The MeidasTouch Podcast - All Hell Breaks Loose on Senate Floor as Vote Delayed

Episode Date: June 30, 2025

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on hell breaking loose in the Senate as the vote-a-rama got pushed back, hecklers screamed at the Senators, Democrats pushed back at the disastrous bill, Elon Musk spoke out against the disastrous bill, and a Republican Senator announced he was calling it quits, and more!!! Body Odor ANYWHERE with @shop.mando and get 20% off + free shipping with promo code MEIDAS at https://shopmando.com! #mandopodVisit https://meidasplus.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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win! Download the BetMGM Ontario app today! You don't want to miss out! Visit BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. 19 plus to wager Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact All hell was breaking loose on the Senate floor as the Senate tries to rush through Donald Trump's disastrous budget bill before July 4th.

I mean, you had MAGA Republican Senator Tom Tillis calling it quits, saying he's not going to seek reelection after he voted no against this disastrous budget bill. And Donald Trump attacked him and Donald Trump said that Tillis needs to be primaried. You had hecklers show up at the Senate and start yelling at senators and saying, basically you're killing us, you're destroying our lives, shame on you. And then you had the MAGA Republicans literally worn out.

They were getting so tired that they decided to push what's referred to as a vote-a-rama till this morning instead of doing the vote-a-rama at 2 a.m. in the morning or 2 a.m. at night depending on if you consider that the morning or the night. Remember the vote-a-rama is where once you vote to proceed on a budget bill or a reconciliation bill in this case, and after 10 hours of debate takes place on the Senate floor, that took place, the Democrats are able to add unlimited number of amendments, or at least propose to add an unlimited number of amendments to which the MAGA Republicans are forced to vote down. It's almost kind of like a filibuster in a way.

And it's just an endurance test where you keep on introducing amendment after amendment. The MAGA Republicans try to strike it down and this could last more than a day. When it came to one of former President Biden's large initiatives, the American Recovery Act, the MAGA Republicans did a vote-arama that took about 25 hours. So the MAGA Republicans thought that they were going to be able to vote on the disastrous budget bill on Monday, in which case it would go back to the House of Representatives because the language in the Senate is different than the House language. The language has to be identical, and the Senate made it much worse.

The Senate murder bill is worse than the House murder bill. It kills more people. It harms our energy grids and the energy affordability we have here in the United States and our energy competitiveness with China. It makes it so much worse. More people taken off of food stamps and more people lose essential services. So then has to go back to the House. So where are we right now in the Senate? So the voterama now takes place today because the Senate Republicans got tired.

They could have done it at 2 a.m., but they said, all right, let's start 9 a.m. East Coast time. This can take 24 hours, 25 hours. Let's see, maybe the Democrats try to stretch it even longer. Could Democrats go 48 hours? I don't know about that,

but then that pushes this till Tuesday. Maybe there's a vote on this mid to late Tuesday. Maybe it even stretches into Wednesday. So what does that mean right now? Because remember, Trump wants this thing passed by July 4th. July 4th is Friday. A lot of the House and Senate, they're gonna wanna try to go home before July 4th. July 4th is Friday. A lot of the House and Senate, they're gonna want to try to go home before the 4th. Why? They want to take a

vacation. They want to be home. So let's say the Senate passes this Tuesday or Wednesday. Let's say that goes down. Then the House has to either quickly pass it on the 3rd or the 4 fourth and it be signed on the fourth or this gets kicked to the following week. So a lot of drama unfolding in the Senate right now. All right, let's bring you to the Senate floor where you had the debate. Remember 10 hours of debate that Democrats get. But then you had a heckler show up to yell at the MAGA Republicans and say, you people are awful. You people are killing us.

Let's watch what unfolded play this clip. The Sergeant of Arms Restore Order. The Sergeant of Arms Restore Order in the galley. The Sergeant of Arms will restore order. The sergeant of arms will restore order in the galley. You people are awful! You're awful! So one of the tactics that the MAGA Republican Congressmembers are trying to do now is saying that all Americans will die in a nuclear war if we don't pass Trump's disastrous bill because you won't get the Golden Dome.

The Golden Dome, everybody. Willy Wonka's Golden Dome. No one really knows what the hell this is even referring to. And Donald Trump wants a trillion dollar defense budget for a golden dome, but that's what they are talking about. Now, bringing you back to the Senate floor. Here is MAGA Republican Senator Rand Paul. He does not support this disastrous budget bill.

Here's one of the reasons he says he doesn't support it. Play this clip. Which brings us back to maybe we have to judge the effects of the big, not so beautiful bill by looking at what happens to the debt next year. Supporters of the bill admit it adds $270 billion to the debt next year. That's the only thing we know for certain.

We don't know what happens in year three, four, seven, eight, nine, ten, but we know next year this bill will grow the deficit by $270 billion. In addition, the bill increases the debt ceiling by $5 trillion. What does that mean? That is an admission that they know they aren't controlling the deficit. They know that the ensuing years will add trillions more. So we're adding two trillion this year, but they're anticipating, the authors of the bill anticipating adding more than two trillion next year.

That doesn't sound at all conservative to me, and that's why I'm a gnome. Gotta give him credit for being honest there about how disastrous this budget bill is. On the other hand, you have Maga Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. Here's what he has to say, play this clip. All my colleagues gonna vote for this bill. You should be proud and you should talk about it because it's gonna make us all safer and it's going to make us all more prosperous. Me being budget

chairman is a quirk in the history of the Senate. This is not my thing normally, but I have really gotten into it and I've learned a lot thanks to my colleagues and I'm proud to have the honor of being budget chairman at a time I think it matters the most. I thought Democratic Senator Murray did a very good job, just very calmly and diligently explaining why this bill is such a disaster. Let's play it. And as a senator from Washington. Mr. President, I've been here a long time. Not only have I been the budget chair, I am the longest serving Democrat on that committee. And in my 33 years here in the United States Senate, things have never, never worked this

way where one party so egregiously ignores precedent, process, and the parliamentarian, and does that all in order to wipe away trillions of dollars of costs for a bill that could just be the most expensive legislation this body ever passes. Forget Senate procedure for a minute. Math, Mr. President, has never worked that way. I taught preschool, and I'll tell you, even our littlest kids knows the difference between a trillion and zero. It doesn't take a preschooler to tell you they're using magic math or that you can't

just ignore the rules you don't like. How many times have my colleagues cried about the debt? How many times have they told me, I know you want to invest in childcare, Patty, but we got to get this budget under control. But now that it's tax cuts for billionaires and corporations, suddenly the budget doesn't matter anymore. Suddenly the rules do not matter anymore.

Suddenly a couple trillion goes away with a sprinkle of fairy dust. And here she is again. Play it. Have you no shame. If you think you can look the American people in the face and tell them we have to bring down the debt after passing what might be the most expensive bill in history. If you think you can do that and then be taken seriously, well you know what? If you

believe that, maybe you are foolish enough to think that zero and a trillion are the same. Mr. President, I can't believe this is what we're doing today because I can tell you right now, if this happens, we will all laugh you out of the room because we have never seen anything like this. Not in my time here in the Senate, not in my time on this planet. We are not going to let anyone forget that you're trashing the rules in order to pass this egregious bill. Then you have Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse

from Rhode Island, environmental and public works committee ranking member. And here's what he had to say, let's play it. In this place where big money now rules and in which fakery is now the order of the day and numbers no longer have to be real, there is one point that stands out and that is that the fakery on the floor is belied by the language of the bill. If these assertions were true, they would not need to raise the debt limit.

Then we have Democratic Senator Gary Peters, Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee ranking member from Michigan. Here's what he has to say, let's play it. All right, this bill will blow up the national debt. Since President George Washington gave his farewell address, our nation's leaders have warned against the dangers of accumulating a national debt. 15 years ago, Admiral Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated, quote, the most significant threat to our national security is our debt.

The national debt is at an all-time high, $36.2 trillion. And just in the last 16 years, it has tripled. Our annual deficits frequently exceed $1.5 trillion, including a record $3.1 trillion deficit in fiscal year 2020 during the Trump administration. Unfortunately, these are the first of many grave financial milestones that we face. Within the next decade, our country will spend more on servicing the debt than we do on any other federal account outside of Social Security. Our fiscal house is basically on fire. But if our Republican colleagues jam through this bill, it'll pour, won't, it's not going to pour water on that fire. It's going to pour gasoline on those flames.

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This bill will kill 300,000 jobs in wind and solar per year. We're gonna lose out on $450 billion in capital as thousands of projects go under. And because of that, we're going to generate about 500 gigawatts less energy in the next decade. Now, there was a time, and I lived through it as a politician, there was a time when people who wanted to take climate action had to argue for that climate action because it is a planetary emergency and there were

trade-offs and people on the other side said, look, as we try to take action to deal with this planetary crisis, we can't create shortages. We can't increase prices. We can't impede economic progress all that has flipped This bill will create shortages This bill will impede economic progress this bill will increase prices the 500 gigawatts less energy in the next decade is pretty much exactly

The amount of energy that we're going to need to meet rising demand. We are going to have energy shortages as a result of this legislation. And you don't have to love clean energy or be an environmentalist. And I love clean energy and I'm an environmentalist. But you don't have to care about the climate. I think you should. You don't have to care about the climate

to understand that this is a basic question of supply and demand. Energy demand is soaring for the first time in decades, largely, not exclusively, but largely because of AI data centers. And our best chance of meeting it in the next few years is with wind and solar, not oil and gas. Even nuclear and geothermal are going to take a while.

That is not just a political talking point or a preference of mine. It's just a fact that gas turbines are stuck in a years-long backlog. It's also a fact that 80% of the new capacity on the grid last year came from solar and storage. It's growing, it's cheap, it works. And there are hundreds more projects that are in the pipeline waiting to be hooked up. So the idea that we're gonna kill the only energy that can be brought online in the short run, the very same week that half the country was meeting melting in a record heat wave, which left tens of thousands without people without power is beyond absurd.

Here's Democratic Senator Wyden. Let's play it. I have never seen this kind of economic self-sabotage. The demand for energy booms right now. Even the heads of companies involved in fossil fuels are saying to me and other members of Congress, we need solar quickly to get more electrons to the grid. But Republicans don't want to listen because this plan risks plunging us into an energy crisis. It would be a disaster and a total surrender to China

on clean energy manufacturing. It's clear as a sunny day that all the talk from Donald Trump and Republicans about American energy dominance was just a fraud. Nothing but a hollow campaign slogan. Then we have Democratic Senator Murray again. Here she talks about Maga Republican Senator Joni Ernst doubling down, walking through a cemetery,

saying that we're all going to die, you will die. So who cares if this budget bill kills you, you will die anyway. So this budget bill will just make it quicker. That's what the Mag, these Maggot Republicans are murderers in my view, right? To me, this is a murder bill. These people are killers in my own opinion. And they're like, they have this ghoulish view of death. Let's take a look at Democratic Senator Murray calling Joni Ernst, the Maggot Republican Senator from Iowa out, let's play it.

Republicans are trying to stick their heads in the sand on this. One Republican Senator told their concerned constituents, and I quote, we're all gonna die. Well, maybe that's a better name for the bill. At least it's more honest. Because when you take healthcare away from people, when you make it harder to get, when you make it harder to get when you make it harder to afford when you close the only

hospital for miles yeah you're right people will die you think my colleagues would show a bit more concern about that instead that senator actually doubled down and in a response video she filmed walking through a cemetery I don't know how you get out of touch that much to misunderstand this, but let me be clear about something to our Republicans. Whistling past the graveyard is a metaphor to stop ignoring dangers. It is not a literal messaging suggestion. Democratic Senator Cantwell, let's play it. And so now, don't

take my word for it, take Mr. Musk's word for it, the latest Senate draft bill destroys millions of jobs in America and causes immense strategic harm to our country. Utterly insane, destructive, it gives handouts to the industries of the past while severely damaging the industries of the future. Yeah, he said it best. Here's Democratic Senator Murray talking about how poorly this bill polls, this disastrous budget bill, let's play it. Now let's be clear, when we talk about how unpopular this bill is with the American people,

the reason is simple. This bill pulls like garbage because it is garbage. That's why it should go nowhere except a trash bin. Here's what the MAGA Republican senators were saying outside of the Capitol building while that debate was taking place where you had Lindsey Graham Mark Wayne Mullen and MAGA Republican Senator Kramer. Here's what they had to say. Let's play it I think that's a result probably of doing one big bill

If we had broken this thing up and done border and military early on We got Democrat votes for that, made the tax cuts permanent. The polls don't look particularly favorable to the bill. I've heard you say that, I've heard people say that, and I was like, what poll? Because in every red state I know of, they love it. It's President Trump's agenda. The bill is popular because the president's popular and we're moving forward with it. I think that that's when you pass it and prove the public wrong and

let them live with lower taxes and the permanency of tax cuts. Here's Democratic Senator Van Hollen. Here's what he had to say. Let's play it. If you look at the blue, you can see for each year starting this year, 2025, 2006, the blue is what Senate Republicans claim their bill will add to the deficit. The red is how much more it will actually add to the deficit. So at the end of this 10-year period,

what you see is Senate Republicans are claiming that their bill will add $441 billion, which is still a big number, but the real number, the real number when you do honest accounting, when you add up all of these, it's $4.2 trillion, a much bigger number. Now I do want to point something out on this chart. I think everybody watching should understand it. If you look at these orange parts, these are the additional deficits from tax cuts. Starting here in year 2029, 2030, you'll see that they actually do start going down. Why is that? It's because the tax cut that President Trump promised for no tax on tips, they phase those out.

This is all just a make-believe ruse. Yeah, we start providing no tax on tips, but those disappear. The tax breaks for wealthy people, they go on, and they go on not just for this 10-year period, but the reason they violate all the rules of reconciliation is because they keep going on after that. And as Senator Merkley said, if you look at the entire history of the Byrd Rule, that's Senator Byrd, it was designed to make sure that 51 senators through a vote

could not make these kind of permanent changes in any area. But specifically they were worried about areas that increased the national deficit. Here you have MAGA Republican Senator Tom Tillis saying that he can't look his own constituents in the eyes and tell them that they've lost their Medicaid. He goes, they're going to get killed. I can't look my constituents in the eye and tell them we've betrayed them and now they're going to die.

I can't speak for my other Republicans, but I can't be a murderer as a senator. My colleagues will be murderers. I can't kill my own constituents. Here he is. Let's play it. Now, between the state-directed payments and the cuts. Here he is, let's play it. Now between the state directed payments and the cuts scheduled in this bill, there's a reduction of state directed payments.

And then there's the reduction of the provider tax. They can't find a hole in my estimate. So what they told me is that, yeah, it's rough, but North Carolina's used the system, they're going to have to make it work. All right. 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's not there anymore, guys. Think when the White House,

the senators advising the president, are not telling him that the effect of this bill is to break a promise. And you know the last time I saw a promise broken around healthcare, with respect to my friends on the other side of the aisle, is when somebody said, if you like your healthcare, you can keep it. if you like your doctor you could keep it. We

found out that wasn't true. That made me the second Republican speaker of the House since the Civil War, ladies and gentlemen, because we betrayed the promise to the American people. Two years later, three years later, it actually made me a U.S. Senator because in 2010 it had just been proposed and just anticipation of what was going to happen was enough to have a sea change election that swept Republicans into the majority for the second time in 100 years. Now Republicans are about to make a mistake on health care and betraying a promise. 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 where he said we can go after waste, fraud and abuse on any programs. And then I got to play this for you, Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock from Georgia. He goes, I want to make a point about budgets. A budget is a moral document as well. Here, play this clip. And so in a very real sense, lives are on the line. We are in a moral moment

because something else is on the line. I submit that the character of the country I submit that the character of the country is on the line. In real sense the question tonight is who are we? Not who do we tell ourselves we are, but who are we really? What and who do we care about? What kind of nation are we? And what kind of people do we want to be? Who matters? And who doesn't? Who do we think is dispensable? Who do we think is dispensable? In no place is the answer to that question clearer than in a nation's budget. I submit that a budget is not just a fiscal document, a budget is a moral document. Show me your budget and I'll show you who you think matters and who doesn't.

And if this awful budget were an EKG, it would suggest that our nation has a heart problem and is in need of moral surgery. There you have it folks. Democrats were successful though in at least starting the voterama today on Monday, 9 a.m. versus at 2 a.m. And so now Democrats can try to drag this thing to Tuesday, educate the public more on this murder bill and how disastrous it is and is going to be. And then we'll see what the House does. I think ultimately the Senate passes this atrocity because I believe that the Magna Republican senators want to help Donald Trump kill Americans.

I'm not going to mince my language. I think Donald Trump, and I'm giving you my opinion, I think he gets off on killing Americans. I think that gets off on killing Americans. I think that makes him as a weak and pathetic man feel powerful. I think you have a lot of sicko, MAGA Republican senators who want to kill Americans as well. They like to see death. They're in a death cult. We just got to call it out.

We'll call it like we see it here on the Midas Touch Network. Hit subscribe. Let's get to 6 million subscribers. Thanks for watching. New Midas merch drop. Check out the latest Pro Democracy sticker packs, t-shirts, hats, sweatshirts, and more. All at store.midastouch.com.