eliminated into waste, fraud and abuse, money laundering. Read the code. Look how long it's been there."

"I’m telling the president that you have been misinformed," Tillis said. "You supporting the Senate mark will hurt people who are eligible and qualified for Medicaid."

"I love the work requirement. I love the other reforms in this bill. They are necessary, and I appreciate the leadership of the House for putting it in there," Tillis said. "But what we're doing, because we have a view of an artificial deadline on July 4, that means nothing but another date in time. We could take the time to get this right if we lay down the House mark of the Medicaid bill and fix it." 

The two-term senator said he consulted with Republican experts in the state legislature, Democrats loyal to Gov. Josh Stein and an independent body from the hospitals' association to gain insight on how the provider tax cuts would impact North Carolinians. In the best-case scenario, he said, the findings showed a $26 billion cut in federal support for Medicaid. Tillis said he presented the report to the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Dr. Mehmet Oz. 

"After three different attempts for them to discredit our estimates, the day before yesterday they admitted that we were right," Tillis said. "They can’t find a hole in my estimate."

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"So what do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding is not there anymore, guys?" Tillis said. "I think the people in the White House, those advising the president are not telling him that the effect of this bill is to break a promise, and do you know the last time I saw a promise broken around healthcare? With respect to my friends on the other side of the aisle, it’s when somebody said, ‘If you like your healthcare, you could keep it, if you like your doctor, you could keep it.’ We found out that wasn’t true." 

In promoting the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, from 2009 to 2010, former President Barack Obama repeatedly claimed, "If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor." Tillis argued that it was the failures of that package that led to him becoming the second Republican Speaker of the North Carolina House since the Civil War and later to his election to the U.S. Senate. 

Trump celebrated Tillis' retirement announcement and issued a warning to other "cost-cutting Republicans." 

"For all cost-cutting Republicans, of which I am one, REMEMBER, you still have to get reelected. Don’t go too crazy!" Trump wrote Sunday night. "We will make it all up, times 10, with GROWTH, more than ever before." 

After his Senate speech, Tillis told reporters that he had told Trump that he "probably needed to start looking for a replacement."

"I told him I want to help him," Tillis said, according to Politico. "I hope that we get a good candidate that I can help and we can have a successful 2026."

The senator told reporters Trump is "getting a lot of advice from people who have never governed and all they’ve done is written white papers." He condemned "people from an ivory tower driving him into a box canyon."

In his retirement announcement, Tillis said that "it’s become increasingly evident that leaders who are willing to embrace bipartisanship, compromise, and demonstrate independent thinking are becoming an endangered species."