WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump went after Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., Tuesday for pushing back against legislation that would enact the president’s agenda of tax and spending cuts.

The president is pressing Senate Republicans to line up behind the package he’s dubbed a “big beautiful bill,” but he singled out Paul in back-to-back online posts. 

“Rand Paul has very little understanding of the BBB, especially the tremendous GROWTH that is coming,” Trump wrote. “He loves voting ‘NO’ on everything.”

“The people of Kentucky can’t stand him,” he added.

“I think it’s an important debate to have,” Paul said later Tuesday morning. “I don’t make it personal at all. I like the president, supported the president. In fact, I’m for the tax cuts. I am for a lot of the bill, but I can’t in good conscience give up every principle that I stand for and every principle that I was elected upon, and that’s that we can’t accumulate more debt.”

Paul, a longtime opponent of deficit spending, is among a group of Republican senators who oppose the legislation because they think it does not go far enough in cutting spending.

He is singling out a provision that would increase the nation’s borrowing limit by $5 trillion to avert a federal default in July.

“They could get my vote and I could vote for the package if they take out the debt ceiling and vote on that separately,” said Paul.

Last month, Trump blasted another Kentucky lawmaker, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Crescent Springs, before the congressman cast one of two Republican votes against the House version of the bill, which Massie called a “debt bomb ticking.”  

“I don’t think Thomas Massie understands government,” Trump said on May 20. “I think he’s a grandstander, frankly.”

Massie said he “took some big hits” for his opposition to the bill, and is now fundraising in response.   

Democrats are staunchly against the bill saying it will, among other things, gut health care for millions of Americans.