The NPR Politics Podcast - Congress Delivers Trump A Win With Tax And Spending Bill

Episode Date: July 3, 2025

Congress narrowly passed President Trump's massive tax and spending bill this week. We discuss what the GOP victory could mean for the 2026 midterm elections. And, we look at the message the president was trying to send with his visit to a new migrant detention center in the Everglades. This episode: White House correspondent Deepa Shivaram, senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, and senior political editor & correspondent Domenico Montanaro. This podcast was produced by Casey Morell & Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from Yarle and Pamela Mohn, thanking the people who make public radio great every day and also those who listen. Hi, this is Kristen in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where my two year old and I are taking a walk along the Gettysburg battlefield, starting and ending at the Eternal Peace Light Memorial. This podcast was recorded at 107 PM on Thursday, July 3rd, 2025. Things may have changed by the time you've listened, but we will be drinking ice cold water on our drive home. Enjoy the show and happy 4th of July. Yes, happy 4th of July everybody. Stay cool out there.

And Domenico's not going to say anything. Nope. Nope. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Deepa Sivaram. I cover the White House. I'm Tamara Keith. I also cover the White House.

And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And today on the show, we're trying to make sense of a busy week in Washington. Tam, let's start off with Congress. There's been a lot of grumbling, but despite that, Republicans are on a path to deliver President Trump's tax cut and spending bill. And this, as we know, is a massive bill that will extend Trump's tax cuts from the first term, add new spending for immigration and the military. These are all campaign promises by the president. So what do you anticipate the president will

have next on his domestic agenda? Always be selling. He is going to be selling this package. He is going to tell the American people exactly what he is giving them. And if he doesn't, he risks people forgetting about it because the news cycle is so relentless. And in the case of this bill, it's an extension of an existing tax cut, which means truly a lot of people may not notice the benefits side of it. I will say that as we are taping, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is in the midst of a marathon of holding the House floor, talking about the bill, talking in specifics about how many people might be

kicked off of Medicaid in the districts of moderate Republicans and Republicans who they are hoping to unseat in the midterms. So this is a very live and active political moment. It's really difficult to argue a negative in politics, right? I mean, they're saying, So, this is a very live and active political moment. It's really difficult to argue a negative in politics, right? I mean, they're saying, you know, hey, this bill passed and you're not getting a tax increase is a lot different than saying, hey, I just cut your taxes. It's hard to run on something that's like everything stays the same. Yes.

And the remarkable thing though is that even historically when there have been tax cuts, think about the Bush tax cuts where they literally sent checks to people or Obama actually had a really big middle class tax cut as part of the stimulus bill. Those tax cuts, people forgot about them very quickly. There wasn't a lot of political benefit. In fact, a lot of people thought that their taxes had gone up under Obama even though they actually went down. And one unique thing about this mega bill, this one big beautiful bill, as President Trump has called it, is that it doesn't just contain tax cuts, it also contains spending cuts. That is different from, for instance, the Bush tax cuts, where they didn't want people to associate cutting taxes with losing benefits. In this case, it's all tied up.

It is all tied up in one bill. And according to an estimate from the Congressional Budget Office, up to 12 million people could lose their health coverage as a result of this legislation, though over a period of years. Yeah. And this is something that, you know, for the president, he's about to go, you know, celebrate this victory and take a lot of credit for it. But to your point, there's definitely still parts of this bill that have, you know, attracted some controversy. The cuts to Medicaid, but also how much this adds to the deficit was another big sticking point for many members of Congress.

Absolutely. Many of the Republicans who earlier this week said there was no way they could support this bill because it added too much to the deficit. Overnight, they folded. They folded under pressure from the president or persuasion from the president. You know, he is his own best lobbyist. Well, Domenico, I mean, there might be some risks here, right? Because think back to 2017, you know, Trump comes into office, it's his first term, he passes the first controversial tax cut bill through Congress, and then come 2018, Democrats took back the House and a really big victory for that side of the aisle. So what are some of the political risks ahead of the midterms for 2026?

Well, I think it's really interesting that Democrats are now pivoting to make this a broader conversation about healthcare, not just Medicaid specifically in that entitlement. That's what we heard as Tam alluded to Hakeem Jeffries' speech on the floor of the House opposing this bill, the minority leader. We should look at a little bit of the history of health care and midterms because back in 2010, when the Affordable Care Act was going through and the Tea Party fervor was happening and all those Tea Party town halls, the ACA then, then you know, called Obamacare was a net negative, right? Only 35% of people had a positive view of the ACA, according to KFF, which tracks sentiment on this. It's now at a record high. 66% have a favorable view

of the ACA. So, you know, we are eight years to the month of John McCain's thumbs down on the repeal and replace bill that never wound up getting put in place. John McCain, the late Republican senator from Arizona. So it had become, it had turned into a positive issue for Democrats and a negative one for Republicans. And when you look at the polling on Medicaid, it's very well liked. People say that it's working well. Two thirds of people say that they themselves or they know someone who has been on Medicaid. So this is really difficult when the Congressional Budget Office says that some almost 12 million people would lose health insurance coverage over the next decade.

And of course, Medicaid being the program that provides health insurance for about 70 million low-income elderly and disabled Americans. One politically smart thing about the way they structured this though is that the tax cuts are right away. The cuts to Medicaid and food assistance, those come later. And often voters have a hard time drawing a direct line from some problem that they have three or four or five years from now to a piece of legislation. Yeah, I'm really curious, especially because, you know, we're talking about midterms now, but it's still July 2025. Like there's a long road to go before regular voters start tuning

into like, oh, my, my congressman or congresswoman is up for reelection. And how many of these points that, you know, Democrats are arguing and Republicans are arguing are actually going to be still sticky by then is definitely questionable. Well, there's going to be a messaging war that happens between now and then. The polling has shown mostly opposition to this bill in aggregate, but when you drill down on some of the more specific issues, as the White House will point out, there's some more support for things like work requirements for Medicaid. So it's going to depend on how the

message is framed. And we're going to see that take place over these next several months. I want to pivot because there was also immigration news this week. The president went down to Florida for the opening of a new migrant detention center. Tam, tell us about what happened on that visit. Yeah, so this was a temporary facility that was built from start to finish in about a week on an out-of-use airstrip in the middle of the Everglades. They are repurposing FEMA trailers. There are these huge tents that have air conditioning and beds and also interior walls made of chain link fencing.

This is a detention facility. It was built by the state of Florida. The state is going to be reimbursed with FEMA funding and it is truly in the middle of the Everglades which is something that President Trump seemed to really like. He liked the idea, he kept lingering on the idea that it's surrounded by alligators and venomous snakes. It's known as Alligator Alcatraz, which is very appropriate because I looked outside and it's not a place I want to go hiking anytime soon.

But very soon, this facility will house some of the most menacing migrants, some of the most vicious people on the planet. We're surrounded by miles of treacherous swampland, and the only way out is really deportation. And a lot of these people are self-deporting. Really the message coming out of this was why would you want to put yourself through alligator alcatraz as they call it when you could just self-deport. There was a real emphasis on self-deportation. In theory, this is a facility that could house up to

3,000 people and is supposed to be just a temporary facility that people would move through on their way out of the country. But President Trump was talking about, hey, other states should do this. Maybe these should be made permanent. So this is very much part of the president's broader message about wanting to get those mass deportations that he promised when when he ran for office. Yeah but Domenico I mean we talked a little bit about this on the pod yesterday where you know there's some ups and downs I guess with how Americans feel about how President Trump's immigration policies are being implemented. It's not exactly like a

straight shot of approval across the board. No, definitely not. Only 43% said that they approve of the job that he's doing in handling immigration. 54% of people said that they think ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is going too far in enforcing these rules on immigration. This idea that we've heard Tom Homan, the Bordersar for Trump, say is that workplace enforcement is something that they're going to continue to do. For example, while there's less support publicly for deporting people who seem to be just doing their jobs and happen to

be in the country without legal authorization and have been convicted of no crimes, they're fine with making examples of some people to get the message out more broadly not to come. Yeah, and President Trump talks about this as the worst of the worst. But the reality is that the vast majority of people that are being swept up in immigration raids at this point are people who are in the country without legal status, but otherwise have been living their lives, raising their families, working, and not committing crimes. They are not criminals other than being in the country without legal

authorization. Yeah. I want to switch gears just to talk about foreign policy for a bit, because there's also some news that's been happening, will continue to happen. The US bombed Iran about a week and a half ago, and you know the US directly joining a conflict between Israel and Iran. Then there was a ceasefire and Tam, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin, and Yahu was set to visit the White House next week so the conversation will obviously be continuing. What are you watching for for that visit? Yeah President Trump has said it'll be a little bit of a celebration. You know the President really wants to be done with Iran. He is doubling

and tripling down on the idea that the Iranian nuclear program was totally obliterated, that he could make a deal with them, but he doesn't need to because really they don't want nuclear weapons anymore. That is not totally based in reality. Iran has kicked out the UN's nuclear inspection agency. There are signs potentially that this is not as done as the president wants it to be. So that's part of the conversation. A bigger part though is also that the conflict in Gaza is still going on. President Trump wants a ceasefire. President Trump is now saying on social media that Israel has at least tentatively agreed to a short-term ceasefire with Hamas. We don't have a lot of clarity on that from the region, but in theory that will be a bulk of the conversation when Prime

Minister Netanyahu visits. Yeah, and Domenico, I mean, going back to that poll that NPR PBS News Marist put out this week, you know, there were some opinions also about the decision for the US to intervene in this conflict in the first place. Yeah, people were really split down the middle, 50-50, literally, on whether they agree with the strikes or disagree with the strikes. Three quarters of people, though, said that they are worried about retaliation. If something were to happen in the United States or to service

members abroad or at embassies, things like that, it's something that they're concerned about and would likely have some degree of political consequences, which is a reason Trump is glad that this is not in the headlines anymore. A significant portion of his base does not want a prolonged, protracted conflict in the Middle East. So he was happy to make these strikes a one and done deal and say, okay, we've all moved on their nuclear program is obliterated, quote unquote, even though all of the analyses so far have shown that the program may have been set back, but not necessarily completely destroyed or obliterated.

You know, they also found that the survey that 48% of people think that Iran is a major threat, 39% characterized Iran as a minor threat. I thought something interesting sort of jumped out in this. Of Gen Z, one-fifth, 20% said that Iran represents no threat at all. They were the largest group to say that. I think it's a real turning of how people are viewing conflicts in the Middle East. Yeah, I mean, it's a generational shift, obviously. They weren't around during the Iran hostage situation. Also, neither were we. We weren't either. All right, we're going to take a quick break and back in a moment.

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Mankind, that word should have new meaning for all of us today. We can't be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interests. Perhaps it's fate that today is the 4 Fourth of July and you will once again be fighting for our freedom, not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution, but from annihilation. We're fighting for our right to live. To exist. And should we win the day, the Fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday,

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I'm Deva Shivaram. I cover the White House. I'm Tamara Keith. I also cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.