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- [00:02]
Unknown Speaker 1
Rural communities are being squeezed from every side, from rising health care costs to crumbling hospitals, from attacks on public schools to the fight for paid family and medical leave. Farmers and small businesses are reeling from the trade war. And now Project 2025 is back with a plan to finish what Elon Musk started. Trump and the Republicans won rural votes, then turned their backs on us. Join the One Country Project for the Rural Progress Summit, July 8th through the 10th. This free virtual event brings together leaders like Senator Heidi Heikamp, Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Governor Andy Beshear, and others for real talk and real solutions. Together, we'll tackle the most urgent issues facing rural America. Register today or learn more@ruralprogress.com.
- [01:02]
Unknown Speaker 2
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- [01:31]
Tim Miller
Hey, y' all, Tim Miller from the Bulwark here. I just got off cable with Sam Stein. Look at us. Multi platform and Claire McCaskill, maybe my favorite deadline White House partner. And we're trying to kind of work through the rationale for why the Republicans jammed this bill through the House a little behind the scenes. I showed up a couple minutes late for tv. I never do that. I just, I'm already, I already have my summer vacation. I'm on vacation brain. I don't know what was happening, so. But I got in there in time and I had a little quibble with Claire over some of what the Republican rationale is on this. But one thing we all agree on is it's just pathetic how Holly and Ron Johnson and Murkowski have behaved in particular, given that they all know that this was a bad bill. So stick around. Claire, Sam, me. Check it out. Subscribe to the feedback and we'll be having much, much more on this and everything else going on in the news right here at the Bulwarks. So stick with us. See you soon.
- [02:32]
Claire McCaskill
Republicans swallowing a political poison pill in the form of Trump's signature legislation is where we start today with former Democratic senator and MSNBC political analyst Claire McCaskill. And here with me in Washington, managing editor of the Bulwark and MSNBC Contributor Sam Stein. Sam, talk to me about how this came together in the final hours.
- [02:53]
Sam Stein
It's kind of remarkable, honestly. We had a incredibly rushed process with a totally arbitrary deadline in which people were basically adding billions of dollars, taking billions of dollars, crossing up provisions, amending provisions, making changes up into the last moment. And Senate Republican leadership had four holdouts. Rand Paul, Susan Collins, Thom Tillis, and Lisa Murkowski. Rand Paul would have moved if they had scrapped the debt ceiling raise in the bill. That was not going to happen because they didn't want to do that, because Trump doesn't want to do that. Thom Tillis had already made his position known and he's retiring now. So that wasn't going to happen. So it came down to basically, could they get Susan Collins, who hinted she was very much against the bill, or Lisa Murkowski? And through a series of provisions, basically gifts to Alaska, they got her vote. And what's kind of remarkable about this is that Lisa Murkowski managed to score some provisions to shield her own state from the devastating consequences of this bill in order to vote for it. And she acknowledged that those devastating consequences will now be inflicted on 49 other states. And she said, well, I'm going to try to fix this, and hopefully it comes back to the Senate in reality. And she knew this, the next step is for the House to just try to pass what the Senate passed, which means it will never come back to the Senate. And so Murkowski took a plunge. Whether she did it because she felt it was honestly coming back or not is up to her to explain. But I think everyone else other than her knew that this is the last time the Senate will likely get its hands on it.
- [04:26]
Claire McCaskill
Claire, I want you to take a stab at what you think Senator Murkowski's calculus was here, but also just more generally, what Republicans were thinking in passing legislation that they know is unpopular with the majority of American people.
- [04:41]
Alicia
Yeah, Lisa got stuff for Alaska, and I think she probably got herself in a position where she was saying, I won't vote for it. And they said, well, let's do this for you. Let's do that for you. And she said, well, if you'll do this for me. And I'm betting that they kept giving her everything she asked for. And then she kind of was in a hole. It. She kept, you know, it would have been like her, keep moving the goalposts. I'm not going to make excuses for Lisa Murkowski and what she did, but what about somebody like John Cornyn running in Texas? Next year. What about somebody like McCormick in Pennsylvania who barely beat Bob Casey? And there is so much about this bill that is politically toxic, Alicia. I mean, you know, the fact that the mere pittance they're giving on taxes, on tips and Social Security, guess what, that goes away immediately after the next presidential election. And then on the other hand, the tax cuts for billionaires, they're permanent and the cuts for Medicaid don't happen until after the midterms. So there is so much cynicism in this bill, they are banking so much that people will buy what they're selling, which is a lie. And what's going to happen, there's going to be real devastation and people are going to feel the pain. And I do believe that the people who voted for this bill will regret it.
- [06:06]
Claire McCaskill
Tim Miller, your thoughts on this legislation?
- [06:11]
Tim Miller
Well, I agree with Senator McCaskill there. I almost, boy, that would have been an insult calling you Senator Murkowski there for a second. I agree that certainly the swing district Republicans in the House are going to regret this, as evidenced by the fact that Thom Tillis, who is going to have the toughest race of every of all the Republicans in the Senate, besides maybe Susan Collins essentially quit over not wanting to vote for this bill. So and the bill is a big time political loser. But the policy ramifications are very severe. And I just, I, the Senator Murkowski's explanation for voting for this bill is something that it's hard for me to think of other precedents for this. Like before this time where, you know, you would have a senator. It's not just her. It's also Josh Hawley and Ron Johnson who are out there saying essentially that this is a bad bill. Hawley's rationale for voting for it is that the Medicaid cuts won't go into place ever and that he'll fight them in the future. You know, Ron Johnson hasn't even given a rationale for why the bill that he was railing against, he's now voted for. Murkowski said in an interview afterwards that she knows this is gonna cause pain to people in other states. And like, it's not as if the Alaska, Alaska is getting a great deal here. They're just getting a carve out on some of the SNAP reimbursement so that it won't be quite as painful for people on food stamps in the state. That's not a great deal for Alaska. So voting for it just because the Alaska deal is less bad than the rest of the country, when you recognize that it's going to cause a lot of pain in the rest of the country. That's not even getting into the ice side of it. The cuts to energy production. The, the Murkowski rationale for supporting this is extremely befuddling. And there really was no rush. I guess she felt pressured by Thune and maybe President of the United States, but she's bucked him before. So it's a flummoxing decision to pass a bill that so many people who even support it recognize it's serious flaws.
- [08:16]
Claire McCaskill
So what happens, Sam, now in the House?
- [08:19]
Sam Stein
Well, bill goes to House. The House Republican leaders are saying they want to move it tomorrow. Which I mean, sometimes you just got to step back and say, what are we doing this for? Right.
- [08:31]
Claire McCaskill
Like everyone who is voting, billionaires need their tax cuts. Asc.
- [08:35]
Sam Stein
Well, taxes aren't expiring tomorrow. You have some time here. The debt ceiling is not being hit tomorrow. But it's to Tim's point, it's like everyone who's voted for this bill, not everyone, most people who's voted for this bill have been like, well, it's really a bad piece of legislation, but you know, we'll fix it later. Fix it before you pass it. Right. Like there's no. This is. It's hard to underscore how much this is so arbitrary. Trump wants to sign a bill with fireworks going off behind him. Cuz it's July 4th. That's like literally the entirety of this reason. So they could hit the pause button and say, instead of voting for passage, why don't we get it right and then vote for passage, which is, you know, how you would normally operate.
- [09:10]
Claire McCaskill
And he can have his fireworks, you.
- [09:11]
Sam Stein
Can have your fireworks. Push the fireworks back. We'll allow it this time. You asked what happens next. So it's going to go to the House. House Republican leadership is like, we're going to vote for it tomorrow. What we know now is that a number of House conservatives are publicly saying they don't like what the Senate did because it doesn't abide by the framework that they had passed initially in the House. And by that, I mean it doesn't cut enough for them. Mike Johnson had made a deal with them. He said that the Senate was going to actually cut more. It does not cut enough for them. So they have a choice. They can say, no, we don't like this, we want to revise it and cut it even further than the Senate's version and then send it back to the Senate. But I think we all sort of know that we've seen this before, right? House conservatives huff and puff, and then when their bluff gets called, they fold. And so I fully expect people like Victoria Sparks, Chip boy, to make a big stink and then ultimately, you know, get some sort of promise down the road that they will address their concerns and then vote to pass.
- [10:06]
Claire McCaskill
And the New York Republicans, the salt.
- [10:08]
Sam Stein
Issue, which was the big hang up for them, is resolved. It actually got resolved with the deal with the Senate. The question is, can they stomach these Medicaid cuts? And Tim's point, can they stomach the clean energy cuts? I've seen nothing really to indicate that they're going to take a firm stand. And the history on them taking stands even worse than the history of conservatives taking a stand.
- [10:27]
Claire McCaskill
Claire, you have the president saying he wants the House to take up the Senate version of the bill. You think that happens?
- [10:33]
Alicia
Yeah, I think it happens. I can't tell. I mean, I can't take any of these people seriously at this point. I mean, Ron Johnson, you know, and Josh Hawley are two great examples. I mean, Josh Hawley is actually saying, I'm going to work the next two years to get the Medicaid cuts out. All he had to do was vote no. That's all he had to do. The bill wouldn't have passed. The Medicaid cuts wouldn't have passed. They would have come back around with something else to try to get the tax cuts for the wealthy. Because let's be honest about this, Alicia, what they care about are the tax cuts for the wealthy, period. They don't care about the deficits. They don't care about the debt. They don't care about health care. They don't care about clean energy and job creation. All they care about, all of this is in the name of making the tax cuts that Trump did in 2017, which favored the wealthy by enormous margins, permanent. That's what this is all about. And they are willing to bet that the American people won't pay close enough attention and get mad enough to. To throw them out of office because they have done this. And I think that the House will pass it. I think they will. You know, I have nothing to tell me that they're going to have any more sense than the Senate just had.
- [11:56]
Claire McCaskill
Yeah, Tim, I think what we're all trying to assess, and Claire sort of touched on it, there are these political cross pressures. The fact that there are a lot of Republicans who felt that part of their mandate was to help their billionaires and millionaires extend that tax cut. They've got Donald Trump breathing down their neck. But then you also have the Musk of it all, right, the fact that he's publicly threatening Republicans with a primary challenge that didn't seem to move anyone. And I wonder, Tim, what you make of that?
- [12:26]
Tim Miller
Yeah, a couple of things. I don't think that the Musk primary threat moved anybody, because Republican primary voters have shown again and again over the last decade that what they want is loyalty to Donald Trump. And so you can threaten people and say, I'm gonna run a bunch of ads in your district, but a lot of these guys already have a lot of ads running in their district. And if the ads aren't potent enough to resonate with Republican voters, you know, then it's not gonna work. A primary is not gonna work. And so I just don't think it's a very credible threat for Musk. And we'll see who knows if he can go out and recruit. So it's easier said than done. Maybe it's possible, but I think that's why you haven't seen that movement on that. And I just kind of want to slightly quibble with something that Claire said and just sort of expand. I think there are three reasons why they voted for all this. I think, yes, she mentioned the tax cuts. And the extension of the Trump tax cuts, I do think is something that is important to these folks, in part because of their donors, in part because of ideology. But there are two other things. Number two is Trump just wanted something like Trump just. That's why he calls a big, beautiful bill. He just wanted to be able to say that he passed something. And as silly as that sounds like these guys didn't want to get crossways with Trump. And Trump, the devil was not really in the details for Trump on this bill. He would have said anything, was the big, beautiful bill. He was even, I think, open to not extending the top tax bracket when Bannon was suggesting that for a while, Trump just wanted something done. So as a we need to please Mr. Trump part of this, that's number two. And number three, I just don't think we can understate the importance of the ICE funding here. Now, again, they could have pulled that out and put it in another bill, but J.D. vance said this explicitly last night on Twitter. He said all of the other stuff, all the stuff that you guys in the media and the Democrats are complaining about, about the cuts to health care and the cuts to food stamps, he's like, all that is immaterial. What really matters is that we're getting enough money to ICE so they can put more migrants in jail. And I think that there is a part of the Republican base for whom that is even more animating now than the tax cuts and some of the people in the Senate and House and certainly JD Vance and Stephen Miller in the White House. And so I think that making sure they have enough money to continue to send these mass thugs into communities to put people into detention centers without due process is a genuine policy view that not every Republican voted for this has, but that some of them have and that was a big motivator for getting this passed.
- [14:58]
Claire McCaskill
Are there concerns about the Medicaid, though, cuts though?
- [15:01]
Unknown Speaker 3
No, no. We're not going to be playing with Medicaid, only waste broader. Yeah, the Democrats have it wrong. Yeah, Waste, fraud and abuse. In fact, if you look at what's gone on, we've gone way back. We take care of Medicaid, we take care of Medicare. They will blow Medicare and Medicaid because they have no idea what they're doing, just like they don't have any idea what they did on the border. They have no idea Medicaid is in big trouble with the Democrats.
- [15:28]
Claire McCaskill
Anyone who loses their health care coverage, that is because of waste fraud and waste fraud.
- [15:32]
Unknown Speaker 3
Only waste fraud and abuse, which is what everybody wants.
- [15:35]
Claire McCaskill
It's a little bit of that weave you've heard so much about there, Sam Stein. But listen, there's been great reporting in the New York Times about the fact that a lot of the Medicaid stuff is actually sort of their theory here is that they can have people not sign up because they change deadlines, because they change paperwork, because they simply make it more difficult for people to get access to all of this. That is not tackling waste, fraud or abuse.
- [15:58]
Sam Stein
Yeah. I will see your New York Times reporting and raise it. Bulwark reporting by Jonathan Cohn Tuesday here.
- [16:04]
Claire McCaskill
Go ahead.
- [16:05]
Sam Stein
But this is death by paperwork for a lot of people. And when I say death in some cases, literally.
- [16:12]
Alicia
Yep.
- [16:12]
Sam Stein
Because when you do not have access to health care, which is what will happen when people do not have access to Medicaid, you have worse health outcomes and sometimes you will die. And yes, it's all paperwork. It's bureaucracy. It's work requirements. It's people having to show that they're looking for work. It's people having to show why they can't look for work. And there are countless studies because states do versions of this, much less onerous versions of this, that show that people will fall off the rolls. And that's not wasteful, fraud and abuse. You can spin it, you can weave it. You can say, well, you know, if people are able bodied, they should be working, they should be on employer health insurance. Or you can say, well, you know, there's illegal immigrants who are taking these benefits and therefore we are cracking down on this. But by and large.
- [16:55]
Claire McCaskill
Which is what Jay advanced the argument you're making.
- [16:56]
Sam Stein
Exactly. And this is all intertwined, as Tim notes, around this idea that if you can go after illegal immigration. And the other thing is, you have to understand one of the political factors here is that the Trump coalition, more Trump voters are on Medicaid than Democratic voters. And so they have to sell this to those people who are their constituents. And one way they do it is by saying the illegal immigrants are taking these health care benefits away from you. And we are going to stop that to strengthen the program so that you can access it. It's not accurate. It is a distraction. And they are hoping that if they just repeat it enough, it can become politically palatable for them.