Bulwark Takes - Republicans Admit They’re Voting for Disaster

Episode Date: June 29, 2025

Sam Stein is joined by health policy reporter Jonathan Cohn to break down the shocking reality of the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” barreling toward passage in the Senate. Watch Jonathan's interview with Kentucky Gov. Beshear: https://youtu.be/1HsHyKFNOhA Read his latest piece here: https://www.thebulwark.com/p/medicaid-cuts-republicans-severing-lifeline-north-carolina

All right, hey guys, me Sam Stein managing under the board joined by Jonathan Cohn, who's got a great newsletter out this morning for the breakdown. We're gonna be talking about that and the big, beautiful bill, if we want to still call it that I always get a little bit angry when I have to call it that. the Senate. It's going to probably happen sometime on Monday. I know you and I have been saying we expected it to pass. And so I'm not totally surprised. And yet, I can't get over like, a little bit of shock that this is happening. Because the more you see and read about this bill, and the scores are coming in, and the analyses of the bill, and we're seeing some legislative text, the more amazing it is to think that we're actually about to do this to ourselves. The amount of self-inflicted damage we're about to cause is really remarkable and I just can't, to a degree, I can't really wrap my head around it. So I have a few things in the bill that

really sort of stood out to me, but what's your first takeaway of what happened overnight, Jonathan? I mean, same thing, both not surprised and shocked at the same time. I mean, it's an accomplishment to write a bill that is this destructive in this many ways, right? I mean, just a big picture, right. We're taking out a generational investment in clean energy. We're going to kill a ton of factory jobs. We're taking away food assistance from people who are already barely making it. Right. Not apparently in the two non-contiguous states, I read that this morning that we'll get to that as I because that may not be part of the bill. All right.

This gets to the question of whether they get over the line. I start your role. You go ahead. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no historic largest cuts to Medicaid in history, with additional cuts to the Affordable Care Act. You're looking at 11, 12, throwing the ACA cuts, 15, 16 million people, 16 million people losing health insurance. The crazy thing about this, and the crazy thing, there's a million crazy things, is that they're doing all of this and still you know if you're like a fiscal conservative you should hate this bill because it's gonna add trillions of dollars. To the deficit arm and all for the sake of you know really big tax cuts for the wealthiest americans i guess sticking into the lips so you know those are tough trade offs to make i apparently this the Committee for Responsible Federal Budget, which looked at the CBO analysis and conducted a bit of their own.

The bill, the Senate bill will have a $3.9 trillion addition to the debt. That is constituted with $4.45 trillion in net tax cuts, $300 in gross spending and $1.5 trillion in cuts. It is actually it's worse than the House bill. It will have a bigger impact on the debt and deficit than the House bill. How do the Medicaid cuts compared to the House bill? Harsher? Yeah, yeah, they got worse. I mean, they were already bad. They've managed to make them worse. You know, We'll have to look at the breakdown exactly when CBO goes through a line by line, why they think it's worse. But I mean, there were features in here. I mean, they are at least based on the bill

that CBO was using for its estimate, which again, is no longer the bill, I think, because I think they've since modified it. There, you know, the, the, the, there were differences, uh, relative to the house bill, the provider tax cut was, was a little bigger things on the timing on some of the, uh, of the features were, were, were, were changed there on those other small tweaks. But, um, yeah, I mean, you know, I guess what, you know, you're taking insurance away from 11 million people. What's another million.

Yeah. Why? Who cares? You know know just throw it out there there um this bill spends money in interesting ways here and there for instance there's 173 billion dollars for immigration some of that's offset by new fees But a lot of money on immigration and they had this weird thing involving a plane or shuttle that they're transporting from DC to Texas. There's like 80, what was it? $85 million to transfer the space vehicle and that's referring to shuttle, the Discovery shuttle from the Smithsonian to a nonprofit in Houston, Texas. Just a little gift to the Texans there. They

spent yesterday trying to butter up Lisa Murkowski by throwing a bunch of stuff in for Alaska, tax breaks for like whalers and things like that, including and now you can explain what's going on. They were going to exempt the non-contiguous states from some of these snap cuts. But apparently the parliamentarian ruled this morning that that is not compliant with the reconciliation construction. So that's who knows if that's out now or they're going to rewrite it. God knows. I want to just get to the thing two things and I'll get you reaction one at a time.

You reference the the just the absolute devastation to clean energy subsidies and tax breaks that are in this bill. There was a Washington Post piece that I would highly recommend people read about this. And it was just sort of shocking, the degree to which we're just totally screwing ourselves over with this. But one thing stood out. So they're just eliminating all these subsidies, they're eliminating all the consumer, sorry, the tax breaks, they're limiting all the consumer subsidies for all this stuff. The post story has this anecdote about this company, a factory in Texas, sorry, in Tulsa, they're getting a $620 million factory in Tulsa that is just now up in the air because

they don't know if they're going to have any of these tax subsidies. And the guy's like, we can't build a factory if on, you know, one administration is going to give us these subsidies and then the other one's going to yank them away. It's also unless people are unaware is in Oklahoma, the senators from Oklahoma seem totally on board with this bill, or at least they're not like protesting it. So what an Elon and the other thing that happened over and over and I was Elon Musk, formerly the top advisors of president Trump and the biggest donor in Republican politics called the suicidal. So this is just forfeiting our future.

Uh, but obviously that no, he no longer has sway in the Republican party for some reason. So that to me, I was just like shocked reading that post piece. Can you kind of, cause I'm, I don't religiously follow this stuff like you do, but like, just how bad is what we are doing on the on the renewable energy front here? Yeah, I mean, it's terrible. I was speaking to it really is. It is such a self owned to, you know, I mean, look, I mean, like so many other things that happened in the Biden administration didn't get the publicity it deserved, some of it was slow to roll out.

So this didn't get a lot of appreciation. But one of the things that happened when Biden was president was they put this huge investment into clean energy. And in this sort of MAGA-ed world, it's the libs and they're granola eating eating latte, quaffing, merlot, sifting, fancy EVs. Right? But here's the thing. It led to this boom in EV battery construction all across where I live in Michigan, the Midwest, also across the South. I interviewed Governor Beshear from Kentucky the other day, and he was talking about the huge battery investments they have in Kentucky.

Same thing in South Carolina and Georgia, and then the solar industry. Texas is like the capital of the solar industry right now. I spoke to a woman who represents the solar manufacturers. She's like, we don't know what we're going to do in between losing these investments potentially. Also the tariffs, we don't know what we're going to do between losing these investments, potentially. Also the tariffs, which are like putting a stranglehold on a lot of their raw materials. And it's a cell phone for Texas industry, for industry in Oklahoma, for industry in

Kentucky and South Carolina. And all these senators are voting. So why are they doing this? Because I was like a week or two ago, the whole CW was that they were, you know, some of the moderate Republicans or even like the non moderate Republicans were really worried about phasing out these incentives and they just went ahead and plowed forward with it. I don't understand it. What happened here?

Yeah. I mean, I think they tried to dial them down a little bit, right? They're just like, okay, can we get some of these a little bit delayed? Can we phase some out, phase some in? They won some small victories here and there, although then a lot of them vanished with the Senate bill. Um, but I honestly think this is just, this is, this is where we've, we've come to this point where the vibes and Trump just overwhelm, at least in the

short term for now, uh, are overwhelming everything else. Trump hates this stuff. The, you know, and, and, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's the green new deal. So we got to kill it. in the short term for now are overwhelming everything else. Trump hates this stuff. It's the Green New Deal, so we got to kill it. It's funny. This played out in Texas in the state because the state had a battle just a few weeks ago in the legislature about some clean energy incentives. It was the Republicans there. The clean energy of the advocates beat it back in part because you had a lot of tech people saying, hey, we need this energy for the data centers. And so it doesn't seem to be working that way at the national, but they will notice

afterwards because those jobs are going to go away. Those factories are not going to get built like that story you were just telling. Yeah, I'll just add on that. The Chamber of Commerce used to be an influential entity in Republican politics, probably immaterial now. Right next door to the White House, right? Yeah, across the street. They came out and said, don't do this.

They're going to do it anyway. The thing that really- I say one more thing. The building trade union called this the biggest job killer. It's crazy. I mean, it's it's it makes no sense on any level, except for the fact that Trump doesn't like this stuff. And here we are. Um, the quote that I think summarizes the situation the best, where we're at politically right now came from Josh Hawley yesterday. Josh Hawley from I know, Josh Holly for months now has been saying we can't cut

Medicaid, we can't cut Medicaid. And he's been very clever and lawyerly and trying to figure out how to define what a cut to Medicaid is. And he went with, you know, well, we don't want to cut Medicaid benefits, but we can cut and fit to reform a Medicaid and yada yada yada, blah, blah, blah. It was all bullshit. Obviously, I you know, for a brief moment, I thought maybe he was sincere about it, but it became very apparent a couple weeks ago that he was going to get to yes on this bill. But he wants his cake, he wants to eat it too. And so he had this to say to NBC News about why he's voting yes on this bill. He says he's not pleased that it will quote,

take away healthcare from working people. This is his quote. He admits the bill will quote, take away healthcare from working people. Quote, this has been an unhappy episode here in Congress. This effort to cut Medicaid. And I think frankly, my party needs to do some soul searching.

If you want to be a working class party, you've got to deliver for working-class people You cannot take away health care from working people and unless this is changing going forward This is what will happen in coming years. So I'm going to do everything I can to stop that. Well Technically, you're not doing everything you can to stop that because you're voting to allow it to happen. And so I Can't it's like, what kind of universe does he think we're living in? Like that we can't read that he's voting yes

for a bill that he thinks sucks. He thinks the bill sucks and he's gonna vote for it on the idea that he will try to stop it from happening. I mean, it's like, we're in the theater of the absurd here. I don't even understand it. I've been trying to figure this one out. My theory is I thought, you know, I was thinking, you know, he Josh Hawley kind of really young looking guy. So maybe he looks in the mirror and he for he thinks he's actually on Senate staff,

and not an actual senator who casts a vote. Like, you know, Senator Josh Hawley could vote against this, he could actually do this. And so if you know, sitting apart from the party and say, gee, it's very strange that this thing is happening. The thing is, it's like, all of this is centered around a completely arbitrary deadline. So it's like, if Josh Hawley was like, you know what, I want to take another week to just make sure we're doing this right, or to try to convince people to dial back these Medicaid cuts and reforms and think about doing it differently. He could do it.

There's no reason to pass this Monday. Like it's just so arbitrary and made up. And I have to tip my hand. I do. I have to tip my hand to Trump. Because he's manufactured a completely made up deadline for legislative action. I think he wants to have some sort of signing ceremony on July 4th with fireworks going off and shit.

And like, yeah, but no one had to say yes. They could have all said, no, we need a little more time. But first, he's he managed to convince these people that they had to move at this speed. And I don't get it. But he did it. Yeah, I'm so glad you said that there's zero reason why they're rushing to there's no crisis. There's nothing that's going to change soon. I'm the data.

If you think it sucks, just fix the bill now. That's so stupid. That's what you're elected to do. I know. Let's talk quickly about Ron John. He also said the bill was, you know, he couldn't vote for the bill, couldn't vote for the bill, just didn't cut nothing, couldn't cut enough, couldn't vote for the bill, couldn't vote for the bill, couldn't vote for the bill was, you know, he couldn't vote for the bill, couldn't vote for the bill, just didn't cut enough, didn't cut enough, couldn't vote for the bill, couldn't vote for the bill, couldn't vote for the bill.

Even though it's worse with respect to debt and deficits than the House bill, he's going to vote for this bill, even though he thought the House bill was crap because it didn't do enough for debt and deficit. I think the thing he got was a vote to curtail the Medicaid expansion that was done under Obamacare that should be offered in the amendment process sometime today thoughts on that will that pass? Yeah so I It's it's difficult to imagine that passing that then that would I mean that would be huge I mean, so, you know, I definitely think I would not assume it would fail

You know, the weird thing is so what the pattern has been Both both, you both the moderates, I don't even know if we call them moderates versus conserves, the people who want fewer cuts in Medicaid versus the people who want bigger cuts in Medicaid have both, every step of the process, both have screamed and said, we can't accept this. And every single time the bill keeps moving towards the side of more cuts. I mean, do you remember someone was posted on Twitter earlier, and I had forgotten this because it's not 2025 and you forget things

that happened two weeks ago or two months ago. But you're a Don Bacon, tiring member. Oh, I saw this one. Yeah, you know who said the red line. $500 million billion is my red line. Yeah, we're twice that now. Twice that. And he'll get a chance to vote again, right?

This guy go to the house. Yeah. So I mean, look, the flip side is that there is, I do want to emphasize, I mean, the final votes haven't happened yet. It was the Senate in 2017, we followed this exact pattern. There was a motion to debate the bill and it was only on the final vote that McCain voted down on that bill. But yeah, no, I mean, Johnson's amendment would, it's something that has come up several times during

this debate and every time it's been killed because it would be, it would be by, as devastating as the cuts are in the bill already, for the most part, they do not touch the underlying architecture of the Affordable Care Act. They cut it in all kinds of other ways that are going to be devastating to people. But if you think about it, the framework of the house is still there. This would be taking a slash hammer to one of the pillars of the house and much more serious. It would completely screw over a bunch of states that have expansion, including Missouri, including North Carolina, including Kentucky, a lot of red states with senators who they may say they don't care about this, but I mean, their state legislators do and their hospitals and that may be a bridge to pardon. That's probably why it doesn't

probably is far. But then again, we had a bunch of hospital associations come out yesterday and be like don't do this don't do this don't do this and they did it so I just I just feel like you know no matter what they they're gonna get something done and even if we think like there might be some house members out there who can't stomach this they'll stomach it all right man we should cut it there because by the time this goes up we'll have five other variables that we will not have accounted for in this video. And so we'll have to do this again later today. I appreciate you. And I should say, and I don't I know I I'm sort of obligated to say this because, you know, I edited the

piece and you know, I loved it. But your piece this morning on what would happen to people in North Carolina if the Medicaid cuts go into effect is I think essential reading and people haven't read it yet they should it's so good. It really puts a face on what's happening in Washington DC. So thank you for doing it. People should check it out and subscribe to this feed as well. We appreciate you and we'll talk to you later.