Breaking News from Pod Save America - BREAKING: Trump's New Bill Is An Unmitigated Disaster - Here's What's In It

Episode Date: July 1, 2025

The Senate just passed Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill.” Tommy Vietor and Dan Pfeiffer explain why it’s a disaster—and what’s really in it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, Dan, the Senate just passed Trump's big, beautiful bill. It will throw something like 17 million people off of their health care. It will cost $3 trillion. It'll give $4.5 trillion dollars with the tax cuts for the richest people. It will cut food assistance. We're going to spend $23 billion on Trump's fucking Golden Dome project for some reason. This might be, I can't really remember being this angry at our government or how stupid it is. There's never been a dumber bill in history.

It makes no sense. It answers no questions anyone's asking. It solves no pressing problem. It makes every problem we have worse. It runs counter to everything's Republicans say they care about other than tax cuts for the rich, right? It makes a recession more likely. It spends money in some of the stupidest ways possible. It jacks.

It's the biggest single increase in the debt. debt in U.S. history at a time in which interest rates are jacked up. So this is much, much worse than any of the times like during COVID when interest rates were near zero when we jacked up the debt. We're going to spend most of our federal budget now on debt servicing because of this. And so for what end? We're not giving health care to a bunch of people. We're not building, you know, infrastructure or stopping climate change or anything like that. We're simply preserving tax cuts that already exists for rich people. Yeah, Dan, the interest on our debt could exceed 1.9 trillion per year in 2034 if all the

measures in this Senate bill are made permanent. Yeah, just to dig into the tax piece of this for a second. So the Financial Times had a great chart. I think it was based off data from Yale University. So the bottom 20% of the country, the poorest 20% of people in this country, will lose $560 a year because of this bill. You'll see your aftertax income go down $560 per year. The top 1% will get $32,000 more per year.

The top 0.1% will take home $118,000 more. That is who benefits from this piece of shit bill. It's insane. Like, you and I know it's bullshit, but Trump ran as a populace who is going to lower your costs. And this is the only bill of consequence that he has passed since he's been in office. And it will be, presuming it gets. to the house. It's a giant tax cuts for the rich that is paid for by kicking working class Americans off their health care and their food assistance and raises costs for 80 million

Americans. It makes their life more expensive, making their health care more expensive, their energy costs more expensive, their food more expensive. It's a truly, truly insane, incredibly cruel, morally odious piece of shit. And the thing is, it's also incredibly politically unpopular. Like, it's not even like it just, what they're doing makes no sense. Does it make sense publicly? Politically does it make sense substantively? Doesn't make sense ideologically. It's just for the sole purpose of giving Donald Trump a win no matter, no matter the cost.

Harry Enton and CNN sort of did a rundown of all the polls. The polling on this bill range from 19 points underwater to I think 26 points underwater. It is as unpopular as it could be for all the reasons you just described here. It's like it's not helping anyone. It's not solving any problems. It's making a bunch of problems worse. For example, it's going to completely undermine all these efforts that were made by, yes, Joe Biden and Barack Obama and Democrats, but to subsidize the clean energy industry, which is going to kill jobs. And it will ultimately mean that there is just less power.

There's less wind energy. There's less solar energy. So the price of energy is going to go up. We're going to have blackouts and brownouts in this country. And energy-intensive industries like data centers or artificial intelligence, won't be able to operate here. They're going to go abroad. They're going to go to China because you know what China did?

China installed more wind turbines and solar panels last year than the rest of the world combined. They are eating our fucking lunch when it comes to renewables. It's just like this, every goal they say they have, they undermine with this bill. So if you believe the J.D. Vance, Donald Trump, China is the, it's the adversary of our time. And we have to compete with China. Then what are we doing? we are undermining our ability to compete with them on clean energy and compete with them on AI. The two things that are likely to drive economic prosperity and global dominance in the future

and we're making it worse. And for no reason. It's just to own the lips. There is no point here. No one actually wants this from a substantive perspective. They just want it because it makes them feel better about themselves. Yeah. I mean, we love it and I talk to Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut yesterday.

And we try to kind of like in good faith ask what, who is this for? Who wants this? How does this benefit anyone since the politics are terrible? the impact is terrible. And Murphy was like, look, remember those stories about the oil and gas executives coming down to Mara Lago and writing $1 million checks to the Trump campaign? And Trump basically saying, I'll do your bidding if you give me your money. Here we go. Like this is the kickback. But our guy, J.D. Vance, he said, this is a tweet, Dan. The CBO score, the proper baseline, the minutiae of the Medicaid policy is immaterial. So he thinks that cutting 12, 17, depending on how you look at million people, off of Medicaid or getting rid of health care for up to 17 million people is immaterial. That's his position on this bill. J.D. Vance, fighter for the working class. We're all going to die.

Everyone, they'll get over it. There's just an incredible dismissiveness towards these suffering of people. And there is no upside to this bill, but if there were to be one, I would hope it would be that between J.D. Vance casting the tie-breaking vote for this bill, Josh Hawley, who spent months talking about how we're a working class party, we're must protect Medicaid, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, votes for this bill. This idea that these right-wing populist intellectuals who are pushing the party in this, like, MAGA direction are all full of shit.

Like, let's just, we can dispense with that notion forever. And just in case someone's watching this and you're a Republican or independent and you think, ah, you know, look at these two whiny Obama libs like complaining about this bill. Let me just read you some quotes from others criticizing this bill. The building trades union called it the biggest. job-killing bill in the history of this country. Elon Musk called it utterly insane and destructive. The IBEW union called it a direct attack on working families shoveling tax breaks to the rich. Senator Tom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, who ended up voting against the bill,

was trying to explain why when he said, what do I tell 663,000 people in two years, three years, when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid. Senator Rand Paul, Someone who I don't agree with on politics, but is a very principled person when it comes to deficits in debt, said this bill will grow the deficit. The deficit will grow by $270 billion next year, even if you use the scoring metrics that are most favorable to proponents of this bill. This thing is a disaster. It is probably the worst piece of legislation ever passed in this country. It serves no purpose. It only hurts people.

It helps no one and love them rich people. Yeah. So, Dan, okay, the Senate passed it. It seems like the House is going to take it up for a vote tomorrow. The tomorrow Wednesday, July 2nd. They're trying to get this thing done by July 4th, because Trump wants it done by July 4th for some reason. Do you have any hope in the House? I mean, first of all, people should go to Vote Save America.com if you want to figure out which congresspeople, congressmen in battleground districts are really wavering and might. could be pressured to vote no. But what's your sense of how the vote, how the House is going to look at this thing, given all the changes that came out of the Senate? The thing that has been true throughout this process,

and if you take Republicans at their word, this bill should fail. It violates what, it violates what the moderates want. It violates what the conservatives want. It violates what the fiscal hawks want. But Trump has had an ability to get all, get the people to constantly vote against their own words, their own interest for this bill. It's, you know, the real test vote will be in the Rules Committee tomorrow.

You already have Ralph Norman, who's a member of the Rules Committee, a budget hawk. I mean, it's hard to actually legitimate. He self-identifies as a budget hawk. His voting record would suggest otherwise, but has said he's a no on this bill in rules and on the floor. If they can't get majority in rules, then they can't pass the rule, then they would need to go to the floor and have to get two-thirds vote, which obviously they cannot do. So I think people should keep the pressure up for sure. We only need to flip a couple of. votes to do this. Yeah, we need to keep the pressure up. But we also need to raise awareness about

this bill because no one seems to know about it. I mean, Dan, there was some polling. I think you texted it to me the other day from, what was most of polling about how like 8% of the country heard of this thing? Is it prior, is prior priorities USA, the Democratic Super PAC has been doing a lot of digging into media consumption, how people get their information. But the only 50% of people have heard of it, only 8% could name Medicaid cuts as part of the bill. And so there's a huge awareness. And the way Priority USA looks at this, and this should be a call to arms for all of us and all of us here on this at our podcast, but also everyone listening and watching or whatever else, is that there are people who are about 40, I think

it's about 45 percent of voters they categorize as people who seek out political news. They all know about the bill. It's the rest of the people who either passively consume news, or actively avoid political news and they have no idea what's happening. And those are the people are going to sign this election. And so over the next couple of days here, and if this bill passes, it's going to be coming upon all of us to educate that 55% of voters who are not paying attention to news, what's actually happening before the election happens in 2026. Yeah. The only silver lining, and it's not a real silver lining.

It's like a super scuffed up kind of rusty old metal lining. is that Republicans are breaking every rule, every process, every norm in ramming this thing through, which means in the future, Democrats should not even think twice about things like getting rid of the filibuster. Like, for example, Dan, to try to just make up the math around the cost of this bill, Republicans are saying that extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts actually costs nothing, even though they're supposed to sunset at the end of this year, because it's just a continuation of an existing policy. However, they're putting in place new tax cuts, like no taxes on tips, no taxes on overtime,

like stuff Trump wants, but are pretending that those are going to sunset at a certain point in a couple of years to make this whole thing passable under the reconciliation rules. And in order to avoid Democrats forcing a vote that would require 60 votes to pass this monstrosity, they are not even going to the Senate parliamentarian to get a ruling on whether this thing is admissible, whether it sort of like works under the rules. They're just not asking her. Like that like I'm not getting into all the details because it's so wonky and confusing. But basically their point is like, no, no, no, no, we're not overruling the parliamentarian. We're just never going to ask her opinion.

It's like disobeying your parents or my children disobeying me by not asking me if they can do something when they know they can't do it. Right. So it's, it is, I mean, this obviously changes the rules of the game and Democrats have to understand that when we get into power. I just, I think there is this sense that everyone spends all this money, right? And it's like Republicans are doing that, you know, they're adding all this to the debt, all this debt because they want to extend these tax cuts and do all this other stuff. Well, didn't Democrats just do that with the Inflation Reduction Act and what about the Affordable Care Act?

No, that's not actually the case, both the Inflation Reduction Act and the Affordable Care Act were paid for. we found savings and raised taxes to ensure that it did not add to the deficit. Right. Were there emergencies like the Stimulus Act under Obama during the middle of financial crisis and the stuff that was passed under both Biden and Trump during COVID? Absolutely. But when passing legislations, we pay for our bills. Republicans just add to the debt and then expect a Democratic president to clean it up later on.

Yep. That's exactly right. And just like the most important point, if you're talking to people about this thing is, you know, These cuts are going to kill 51,000 people per year. That's one estimate from a bunch of academics, I think, UPenn, Harvard, and Yale. 51,000 people a year are going to lose their lives because they're no longer going to have health care because we're just gutting Medicaid. I mean, this thing is an absolute disaster. I'm as mad as I've ever been.

I do think we have a little bit of time to try to just increase awareness of the bill. Half the country doesn't know about this bill. There are these members in swing districts that will view the, this as a politically devastating vote. And you can sort of increase their anxiety about getting reelected if we talk about it now in this narrow window when people are supposed to be paying attention. I'd just give one last poll piece of polling data that should give us some encouragement to get the word out.

Earlier this month, Navigator Research, our friends did a poll where they asked people, would you ever support a candidate who cut Medicaid? A majority said no, including a large swath of Republicans. Would you ever support a candidate who gave new tax breaks to the rich? A majority said they would never support that can, including a large swath of Republicans. So if people actually know what's in this bill, it should, it should, even in these very highly polarized times, make a bunch of districts that were not in play, now in play. Some very red states like Iowa, Nebraska, maybe even Texas that were not in play could be in play if people actually know what happened in this bill. and Democrats can articulate a vision and a message that makes people believe that we are the ones who can fix the problem that Republicans created.

Yes, yes, well said. We need to punish all senators and members of Congress who vote for this bill because it is just catastrophic. All right, well, look, thank you for watching this horribly depressing YouTube video. We here, Crooked Media, are trying to build a progressive media empire so that we can get people good information like this about really important things happening in the world. The problem on YouTube is that the right wing folks like Ben Shapiro, the Daily Wire, TPP USA, they have exponentially larger accounts. And so when normal people search for political news on YouTube, they find that right wing crap and not good credible information. So when you subscribe to POTSave America here on YouTube, you help us build a bigger megaphone and get people good information. So thank you for subscribing.