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- [00:00]
A
Most importantly, it's going to get paid for with people's lives. That, that ought to, I don't care how right wing, left wing you are, that ought to send chills down anybody's spine because it means that they could change your rights. Purpose of this paperwork is to make sure that some people fall through the cracks and lose their coverage. Like the, the math shows that they're kind of telling on themselves. And this is further evidence that they know this bill is hurting people. So you might feel like you're getting kind of a bump before the dip. Like at that point, we're talking about something that is not, not really defensible. It's just this kind of hard run amok.
- [00:33]
B
Welcome back to the Philip DeFranco Show. My name would you know, it is Philip DeFranco. And lucky you, you're actually getting two videos today because there's just so much we need to talk about. So today I'm giving you this special bonus video right here and then your regular deep dive into the Daily News that'll be out in a few hours, linked below. But that said, today we're joined by Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, the former US Secretary of transportation, and a man who's been on the front lines of infrastructure, economic policy and the national conversation about what is actually helping or hurting working Americans. So I'm bringing him on here for you today to break down what is really in Trump's so called big beautiful bill, the one that's being celebrated on the right as a win for America, but is actually packed with devastating cuts to health care, food assistance and safety nets that millions of Americans rely on. We're talking about the real world consequences, the deceptive spin, the sneaky smart way that it's backloaded to hide the true pain about to be unleashed and who is really going to pay. But also before you know, dragging him straight into the hellscape of whatever our political reality is about to be, I asked him how his fourth was. So no fireworks and hot dogs for you this year.
- [01:32]
A
There was plenty of grilled meat and pool time. At a personal level, I mean, about family, we got the kids together with extended family. We grilled out. Our kids are about to turn four. So when they're around, lots of cousins who are the same age or a little bit older, like, you don't have to do quite as much parenting. They all entertain each other. So, yeah, definitely had, you know, a beer in my hand and grass between my toes this, this July 4th. But, you know, thinking about those big picture questions, even while, while flipping the burgers.
- [02:00]
B
No, of course. And I mean, jumping into the bbb, jumping into the really important things. Where I want to start with is specifically with, with Medicaid. Obviously, Medicaid and SNAP have been the, some of the biggest talking points. Right. It's estimated that nearly 12 million people are going to lose insurance because the attacks on Medicaid. And I think once the systemic rollbacks are factored in, possibly 17 million. But what I've been seeing is that you have Republicans saying that the changes that they're, they're making, it's not doing that. What they're doing is they're actually cutting out waste, they're cutting out fraud, they're cutting out abuse. I saw Senator Roger Marshall on Fox News saying, quote, so when they talk.
- [02:36]
A
About people not being on Medicaid anymore, half of those people are on it because of fraud or some type of abuse of the system. The other half is because they're unwilling to work 20 hours a week.
- [02:46]
B
I want to know what are your thoughts and reactions to that spin that take what's true there.
- [02:54]
A
Yeah. So the bottom line is this is not about waste, fraud and abuse. And it's very easy to prove that. They did their own math. The Republicans in Congress and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, they did the math. They ran the numbers on what this would do. And remember, the reason that they, they set up all these cuts to Medicaid is they needed to find a way to pay for these tax cuts for billionaires. So they put in all these tax breaks. Those tax breaks mean less revenue comes into the government. Right. And they got to do something to offset that, which means spend less on something. And the thing they chose to spend less on is health care. The only way that math works, even the way they compute it, is if a whole bunch of people lose their coverage. And the simple fact is there just aren't nearly that number of people who are on it, who don't deserve to be on it, who aren't eligible. We're talking about people who are working, but maybe they're working hourly. They get their hours cut a certain number of times this week or that week. Next thing you know, they're screwed. You're talking about people who actually do work the required hours, but they're getting hit with all this new paperwork. And again, the purpose of this paperwork is to make sure that some people fall through the cracks and lose their coverage. If they didn't lose their coverage, then the tax savings wouldn't Be there. So they've kind of tell the, you know, I don't want to get into all the like guts of the math here, but like the math shows that they're kind of telling on themselves. The other way to look at it is, you know, they've tried this in certain states, like they tried this in Arkansas with the work requirements. What they found was it did not increase the number of people who were working, but it did decrease the number of people who were getting care. And what this means is that people aren't going to the doctors for checkups. They're not getting these issues dealt with early on. Until it gets to the level where you've got some extreme situation with a stroke or cancer, whatever it is, they're going to the emergency room. It's going to get paid for in a way that's much, much more expensive for the health care system. But most importantly, it's going to get paid for with people's lives. I mean, I saw one piece of research here says that roughly 51,000 people a year more will die of preventable deaths in this country based on these cuts. So look, cutting waste, fraud and abuse, we're all for that, right? And there are checks that are pretty good, there are audits that are pretty good, but they miss things. And it's always worth going after that. Again, you look at this budget, it actually cut out one of the best means for dealing with waste, fraud and abuse. It actually cut the ability of the IRS to go after wealthy people who cheat on their taxes, which is going to cost taxpayers a huge amount of money. Because again, when that revenue doesn't come in, you got to cut something to make up for it. And so we're all paying for that. Bottom line is this, I'm sorry, this just isn't about waste. I hate, look, I used to run a city government, I worked in the federal government. I hate when I see examples of waste and leakage and just frustrating things that happen. They do happen, but that's not what this is about.
- [05:56]
B
Well, I guess also more generally speaking, how do you think that, what do you think we are going to see as far as impacts on working class and middle class families both in the short and the long term? Because a thing that we are going to kind of continually come back to is the timing of a lot of these aspects.
- [06:16]
A
So one thing they did, and this is further evidence that they know this bill is hurting people, is that they timed a lot of the things in the bill to kick in after next year's election or some of them even after the next presidential election, other things are going to happen sooner. We already saw the first rural hospital to close, this is in Nebraska, actually, just before the bill was signed because they saw the writing on the wall, they saw what they were up against in terms of Medicaid funding. They said we're just what's happening to Medicaid, we can't stay open. I've seen estimates that more than 300 rural hospitals and clinics. This is going to happen to them. It's not all going to happen tomorrow, but you'll see this play out over in the next few years. Same with the Medicaid cuts. Some of the stuff hits in two years, in three years, interestingly, they didn't wait that long for the tax breaks for the wealthy to kick in. Most of those are happening very, very quickly. But yeah, the bottom line is you're going to see more and more of these effects over time. I think our job, those of us who feel strongly about this bill and importantly feel that it's not too late to change this. I think our job is when something bad does happen, we need to connect the dots to why it happened and then say it doesn't have to be this way. Like we can change our, the way we do taxes and health care in this country to make it more fair.
- [07:29]
B
Well, I guess that's the thing, is how do you navigate the communication of the other shoe's going to drop? Because I know that you said the tax breaks for the wealthy are going to kick in initially, but all of the tax breaks are going to hit initially. So wouldn't a lot of people's first impact or feeling or connection to this, this, this bill be, oh, there's more money in my pocket right before they're having to think about other things, whether it's, you know, small, because I think what a lot of the losses for the working class, a lot of it is factoring in everything else that they're going to lose. Is that correct?
- [08:04]
A
Yeah, yeah, I see what you're saying. Like the cuts to health care, the cuts to benefits are slower motion than the cuts to taxes. So you might feel like you're getting kind of a bump before the dip. But you got to remember these are hitting different people differently. So you know, the top 10%, they're expected to see their after tax income go up by about $12,000. Nothing like that is happening for anybody in the bottom half or even the middle class of this country. It's true. If you're a middle class taxpayer, you might see some short term benefit before all of the harms kick in. But for most working Americans, it won't take long for your net after tax income to be lower as a result of this bill.
- [08:43]
B
I guess. What would you say to the people going, well, I'm not now like the tax on tips aspect, the no tax on overtime asp, obviously there's, there's conversation around that hitting different Americans in different ways and that not being an across the board thing. But do you see that as a positive? Is that kind of a false positive? Do you have any thoughts there?
- [09:08]
A
I think it's one of these things they throw in there to try to take the edge off of the rest of it while the big picture is hurting people so much. Look, I think that tipped workers should get favorable tax treatment, frankly. I just think they got to ought to get paid more to begin with so they don't have to worry as much about what's happening with that uncertainty that comes with the tip income. But when you do that, you got to make sure that you make people whole. So yeah, of course there are, you know, no bill is 100% good or bad. This is the budget for the entire country. There's some things in there that I would have done too. I mean, put more money into air traffic control. Obviously that's something I want to do. I think that's a good idea. But you add it all up because you have to look at this as a whole and it's not even close in terms of who it's helping and who it's hurting.
- [09:54]
B
And I mean, regarding where the money is going or where it's getting cut, I recently saw that the Guardian folks, they're reporting on how Senator Ted Cruz, who obviously, you know, he represents tech at Texas, he recently, he recently in the bill made sure that it slashed weather forecast funding, eliminating a $150 million fund to accelerate advances and improvements in research, observation systems, modeling, forecasting, assessments and dissemination of information to the public. And obviously Texas was just hit with a horrific and deadly flooding. And I want to say separate from the blame game that we're seeing kind of play out as information's coming out and things are being figured out, do you believe that this bill is setting us up for more disasters like this or something parallel in the future? And if so, how. And I'll also add, you know, does this connect and tie in to the, the, the pushed resignations, the firings and the cuts that we've seen from Trump's administration recently?
- [10:56]
A
Yeah, I Mean, to put it in the simplest terms I can think of, it's never a good time to undercut weather forecasting and emergency response. Now's an especially bad time to be doing that. The National Weather Service is not the sexiest part of the federal government, but it's one of the most important. Again, I think back to my time as mayor dealing with disasters. We had two floods. Both of them were considered, you know, a thousand year flood or a 500 year flood. It happened twice, just in the time that I was mayor. And having that data, having that forecasting and having that information was really important to how we as a city were able to prepare and I think save lives. In that case, you know, this is not just some nerdy pursuit. This is life and death stuff. And whether it's immediate short term things like getting people out of the way of a disaster, or more long term stuff like deciding where roads should go if they're in a floodplain that's getting flooded more often, or stuff like insurance or businesses making plans, all of these are why things like that are needed. And the weather service has done a very good job of gathering that information. It's an example of what happens, I think, when you take an ideology and you go crazy with it. So I understand that if you're Ted Cruz or a lot of conservative Republicans, you're coming from a place that says basically that my side has gone too far on climate change and that you, you can't, you know, even if you believe climate change is real, you know, you shouldn't do things that, that, that are self defeating or that go too far, we can have that debate. But when you get to the point where you don't even want to do real weather forecasting, or you're deleting science from, you know, government documents and websites, scouring them to make sure that you can't even mention climate change. Like at that point we're talking about something that is not, not really defensible. It's just this kind of hard right ideology run amok. Look, the simple reality is this is happening, right? They set 50 years ago, 30 years ago, you know, when I was a kid in science class and they were starting to talk about what they then called global warming. They were saying, you know, if we don't do something in the 2000s, you're going to see more of this extreme weather, floods, these problems. Now it's happening and now we got to do something about it. And by the way, there's a lot of ways to do something about it that create good paying jobs. You know, the same people who are good at putting in natural gas pipelines are also really good at working on CO2 pipelines, which can be part of a climate solution. That's just one example. You know, here in Michigan, there's solar farms all over the place, renewable energy projects, and they're cutting all of that too. So what they're doing is they're cutting jobs and they're making it harder for us to deal with this climate issue. And it's, it's an example of what happens when you just go absolutely all in on an ideology that most Americans don't share.
- [13:42]
B
And I mean, obviously like one of the big things with the cuts is that it's, hey, we have to, we have to trim down the deficit. Right. But it looks like even with the cuts, the deficit's going to be exploding. It looks like we're going to be adding at least another $4 trillion in debt. And I was interested because I've seen economists talking about, talking about this, but what is the difference about this specific new $4 trillion in debt and the, in the previous $36 trillion in debt? And can you explain that? Because I'm, I don't know, I think that there's a decent chunk of the audience that kind of has no idea about that specific difference about the national debt.
- [14:19]
A
Yeah. So, you know, it would be one thing if they're saying, okay, look, the debt's gone too high, the deficit's out of hand, so we got to tighten our belts. And, and that's why we're going to do, you know, we're going to have to look at all the spending, but they're, they're piling on these tax breaks, the vast majority of which are going to the wealthiest. And, and we're doing it under circumstances that are really different from where we've been in the past because our debt is now higher than the GDP of the country. So any given year, the amount of economic output of this country is now less than the national debt. It's okay for a government to have debt the same way it's okay to take out a mortgage to finance a house. That can make a lot of sense. But there comes a point where that's really putting a ton of pressure on the economy. And we're now at that point, look, neither party has covered itself in glory when it comes to deficit spending in the debt. Okay. The truth is you've had, both parties have been in power and have added to the debt. Although I would point out that my party, the Democratic Party, has a better record of reducing the deficit. But just leaving all of that aside, I think the biggest thing that's important to understand right now is this is going to affect all of us. I think a lot of people are looking at this bill and they're saying, look, I'm not rich enough to get the tax breaks that Trump's giving to people, but I'm also not poor enough to have to worry about SNAP or Medicaid. So really, this doesn't mean anything to me. You know, a lot of people are getting hurt, but it's not me. A lot of people are being helped, but I'm probably not seeing much of that either. So, you know, what do I care about this tax bill? The thing to remember is that all of us pay for that debt, not just because all of us are taxpayers, but also when you have that much debt, it does things to the interest rate. And part of why it's hard to afford life right now in America, part of why so many people, definitely our generation, don't feel like they can get a home is the fact that interest rates are up. And one thing that kind of pushes them further up is when you have the level of deficit spending that's going on. And it would be one thing if we had to. Look, we use deficit spending to fund things like roads and bridges because we knew it was a long term investment, like a mortgage that pays for itself over time, but, you know, putting it into tax breaks for the wealthy does not pay for itself over time. You're just taking the money, handing it to them and running up the debt to do it.
- [16:38]
B
And one of the other things that appears to be running up the debt. Right, is that ICE now has a budget larger than most of the militaries in the world. And so with that, I want to ask, I guess, more generally, are you concerned by the massive increase in funding for ice? And also I've seen more and more people saying this. And so I want to ask, you know, so what safeguards are in place to prevent ICE from transforming into some sort of political enforcement body?
- [17:04]
A
Well, look, the safeguards are supposed to be the law, but that only works if, if the government actually follows the law. And obviously they've had problems with that. Right? I mean, there's a court order saying, do not deport this guy, and they deported the guy anyway. That's a huge problem. And, you know, now the Trump administration has started talking about denaturalization. That means taking somebody who is a citizen and making them not a citizen, that that ought to, I don't care how right wing, left wing you are, that ought to send chills down anybody's spine because it means that they could change your rights. You add to that the fact that they've been picking people up off the street based on an op ed that they wrote or some political stance that they took, and you got a real problem. Look, ICE has a job to do, right? They have an important job to do, which is to make sure that our immigration laws are followed, to make sure that our border is secure. That all makes sense. But you start asking yourself if they're picking up people because of their political views or if they're demanding resources that are beyond what it should take in any country to manage its immigration system, what exactly is the big idea and why are we all supposed to be paying for it?
- [18:10]
B
Do you have an idea as far as what that really is?
- [18:14]
A
Look, I think that they have this idea that pretty much every problem in this country is caused by immigrants. That's kind of the narrative that they've had from, you know, from the get go and definitely in, in the last campaign, that anything you don't like and sometimes look too much illegal immigration does create problems, especially, you know, what we saw border towns going through. But a lot of why we have so much immigration is because our economy has required more people to come in than our immigration law has been prepared to handle because we haven't updated our immigration law since the 80s. So you have all these crazy mismatches in our economy. And the truth is, if you deported every single person in this country who has overstayed their visa or didn't do their paperwork right, that would really screw up our economy. Most people think that isn't the right way to approach this. And yet they're kind of building up enough capability in terms of federal manpower to try to do that.
- [19:13]
B
And Pete, I'll end with a twofer here. One, internally, we wanted to ask you what is technically your job right now? I think aside from denying and deflecting everyone asking if you're going to run to be president in 2028. And secondly, is there a final note that you want to hit on, whether it be with the BBB or just anything in general?
- [19:35]
A
Yeah, so in terms of my occupation, I guess I'd call myself a writer. I'm working on proposal for a book. I've written a couple of books. It's one of my favorite things to do. And yeah, I'm finding other work. So I'M doing fine. But I'm also frankly enjoying being a little more semi employed right now. I'm used to working very, very hard with kind of ridiculous hours and very demanding public service jobs. I love public service, but I also really love being a dad and kind of puttering around the house and taking care of stuff here that that's needed attention for a very long time and spending more time with my husband and his parents and my mom and, you know, just being a human. So I'm trying to focus on that and probably would be focused even more on that if it wasn't for everything that's happening to our country. And I think, you know, the negativity and the fear and the division, I think it can send you in one of two ways. I think a lot of people look at it and they say, I just don't even want to deal with it. I don't want to watch the news. I don't want this in my feed. I don't want to have to just get punched in the face. It feels like every time I check what's happening in Washington and I get that, but we can't give into that. So I'm trying to take the opposite path and encourage people to do it, which was to stay engaged, stay involved, speak out, use your voice. And I'm like a lot of people. I'm not in office. I don't have any government power right now. But that doesn't stop me from using my voice. And I think anybody else. You don't have to be a politician to say something, talk to friends and family about how this stuff affects you and to gear up for what's ahead because, you know, especially if you feel strongly about the broken promises on Medicaid, the tax policies benefiting the wealthy, or any of the other things you're seeing in the country, you don't have to take that sitting down, and you don't have to wait till next November to do something about it. Like, so much depends on the conversations that happen right now and the. And being present in this kind of civic process. I mean, another thing to think about around July 4th is what makes America America? It's not some racial identity, right? It's not some ethnic identity the way an understanding of what it means to be Chinese or French works. It's really a civic identity. We're America because of this system we created. And the most important part of the system is we all own what goes on in our politics and in our government, and we own it for better or for worse. So it's a time, whether you're getting paid to do it or not. I think it's time for all of us to be really involved and engaged.
- [22:09]
B
Pete, thank you so much for the time.
- [22:11]
A
Thanks. Good talking to you.
- [22:12]
B
And to you, I just want to say thank you for watching. If you like getting this bonus video today, hit us with a like. Also, if you're new here and you want more daily news and insight, hit subscribe and turn on those notifications. But really, no matter what, remember that this is just part one. Today you've got your full regular Philip DeFranco show coming out shortly with a deep dive into today's new so love your face and I'll see you there.