The MeidasTouch Podcast - Rep. Brendan Boyle on Trump’s Disaster Budget Bill

Episode Date: June 14, 2025

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Republicans losing all control as Democrats go on the offense and expose their disaster budget bill and Meiselas interviews Democratic Congressman Brendan Boyle who is the Ranking Member of the Budget Committee. Visit 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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That's a good thing in the sense that the word is getting out and people realize 15, 16 million people in America can be losing their healthcare if this budget bill passes. And the status of this bill after the house sent it to the Senate, I need to get more clarity on what the heck is even going on, but we're getting more data every day and it does not paint a rosy picture to say the least for this disastrous budget bill.

This is the headline from Rolling Stone. Theft, Trump's big beautiful bill, I hate that name by the way, really screws the poor. The president's latest round of tax cuts for the rich will be funded in part by taking money from the poorest 30% of American households. Like if you're making over $4.2 million, you're going to get $300,000, $400,000 more dollars in your pocket while literally people making under $50,000 who need that money are having the money like literally stolen and given to the richest Americans.

You take a look right here of some of the analysis by the budget lab, another nonpartisan group, the bottom 80% of Americans will be poorer as a result of this disastrous budget bill in addition to the tariffs. As I mentioned, 16 million people will lose healthcare. And one of the things too that I've been noticing as these Trump cabinet members have been showing up to these hearings and they've been asked to present like the specifics of like the budget or like,

so what is the iron dome? Like, what does it actually mean? They don't even have like answers. What are you allocating $200, $300 billion for? I mean, there was this one moment in the Senate hearings where Democratic Senator Chris Coons held up the defense budget, and it was literally a one of those like 404 page not found error pages. That's what they've submitted. And it's not just been the Defense Department, cabinet member after cabinet member, top official after top official. And this is unprecedented. It's not normal that you

show up. Basically, it's like showing up to school without your homework. They show up and then, you know, the Republican senators and congressmen, they're getting a little fed up, but it's like performative. And the Democrats like where we're in the budget committee, where's the budget, where's your line items, where's anything that you're doing, you know, and it just reminds me of everything that Trump did in all of his businesses, which most of them went bankrupt, just makes up numbers, makes two trillion, three trillion, six trillion, 800 billion, you just,

all you gotta do is market it, big, beautiful, BBBBBB and then people will got to do is market it. Big, beautiful, BB BB BB and then people will, you know, support it. And then I think here's an important point, though. There's a lot of serious things going on and I'm not going to say they're intentional distractions. I mean, to me, it's symptomatic of the dangers of the Trump regime, like the fact that you have in the Department of Homeland Security Chief Christine Noem is speaking and a California senator gets like piled drive to the ground by FBI agents and arrested and that occupies a news cycle or Donald Trump fails to negotiate a nuclear deal

which was supposed to happen on Sunday with Iran and Netanyahu views Trump as being utterly weak and kind of interferes with the negotiations of the nuclear deal. And now you have war raging in the Middle East. I'm not saying that that's there to purely distract from the budget bill, but it can be distracting. I mean, Donald Trump throwing a military parade for himself this weekend, by the way, using the Lollapalooza signs, fence jumpers will be prosecuted. They're using the Lollapalooza fence jumper sign right there. And it's just one action after another. Even Senator Alex Padilla from California said, look, what happened to me is terrible,

but stay focused on the disastrous budget bill. I know, but stay focused on the disastrous budget bill I know who's staying focused on this disastrous budget bill Democratic Congressmember Brendan Boyle Who's the Democratic ranking member of the budget committee? You've been checking in here at the Midas Touch Network about every two weeks or so on the status of it give or take So as we do this interview today, where are we heading into the weekend of June 14, June 15? Where do things stand? Well, great to be back with you.

And yeah, the bill passed the House a couple weeks ago and is now sitting in the Senate. Although we have had some updates from Congressional Budget Office on the full impact of this bill. And what they have found is originally they were saying 13.7 million Americans would lose their healthcare because of Republican cuts to Medicaid

and the Affordable Care Act. However, their previous estimate actually wasn't reflective of the last minute changes Republicans made to the bill in order to win the votes of some real Freedom Caucus hardliners. The change has now 16 million Americans in total will lose their health care coverage as a result of the Republican cuts

to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. So that's the first big news kind of breaking this past week. The other big item and again this is also from the Congressional Budget Office just came out two days ago they did what they call the distribution tables. Basically who's gonna get what based on where you are in terms of household income. It turns out the bottom one-third of the United States income distribution. Basically, every household making under $55,000 a year will actually lose money

as a result of this Republican tax cut. It is a tax cut for the top 1%, but for the bottom third of Americans, they will actually be poor off due to all of the cuts actually being greater in total amount than any sort of pittance of a tax cut. And for the middle class in this country, you'll be held flat. So the poor will be poor, the rich will be richer, and nothing for the middle class of this country. So I saw some of these Republicans who I think like to think of themselves as moderate. My own opinion, there's nothing moderate about them.

At least 13 of them wrote this letter to the Senate asking for help. I mean, these are people who voted for the budget bill in the House. They voted for these provisions. Then they send a letter to the Republicans in the Senate, and they attack the bill. Like, you would think that the dear colleague letter to the Senate was written by Democrats criticizing the thing, but it's written by the Republicans

to the Republican senators saying, this is a bad bill, this is going to hurt our districts, this is going to result in tens of thousands of jobs in our congressional districts. We hope you will take your solemn response. This is for real. I'm like almost quoting it. We hope you will take your solemn responsibility serious as this goes to the Senate and make these corrections. And I'm reading this thing and I said, y'all passed it. This is, this is your thing. Why don't you do your damn job? What do you make of that, Congressman? Yeah, you can't make this up.

You know, when I was growing up, I grew up in a little row home in a blue collar neighborhood of Philly, and we had a very small front porch. And there was always this folding chair that the minute you touched it, it immediately folded. And I think of that old folding chair on our front porch, whenever they talk about the Republican moderates going It immediately folded. And I think of that old folding chair on our front porch, whenever they talk about the Republican moderates going

to stand up and actually vote no on something, I have never once ever seen so-called House Republicans stand up and vote against what their leadership is telling them to vote. And the fact that they know that this bill is so bad, that they would write the Senate, basically asking Senate Republicans to have the courage that they lacked is really comical.

The reality is, however, I will be quite surprised if we see Senate Republicans do anything different than House Republicans did. They are afraid of Donald Trump. They may privately grumble about him. They may send press releases or tweets expressing concern about the Medicaid cuts, concern about the cuts to the Affordable Care Act. They're always so concerned.

But when push comes to shove, they will vote for it because they will do whatever Donald Trump tells them to do. It's weird. I mean, it's just a strange thing. It's dangerous. But as I as I just watch it, I just I can't understand it. I mean, I see Donald Trump, this weirdo guy. You know, by the way, I like Gavin Newsome going after Donald Trump's cognitive issues as well, because I'm seeing a guy who can't put together sentences, like I'm seeing it every day. He's speaking, speaking gibberish. He says one thing this day, one thing the next day, you know, whatever happened to Alcatraz, but you know, it's the most ridiculous

things that this guy's saying, the whole, this This whole title, the fact that we're even calling big, beautiful Bill, like what are we, like eight-year-olds? And the fact that this is going on in Congress, and you see people, I mean, some of these Republicans in Congress are educated and know better, and I'm not suggesting all of them are, but then they just fold for the guy. I mean, are they so fearful of just losing the job? They love the proximity to power. They love the whiff of that orange turd. I mean, I don't understand when you're a co-equal branch and you have power to help people

to why you're doing this job, you cede it and you don't protect it. What's the point of the job? Yeah, I have to say, I often have exactly the same question. I really don't get it. You know, a lot of them are afraid. For most of them, of course, they live in districts

that are deeply red, and so they're worried about the primary, not the general. So they live in fear of Donald Trump bashing them or tweeting against them. But I'll tell you what, as more and more Americans find out about the awful things in this bill, just the health care cuts alone, the biggest cuts to healthcare in American history. And you know, 16 million people losing their healthcare

because of Medicaid cuts, because of cuts to Obamacare, that's bad enough. But the reality is all of our healthcare, even those of us who aren't on Medicaid or the Affordable Care Act, all of us will have our health care negatively impacted because we will see closures of hospitals, especially in rural areas as well as urban areas. We will see longer lines in the ER.

So 16 million Americans losing their health care is awful. It's historic. But it actually will be all 340 million of us in this country who will be worse off. And the more and more people find out about this, the worse the polling gets for Republicans. Right now, it's showing two to one opposition. But I think once this really fully seeps in with the American people, we will see those numbers get even worse from here. Let's do this exercise before we close this interview. Let's actually kind of walk through in a real world way and help me kind of write the script. If I'm an American and I'm watching this,

and let's say I'm making under $125,000 a year and this budget bill passes, the Senate passes it, the House passes it, they go and they do the signing on the White House lawn, this is big, this is beautiful, everybody's whatever. The next day, the next week, the next month, just put yourself as Jane and John Doe, a husband and wife who are married, pick your state, spell out the scenario of what they go through so we can make it in real terms. Yeah. So let's say, obviously, if you're on Medicaid, you're really vulnerable now to these cuts and a certain number of people will lose their healthcare.

I mean, literally 11 million according to the Congressional Budget Office. If you're on, if you get your healthcare through one of the ACA exchanges, you're at risk of losing your healthcare. Some 5 million Americans will. Let's say you're in a student loan repayment program. Now suddenly your repayment program is actually going to go away and be totally changed, you'll have a higher payment every month. Let's say you have a kid who's in a pre-K program, maybe involved or getting their education through Head Start, pretty dramatic cuts in that. Let's say you're helped through a nutrition assistance program, devastating cuts there. But let's say you're someone who, none of what I just said touches you.

Guess what? We all are impacted by interest rates. Mortgage rate, auto loan rate, student loan repayment rate. Well, now because of the massive increase in the deficit and debt that is absolutely 100% in this bill. And by the way, on that point, right-wing groups, left-wing groups, centrist groups, nonpartisan groups have all reached the conclusion this will be the biggest increase in our nation's debt in American history.

Now how does that affect John Q. Public? Well, it turns out the bond market is not exactly enthusiastic about the idea that the US is really ever seriously going to repay this debt. It is now so large and projected to go larger. And so they are charging a higher interest rate in order to buy our bonds. That impacts all of us. Next time you go to buy a car, next time you go to refinance your mortgage or buy a new home, suddenly now your interest rate,

by the way, I mean 7% interest rate right now in a 30-year mortgage, that's gonna be creeping up. It could be 7 1 1 2 and 8% after this bill passes. It could be even larger still. So those are the concrete ways and there are many others in which basically every American is going to be impacted in some way or another. Congressman Boyle, we appreciate you coming back on. What can an American do? What do you do right now? I mean educate other people I think is

helpful. As you said, there's still like 20% of people with no opinion. I saw on that kind of Quinnipiac poll, so get them to have an opinion one way or the other, but they should have an opinion on this and it should be strong. But what else do you tell people to do right now? Yeah, you're exactly right. I mean, the good news is for the 80% or so people who know about this bill, it's deeply unpopular, two to one unpopular over popular, but there's still a 20% chunk who aren't aware of it. And look, people are busy, there's a lot going on, Trump creates a different spectacle every day.

This is actually the ball game. This is what matters most. This will have the biggest impact on people's lives for the next several years, really over the next decade. So if you are that 80% and you know of the bill and you are concerned about it as you should be, please inform the folks in your networks, in your household. The reality is most people get their information

from their social peers, kind of their own informal networks, you actually have a lot more credibility with your family and friends than anyone on TV or anyone on the internet or anyone in elective office. So making sure that you help spread the word is vital. That's number one. And then number two, turning up the heat on the Senate Republicans. I mean, there's a small margin over there. It's also a small margin in the House. Remember the bill, it passed a few weeks ago. It only passed by one vote.

That bill is going to be changed in the Senate. It's going to have to come back to us for another final vote. If we can literally just sway one or two House Republicans, that's 1% of the House Republican conference. Just 1% growing a backbone or perhaps becoming more afraid of the American people than they are afraid of Donald Trump. That could make the difference in stopping this big ugly bill from becoming law. Congressman Brendan Boyle, appreciate you. Thank you.

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