Today, Explained - Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill”

Episode Date: May 21, 2025

“You are tearing me apart, Congress.” This episode was produced by Devan Schwartz with help from Hady Mawajdeh, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Andrea Kristinsdottir and Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Seam Rameswaram. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast. President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson ahead of a House Republican meeting at the U.S. Capitol. Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The time has finally come for President Trump to work with Congress. And he's trying to make it count by cramming everything he can into one bill. One of the most important elements in this package will be extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts. I'm calling for no tax on tips, no tax on overtime. You shouldn't be having people on Medicaid getting more than Medicare. You shouldn't be having the people who should work, can work, getting benefits without working. This should include full funding for a record increase in border security personnel and

retention bonuses for ICE and Border Patrol. It will increase the child tax credit to $2,500 per child, establish optional savings account for newborn babies with a $1,000 credit added and strengthen paid family leave. Trump's calling this package, we call it the one big beautiful bill. But if it's so beautiful, why is he having trouble convincing some of his fellow Republicans to vote for it?

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value in your first 13 months. Terms and conditions apply. Visit bmo.com slash the iPorter to learn more. You're listening to Today Explained. This isn't the first time we've seen Congress try to pass a BBB. For my Build Back Better initiative. We asked Semaphore's Congressional Bureau Chief Burgess Everett if the acronyms wear the similarities end.

No, I actually don't think so. Because I think the reason both of these bills have experienced some turbulence is they just get too big and it's hard to kind of give an underlying theory of the case of why you're doing it right. Ostensibly this time Republicans want to prevent tax rates from increasing at the end of the year. I think there's a very low chance that those tax rates will increase no matter what happens with this bill. And so I do think a lot of other Republicans recognize that. And so when you're now talking about Medicaid cuts, when you're now talking about food stamps and snap aid,

when you're talking about defense spending, all of these new things, it's gotten tied up in what was kind of a singular priority. You also have Trump's tax cuts that he talked about on the campaign that have become wrapped up in this as well. And so I think you can make an argument that putting all those things together offers sweeteners to people and more opportunities to get their votes.

But I also think at some point that the bill can become so big that each change to one part of the bill affects your folks on another side of the conference. And so we're seeing that play out in real time and we're seeing Trump's Tuesday visit to the Hill. Who do you work for? No. Who? No. Who? No.

I don't even know what the hell that is. As an attempt to sort of say, hey, forget all that, just pass something now so that the Senate can take this up and we can work together with them to pass a law. And we'll see if that works. It's really a policy disagreement versus political sheer force of will that we're seeing from the president. America is back. That's won out a lot in the past, but I don't think there's a guarantee that it wins out

this time. Medicaid is one of the biggest sticking points. Is that not right? Yeah, I think it's the biggest one. I mean, I also think there's two, and you hear a lot about salt, this state and local tax deduction. It's really a House, blue state Republican issue. These folks want basically tax relief for their constituents who already pay high taxes.

Well, we're actually going to spend a bunch of time talking about SALT in the second half of the show. So why don't you tell us now a bit more about this fight and the drama around Medicaid? So you don't have the biggest changes that conservatives wanted to put in here. That was basically cutting the federal share of the Medicaid expansion or capping it in some way. That was construed by a bunch of Senate Republicans as benefit cuts because it would probably lead to states providing less Medicaid expansion to their beneficiaries.

So those are off the table. What you've ended up with is these co-pays on some Medicaid expansion folks. There's going to be, and the provider tax, which is basically just a way that states use to get more federal funding. There's also work requirements for Medicaid expansion, and you need to prove citizenship for the most part, although there may be some exceptions to that to get Medicaid benefits. So those are kind of like the core four things. I think there's pretty broad agreement on the work requirements and the citizenship requirements. The other two issues have, I've just talked to some senators about this just now, the other two issues could be problematic. And I'm

not sure Trump quite understands exactly what they would do, but plenty of Republicans think they would eventually amount to benefit cuts. And even his Republican colleagues in the Senate are not entirely happy about this. Correct. So, the last person you're going to hear on this is Josh Hawley. It is wrong to cut health care for the working poor. He's got an op-ed in the New York Times.

He'll tell you. Anyone that wants to listen to him, which is many people at this point, because reporters love intraparty drama, that he thinks this is a bad idea because a lot of Trump voters are on Medicaid. These are working people and their children who need health care. And it's just wrong to go and cut their health care when they're trying to make ends meet, trying to help their kids, trying to make sure that they're able to provide for their families. And so his argument is that you're essentially cutting the benefits of your own voters and

he thinks it's bad politics and he's trying to stop it. Is Donald Trump hearing Josh Hawley's counter argument? I think he is because you hear Trump talk about, you know, don't f around with Medicaid. Here's what I want on Medicaid. We're not touching anything. All I want is one thing, three words. We don't want any waste, fraud or abuse. Very simple.

Waste, fraud, abuse. Other than that, we're leaving it. So I mean, the message is there and he's been pretty consistent on that. But not to use too much of it cliche, but the devil's in the details. And when you look at the details of the proposed Medicaid changes, it would lead to widespread coverage losses, millions of coverage losses. I think Republicans are comfortable with the coverage losses from the work requirements. The question is whether they're comfortable with further coverage losses than that. And I think the

answer right now is no. Well then, take us back to the House, which is at least for this moment where all the action is. The president visited his pals, Mike Johnson and the bunch on Tuesday. Was there any forward motion on this big so-called beautiful bill? I think on the vibes of the moment, yes. I think one thing that works pretty consistently is a shirts and skins exercise, which is the Democrats aren't going to help us. We need to be together as a team. The Democrats are loving that we're divided, right?

And so to the extent that he's building unity within his party, I think it was pretty effective. But I've been looking at all the comments from these House members. The Conservatives don't seem like they're swayed. And over here, I do think there's a Medicaid gap between what the House is doing and what the Senate is willing to do. So I don't see necessarily a ton of movement on those structural things, but I do think it was a useful team building exercise, exercise I think for them to hear from the president for the moment What do they need to figure out to get this thing moving up to the Senate? I think they need to figure out whether they need to take more time with it and get it as close as they can to how

They think could become law or do they need to say we have argued about this enough Let's let these other folks argue about it and see if they can make this bill better and see what can pass the Senate. And then you may see another protracted negotiation between the two chambers of Congress if they end up on different pages, which is, I think, pretty likely at this point because the House seems like it might pass something that the Senate doesn't like, the Senate might pass something that the House doesn't like, and then they might have to reconcile them. This could take months further. The biggest deadline is December 31st.

I give that an asterisk because this also includes a debt ceiling increase in it, which is something we haven't even talked about, which is a really important thing. It's one of the hardest things to do on Capitol Hill and one of the most important things to do so that you don't default on your debt. We already see credit ratings for our country are not as top-notch as they used to be. That's in part because of these debt limit fights. And so we call it the X date on Capitol Hill, which is the last drop-dead moment when they would need to pass a debt ceiling increase.

And it looks like that's going to be late summer or early fall. So you could always bring that out of this big, beautiful bill and pass it on its own. But as long as it's lumped in there, it does give you a little bit of a ticking time bomb of when this needs to pass. You mentioned that this could take until December to figure out. This is our first time talking about the BBB on this program. I really hope we're not talking about it until December. But if we are, how frustrated will our president be? I think very frustrated because I think the reason he's here this week, the

reason he's taking time out of his schedule to come to Congress, not, I mean, Joe Biden did it, but it's not something that happens every day. The reason he's doing that is he's impatient and he wants them to stop basically the circular firing squad, stop spinning their wheels, move forward. Because ultimately it's not a great referendum on him if his signature piece of legislation is struggling to get through Congress. And so I think he wants a shot in the arm momentum-wise from this getting through the House.

I would think they've learned their lesson from the Affordable Care Act repeal and won't hold a big party at the White House after they passed the first version of this through the House because the Senate ultimately killed that bill. But I do think this is a president who wants a legislative shot in the arm. There's only been a handful of new laws signed this Congress, I believe it's one of the least productive initial spurts for a new president in a long time. And so I think he wants to turn that around. And he's doing it by lumping so many things into one bill. But if that one bill stalls,

it doesn't look like there's much of a path for anything else to get through. Burgess Everett will be covering whatever comes next for the big beautiful bill at semaphore.com. Pass the salt, next on Today Explained. The White Chocolate Macadamia Cream Cold Brew from Starbucks is made just the way you like it. Handcrafted cold foam topped with toasted cookie crumble.

It's a sweet summer twist on iced coffee. Your cold brew is ready at Starbucks. It's fun to listen to Today Explained. It's fun to listen to Today Explained. Today Explained is back. I'm still Sean Rommers from here with Jonathan Martin, who writes a column for Politico. Jonathan, we usually come to you for the tea, but today we're here for the salt? Well done. Well done.

What's going on? What's at the heart of this divide between the Republicans over this big, beautiful bill? We've heard, it essentially comes down to Medicaid and SALT. We talked about Medicaid, we wanna talk to you about SALT. Why SALT? So here's the SALT part. This is the long time write-off for state and local taxes

that people could do on their federal taxes. Now, Trump's 2017 tax bill, which expires at the end of this year, got rid of the salt deduction. And so this is something that is really problematic for folks in high income states, typically blue states, where they got people who are paying exorbitant amounts of money in local taxes, property taxes, state taxes.

So where it gets much more, um, sensitive, delicate raw is the kind of class and regional divide here within the Republican party that This is an intra-party fight. So the Republican party has become a rural, heavily red state, heavily working class party. That's its coalition. But it has a narrow house majority and the folks that come from a lot of the most marginal districts, kind of purple seats, tend to be from high income places like Jersey, New York and California and he asked those of the folks that care the most about this issue.

You're talking about giving back a tax deduction that the red mootger states took away. So my feeling is why are we giving all these benefits to these red mootger states who take, take, take and expect the Northeast and states like mine, New Jersey to pay for them? And that's part of what's always been my issue. Why are you doubly taxing people in Jersey to pay for these mootre states that take so much from the federal government and barely pay anything in? Because the suburbs exurbs and even some rural areas of blue America, Jersey, California, New York most significantly do have a handful of Republican lawmakers. Now the last Trump midterm 2018 was really brutal for that kind of suburban Republicans.

There's not a ton out there, but the last two elections, 20 and 22, some folks have won back seats in places like Westchester County, New York, Orange County, California, and the Republicans who are right of center and whose voters give them a hell of a hard time every weekend about cost of living and taxes. I look at it very simply. A district like mine, okay, just north of New York City, three of the four counties that I represent are in the top 16 highest property tax counties in America. And so having an income cap of 400,000 would devastate so many families across my district and I'm just not going to accept it. And what are Speaker Johnson and President Trump saying about salt?

I'm convinced that we'll be able to adjust the dial so to speak so that we can come to an agreement that will that will meet the Criteria that everybody has and that we can move this thing forward We are I talked to Michael Aller who represents a sort of heavily Westchester Bay's district in New York who said that Johnson gets it he district in New York who said that Johnson gets it, he understands it, that Johnson is willing to work with these members because he recognizes that he's speaker in no small part because of this narrow majority that is made up of folks from blue America. President Trump's more complicated. Like on so many things, he's difficult to pin down.

This is trying to tack Jell-O to a wall because Trump tends to veer between the last thing that somebody told him and his mood in the moment. So when I talked to Lawler last week, he's the New York Congressman who's been one of the leading figures in this fight, he told me, Trump gets it. He's from Midtown Manhattan for crying out loud. Nobody knows the issue of the tax burden than him. We talked to him three times in three months. He's for us.

We'll flash forward to this week when Trump went to Capitol Hill. This is the biggest tax cut in the history of our country. Or you'll get a 68% tax increase. And if that happens, I mean, what Republican could vote for that to happen? Because there wouldn't be a Republican much longer. They They would get they would be knocked out so fast He singled out Lawler and said be happy with what you got basically and declare victory It's an I know your district better Than you do and if you lose you can't blame salt So Trump sympathies are suddenly not with the salt crowd and guys

I think the reason for that is because Trump mostly just wants to get this bill done. It wants to sign a bill and anybody who's dragging their feet for any policy reason, it doesn't matter if right, left or center he's crotchety about. Why is it that you can't go back to your district and, and run for reelection on salt? Is it because this isn't an issue that speaks to the, you know, punfully intended salt of the earth?

I mean, I think, look, I think for the red state folks that are from a fairly low tax States, it's just not a significant issue because their voters aren't paying massive property taxes or facing a huge state tax burden like in California, Jersey, in New York, where that bill adds up pretty fast. It's just not relevant for them, and they tend to find these blue state members

culturally kind of distant and say, why should us Republicans compensate for the high tax Democratic politicians who are running California, Jersey, and New York? Pound sand, not salt. I get it, but you know what? Every single day, Congressman La Lota is losing constituents to the state of Florida

because we have no state income tax. So again, this is failed leadership in New York's Albany's capital. Now, the blue staters say, yeah, we got liberal governors, liberal state governments here, but still we got a lot of Republicans or moderates who were voting Republican and House races. And we are the reason why you have that narrow majority in the first place.

So do us a solid. Okay. So solids is an issue that speaks to voters of a certain income bracket and thus speaks to politicians who represent voters of a certain income bracket. But Donald Trump is betting that no one is winning or losing an election or at least running a campaign on salt. But what does this fight over salt tell us about where this Republican party is at under Donald Trump? It tells us that this party is much more oriented around working class voters in rural red America.

It's become a southern and western accented party, quite literally. And Trump is the ultimate Manhattanite. That's the irony that his strongest base is in the South, because obviously he was born in Queens, but sort of made in Manhattan. But this is a Southern rural party, and they're just not that interested in looking out for the concerns of folks from a high income, liberal parts of the country, even if they happen to be, in this case, their

own GOP colleagues. And I should mention that it's not a coincidence that the person who wrote the first draft of this bill in the House, the Ways and Means Committee Chairman, by the way, is like the most coveted chairmanship in Congress. Jason Smith represents Southeast Missouri, an incredibly low tax state and a very rural part of Missouri. And so this is just not front of mind for somebody like that. I think that it's very important that this tax bill is providing relief for working families,

small business owners and farmers. This is the priority of House Republicans. And whenever you look at every tax provision, I think that's something to be mindful of. This is the first, but I think significant, you mentioned Medicaid earlier, which I think also is significant. It's the first test of will the Republican Party reflect the coalition that increasingly makes up its rank and file. And they just happen to be a working class, mostly non-college party now and that's who they are and at the same time a lot of their policies tend to benefit folks who are more affluent and those people are voting for Democrats and this is the great

realignment of our lifetime in which the parties have really swapped their coalitions. The Republicans were always kind of the country club party and Democrats were the party of labor and that, that is obviously changing. But what hasn't changed is the policies haven't caught up to the two coalitions. And when you see the house Republicans saying, we don't give a damn about your needs on stall on salt, that's a first step toward a Republican party that is more reflective of its much more rural working class coalition. And how much of this fight right now, having spoken to lawmakers who are

debating salt and Medicaid and everything else feels to you like it's about the next election versus say Trump's immediate priorities. Oh, for sure. I wrote this column last week about this issue and I said, looming over all of this is two midterms. One, the one that took place in 2018, which was just a sort of political killing field for suburban Republicans who got swept up in the anti-Trump fervor that year.

And the other midterm is obviously the next one, which is next year, Trump's second midterm in which once again, who are the most vulnerable Republicans on the ballot, it's those from center, center left suburban districts, uh, who are represent places where Trump is just culturally deeply this popular. I think part of what's delicate about this is that we're talking about Republicans who are in the same party, but their identity and their culture and their, frankly,

education and kind of income backgrounds are profoundly different. There's a class schism frankly in the Republican Party in Congress. And I think the Republicans, whether it's Marjorie Taylor Greene or Jason Smith who wrote the tax bill, they just don't have a lot in common

with some of the Republican colleagues from high income and sort of heavily educated parts of this country. It's the proverbial two Americas thing, blue America and red America, suburbia and rural America, but you're seeing it within the Republican party in this context and within the US House. ["Politico"] Jonathan Martin knows what he's doing. Read him at politico.com.

As we were nearing published time on the program, we got news that Mike Johnson and his fellow Republicans had reached a tentative deal on SALT. Apparently, they agreed to raise the limit on state and local tax deductions to $40,000. We'll see how that and the rest of the BBB shakes out in the coming days, weeks, months, years. Devin Schwartz made our show today with a little help from his friend, Harim Alwaghdi, and a lot of help from his other friends,

Amna Al-Sadi and Laura Bullard and Andrea Christensdottir and Patrick Boyd. This is Today Explained. As Amna al-Sadi and Laura Bullard and Andrea Christensdottir and Patrick Boyd, this is today explained. you