S2 Ep1056: Catherine Rampell: Slow Burn

Summary

The Bulwark Podcast - S2 Ep1056: Catherine Rampell: Slow Burn

Release Date: June 3, 2025
Host: Tim Miller
Guest: Katherine Rampell, Syndicated Opinion Columnist at The Washington Post and Co-Anchor/Co-Host of MSNBC's Weekend Prime Time

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1. Introduction and Upcoming Events

The episode opens with host Tim Miller announcing the World Pride fundraiser in Washington D.C., emphasizing the event's focus on supporting immigrant defenders, specifically highlighting the case of Andre Hernandez Romero, a makeup artist who has been mysteriously disappeared by the current administration. Miller underscores the event as a blend of serious discussion and celebratory activities, encouraging listeners to attend.

Additionally, Miller mentions his recent collaboration with Will Sommer on a video about Curtis Yarvin, a controversial philosopher influencing prominent tech figures like Peter Thiel and Mark Andreessen. He criticizes Yarvin's stance on "techno-fascism" and directs listeners to the Bulwark Takes feed for more insights.

Miller also highlights FYpod, his side project, noting past episodes that delve into topics like Curtis Yarvin and featuring guests such as Mooch Jr. discussing the impact of his father's tenure under Trump.

Finally, he introduces the episode's guest, Katherine Rampell, praising her for her incisive analysis of the administration's economic agenda.

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2. Current State of the Economy

Timestamp: [02:15] - [06:41]

Discussion Points:

• Economic Uncertainty: Rampell expresses widespread confusion regarding the current economic indicators. She emphasizes the unpredictability stemming from fluctuating federal policies, particularly tariffs and the impending budget bill.

• Tariffs Impact: She explains that sustained high tariffs can lead to increased consumer prices and reduced business profits, potentially resulting in layoffs. This uncertainty hampers economic stability.

• Budget Bill Concerns: The proposed budget bill aims to cut taxes and trim parts of the social safety net, exacerbating deficits. Rampell warns that these measures could dampen consumer spending and trigger a multiplier effect leading to broader economic slowdown.

• Recession and Stagflation Risks: Rampell highlights the possibility of entering a stagflation period—characterized by high inflation and sluggish growth—due to the compounded effects of trade turmoil and weakened social safety nets.

Notable Quotes:

• Katherine Rampell:
  “[02:58] You are not the only one who is confused. If that makes you feel better, maybe it makes you feel worse. I don't know. Nobody knows what's going on.”

• Katherine Rampell:
  “[06:41] ... the more turmoil we have with the trade stuff, the more likely that outcome is [a recession].”

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3. Analysis of the Reconciliation Bill

Timestamp: [10:02] - [19:22]

Discussion Points:

• Wealth Transfer: Rampell characterizes the reconciliation bill as a "transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, from the young to the old, and from the future to the past." She criticizes the bill for including tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthy while simultaneously cutting essential programs like Medicaid and food stamps.

• Impact on Vulnerable Populations: The bill not only favors high-income individuals through tax deductions but also jeopardizes support systems for low-income families and children, including the Child Tax Credit for children of immigrants without Social Security numbers.

• Internal GOP Conflicts: Rampell points out internal disagreements within the Republican Party. While some members support the bill to align with Trump’s agenda, others express concern over specific provisions, such as Medicaid cuts, indicating a lack of unanimous enthusiasm.

• Economic Implications: The combination of tax cuts and budgetary reductions will exacerbate the national deficit, forcing future administrations to grapple with increased debt or further cuts to social programs.

Notable Quotes:

• Katherine Rampell:
  “[12:09] The way I have been describing it is that it is essentially a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, from the young to the old, and from the future to the past, which I think is a nice way of summing up basically all of the moving parts in this bill.”

• Tim Miller:
  “[17:40] So I guess they really like it. That's the answer to the question. Mike Lawlor really likes the bill.”

• Katherine Rampell:
  “[16:27] ... they wanna keep Donald Trump happy.”

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4. Debt and Deficit Concerns

Timestamp: [19:22] - [28:48]

Discussion Points:

• Political Reluctance to Address Debt: Rampell explains the political challenges in addressing the national debt, noting that both parties are hesitant to implement unpopular measures required to reduce deficits, such as increasing taxes on the wealthy or cutting spending on essential programs.

• Demographic Shifts: She highlights that unlike the Clinton era, where a temporary budget surplus was aided by the economic contributions of the baby boomer generation, current demographic trends with an aging population and low birth rates complicate deficit reduction efforts.

• Economic Growth Assumptions: Rampell criticizes the assumption that continuous economic growth will organically resolve debt issues, labeling it as unrealistic given current demographic and policy trends.

Notable Quotes:

• Katherine Rampell:
  “[24:28] ... all of the things that would be required to solve the problem, you know, to get deficits down are just fundamentally unpopular.”

• Katherine Rampell:
  “[26:29] And also part of the reason why we had a temporary budget surplus coming out of the Clinton years was about the demographics of the country.”

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5. Immigration Policies and Economic Impact

Timestamp: [28:13] - [45:32]

Discussion Points:

• Trump Administration’s Immigration Crackdown: Rampell critiques President Trump’s policies that render legal immigrants illegal, citing the removal of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for groups like Venezuelans and Afghans. She emphasizes that this has led to an increase of approximately 800,000 undocumented immigrants by stripping legal statuses.

• Economic Consequences: By removing legal pathways for immigrants and revoking work authorization, the administration is effectively shrinking the labor force, which can have detrimental effects on the economy, especially in sectors reliant on immigrant labor.

• Detention of Non-Criminals: Rampell shares alarming statistics showing a sevenfold increase in detentions of individuals with no criminal records, highlighting that many are being detained for minor or non-existent immigration violations rather than serious crimes.

• Impact on Scientific Community: She discusses a New York Times article about Artem Padapucian, a Nobel laureate whose research was jeopardized by the administration’s cuts to federal grants. Rampell explains that restrictive immigration and funding policies are leading to a brain drain, diminishing America’s leadership in science and innovation.

• Historical Context: Drawing parallels to the immigration reforms of the 1920s, Rampell notes that restricting immigration from skilled fields has historically harmed American scientific and economic prowess.

Notable Quotes:

• Katherine Rampell:
  “[32:35] ... Trump has been warning fear mongering for years that the United States is being overrun by illegals, you know, illegal immigrants. And he is now manifesting those fever dreams into reality by literally taking people who are here legally and rendering them illegal.”

• Katherine Rampell:
  “[45:12] ... the arrival of a lot of Jewish, German, Jewish emigres who fled the Nazis revolutionized US science and innovation.”

• Katherine Rampell:
  “[45:32] ... the grant cuts are slaughtering the golden goose.”

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6. Rise in Anti-Semitic Attacks and Political Weaponization

Timestamp: [45:32] - [50:08]

Discussion Points:

• Increase in Anti-Semitic Incidents: Rampell shares her personal experience as a Jewish individual facing rising anti-Semitic attacks from both the far left and far right. She underscores the dangers posed by such hostility, especially in a nation where securing personal safety is increasingly challenging.

• Government’s Role: She criticizes the Trump administration for weaponizing the rise in anti-Semitism to target institutions like Harvard and Columbia University, arguing that profiling and singling out Jewish intellectual elites threaten civil liberties and safety.

• Public Safety Concerns: Rampell emphasizes the urgency of addressing hate crimes and ensuring that communities remain safe, expressing frustration over the lack of substantial governmental action to counteract the growing threats.

Notable Quotes:

• Katherine Rampell:
  “[45:47] ... you get a lot of hate mail no matter what. But in a country where it's very easy to secure weapons, firearms, it's really hard to know when these kinds of threats are people just blowing off steam and when they are actually going to act on their expressed desire to do harm.”

• Katherine Rampell:
  “[49:10] ... we have proven ourselves to be really good at this stuff in ways that benefit us, that has spillover effects for the rest of the world, particularly when it comes to medical breakthroughs. And for what, I have no idea.”

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7. FEMA Leadership and Departmental Competence

Timestamp: [49:10] - [50:08]

Discussion Points:

• FEMA Director’s Competence: Towards the end of the episode, Tim Miller references a Reuters story about the newly appointed FEMA director, David Richardson, highlighting concerns over his lack of disaster response experience. Rampell sarcastically comments on the current state of meritocracy within federal agencies, suggesting that previous diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts may have inadvertently led to less competent leadership.

Notable Quotes:

• Katherine Rampell:
  “[50:08] Yes. The meritocracy at work. Bring back DEI. I don't know, whatever concerns the public may have had with DEI, it seemed like it resulted in slightly more competent people running the Department of Transportation and the military and FEMA for that matter than whatever we have now.”

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8. Closing Remarks and Future Discussions

The episode concludes with a light-hearted exchange about Ezra Klein, another prominent media figure, hinting at future conversations about political polarization and media dynamics. Miller teases potential topics for upcoming episodes, promising more in-depth discussions.

Notable Quotes:

• Katherine Rampell:
  “[50:35] ... I think intellectual curiosity is the best glow up one can have. And you have it in spades, and Ezra has it in spades.”

• Katherine Rampell:
  “[51:08] Yeah. The dark energy or a glow up coming off of, you know, podcast host competitor Ezra Klein?”

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Key Takeaways

• Economic Instability: The current economic environment is fraught with uncertainty due to unpredictable federal policies, high tariffs, and a contentious budget bill that poses significant risks of recession and stagflation.

• Reconciliation Bill Critique: The proposed bill is heavily criticized for favoring the wealthy through substantial tax cuts while simultaneously cutting vital social programs, exacerbating income inequality and increasing the national deficit.

• Debt and Deficit Challenges: Addressing the national debt is politically unfeasible in the current climate, compounded by unfavorable demographic trends and resistant political factions.

• Impact of Immigration Policies: The Trump administration's stringent immigration policies are dismantling legal pathways for immigrants, leading to a surge in undocumented populations and a detrimental effect on the U.S. labor force and scientific innovation.

• Rise in Hate Crimes: There is a disturbing increase in anti-Semitic incidents, compounded by political weaponization of these issues, which threatens community safety and civil liberties.

• Federal Leadership Concerns: Recent appointments, such as the FEMA director, raise alarms about the competence and effectiveness of federal agencies under current administrative priorities.

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Conclusion

This episode of The Bulwark Podcast with Katherine Rampell delves deep into the multifaceted challenges facing the United States, from economic turmoil and policy-driven social inequities to the erosion of scientific leadership and rising hate crimes. Rampell provides a sobering analysis of how current political strategies are undermining the nation's economic stability, social fabric, and global standing in science and innovation. Listeners gain a comprehensive understanding of the intricate interplay between policy decisions and their far-reaching consequences, all while being urged to critically assess the direction in which the country is headed.

Transcript

[Tim Miller]

Foreign welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. A few quick programming notes. Reminder, it's this Friday. We're doing the World Pride fundraiser US in crooked media in support of immigrant Defenders legal team that is working on behalf of these Venezuelans who have been sent to El Salvador. Obviously, since World Pride, we are going to focus in particular on the story of Andre Hernandez Romero, the makeup artist who has been disappeared for no good reason by this administration. And so we're going to have a little bit of, you know, maybe some tears, a little serious talk, but also some laughs and some revelry and some gaiety if you will, since it's World Pride. So come on out. There's still some tickets left. Not that many.

[Katherine Rampell]

So.

[Tim Miller]

So you're going to want to jump on it. It's Friday night in Washington D.C. at the Lincoln Theater. Hope to see you all there. Just a couple other quick things. I did a video last night with Will Sommer about Curtis Yarvin, the so called philosopher that has inspired Peter Thiel and Mark Andreessen and JD Vance and all these other tech bro oligarch types. And it was because there's a New Yorker profile of him that was very, very long and it sunk me into the depths of despair. So if you want to learn more about Curtis Jarvin and how fucking stupid the supposed philosophy is behind techno fascism, you can check out the Bulwark Takes feed on your podcast player of choice or go watch me and will on YouTube. And just another reminder, while I'm doing this about FYpod, we're hitting our stride. I taught the youth about bin Laden's porn stache on last night's episode. Last week we had the Mooch's son. Mooch Jr. Got a new movie out and we talked to him about what it was like being in high school when his dad went to work for Trump and then bailed on him. And we've got a bunch of other good guests planned for FYpod, so go ahead and check that out. If you haven't. Today our guest is a syndicated opinion columnist covering economics at the Washington Post. She's co anchor and co host of MSNBC's new show the Weekend Prime Time on from 6 to 9pm Eastern on Saturdays and Sundays. It's Katherine Rippell. Hey Kathryn, welcome back to the show.

[Katherine Rampell]

Thanks for having me back.

[Tim Miller]

I brought you on because you were popping off on the various lies the administration is telling about their econ agenda. So I kind of want to take through those one at a time. But first I thought I'm really most interested in your take on the macro view on the state of the economy because I. Well, I know about the lies, but I'm confused about the economy. There's some things happening. The Atlanta Fed is projecting a Q2 rebound. Stock market looks stable on the one hand. On the other hand, Jamie Dimon's concerned about the bond market. UBS says recession possibilities ticking back up. Job growth forecasts are down. I read one analyst said we may be entering a structurally high rate, high cost era with no off ramp. That seems bad. So I don't know what do you make about what's happening out there?

[Katherine Rampell]

You are not the only one who is confused. If that makes you feel better, maybe it makes you feel worse. I don't know. Nobody knows what's going on. And that's of the part, partly because there are so many question marks about where federal policy is heading. So there's the tariff stuff. And that has obviously had a huge effect on businesses and will potentially have an effect pretty soon on consumers and workers. Meaning that if the tariffs stick around in high levels and they may well change by the end of my finishing this sentence, that will lead to higher prices for consumers, it will lead to lower profits for businesses, it will lead to those businesses potentially having to resort to layoffs. So there's a big bucket of question marks there. Then you also have a big bucket of question marks over this budget bill that you alluded to, which will add trillions of dollars to our deficits going forward, in addition to cutting taxes and gutting parts of the social safety net. But on what timeline that is still sort of to be negotiated. So there are a lot of wild cards there. So like for example, the tax cuts could potentially boost the economy in the near term, particularly from a demand side perspective, if nothing else. Because if people have more cash in their pockets, they're going to spend that cash, maybe even if prices are going up quite a bit. On the other hand, if they lose a lot of these safety net benefits, and maybe that won't even happen until after the next midterms, but maybe it'll happen sooner. Depends how negotiations shake out in the Senate. That means, well, if they have fewer food stamps, they'll be spending less money on food. So how does that affect the macro economy? Because all of these things have knock on effects too. If people spend less money at their grocery store, then maybe the grocery store has fewer people it can hire and then those people maybe ends up laying off people. Who knows and then those people end up spending less, less elsewhere. So it's, you know, this multiplier effect that you might hear economists talk about. And besides all of that, if we do have a recession, which I very much hope we do, not to be clear, and I do not think it's a guaranteed outcome, but the more turmoil we have with the trade stuff, the more likely that outcome is. If we have a recession and we have just gutted the social safety net, then that would make any recession potentially worse and longer. Like, more painful and longer. Because normally more people become eligible for food stamps and Medicaid and all sorts of other safety net benefits when they lose their jobs, when the economy turns south. And that kind of automatically stabilizes the US Economy. So again, like a lot of these things independently add a lot of risk and uncertainty to the economy, but then in combination, it's even worse. So that's why you hear all of these complicated and equivocated forecasts for where things are going. Because if we had just kept the economy that Trump inherited and he didn't do any of this stuff, we probably would have had that coveted soft landing that the Fed was looking for, meaning that we keep growing as an economy. Inflation comes down, et cetera. But now rates come down. Yeah, rates come down for mortgages, among other things. Now, who knows?

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, a lot of that stuff is like middle distance, right. I guess. I wonder what people are looking at in the short term. There was probably the last time we had, John, the tariff stuff was so insane that there were a lot of folks forecasting recession this year, this fall. And the taco response from Trump has, I guess, stalled that. I was looking at Carl over at cnbc. He was talking about how one signal is that travel plans for the summer are kind of soft compared to what folks had anticipated, you know, coming out of those companies. That's one indicator at this point. Are we kind of in a wait and see, do you think, or do you think there might be a change in the environment over the course of the summer?

[Katherine Rampell]

Well, again, a lot of it depends on who has our mad king, who has last whispered in the ear of our mad king. And even if he doesn't ultimately do the most destructive possible scenario out there, which might look like something he has proposed and temporarily implemented in the past of, you know, like 145% tariffs on China, et cetera, the uncertainty over everything itself is a drag on the economy. So when you say like wait and see mode, as if that's, I don't know, if you were actually saying that was a good thing. But I think that implies some optimism.

[Tim Miller]

And I guess it's a good thing compared to, oh my God, like the house is on fire and it's actually the owner of the home that's setting the fire, that they get insurance. Like, that's where we were two months ago.

[Katherine Rampell]

Right. But we're still now watching a guy like huffing gasoline fumes and lighting matches wandering around the house. To extend this metaphor, great job. And that is also not good because if companies don't know what the rules of the road will be, do not know what their costs will be, whether consumers are going to still show up, whether tourists are still going to come, et cetera, that in and of itself that leads to a sort of paralysis that can also really weigh on the economy. I mean, I guess it's not as bad as, like setting the thing aflame today, but it's like a, I'm really torturing this metaphor. It's like a very slow burn that also is not good. So none of these scenarios are great. Again, I don't think a recession is a fait accompli and I don't wanna suggest that. But certainly the odds of recession, or at least a significant slowdown, the dreaded stagflation, meaning that you have inflation and really slow, torturously slow growth, you know, there's a high probability of that, is what I'm saying.

[Tim Miller]

Okay, last thing. On the current economy, some of the tariffs, despite the Taco strategy, some of the tariffs have still been implemented and we've had a significant, like, increase in, you know, if you look at the charts, like how much people are paying, you know, in tariffs over the, like last month versus obviously last year. So are we seeing any actual evidence, like any impact of that or is it still kind of small in the grand scheme of things in a really big dynamic economy?

[Katherine Rampell]

Well, when you say some of the tariffs, as a reminder, we have 10% global tariffs, which at one point was considered the worst case scenario. Trump promised 10% global tariffs during the campaign and markets did not believe him because they thought that was too stupid. Right. Like even Donald Trump would know better than to have 10% global tariffs because it would be really damaging to the economy.

[Tim Miller]

To be fair, we've carved out Rolls Royce engines, some iPhone equipment.

[Katherine Rampell]

Well, no, I think Rolls Royce engines, I think they, if I, if memory serves, I think they're still at 10%, they're just not at 25% or whatever it was. There are some carve outs, you know, you mentioned, what did you say? Semiconductors and some iPhone. Yeah, iPhones. But there may be more tariffs coming that are like a little bit on more legally solid ground. So there's still a lot of uncertainty. We haven't seen any of this show up yet in consumer prices if you look at the latest numbers anyway. And I think that's partly because a lot of companies tried to front run the tariffs. So they're still working through the inventory that they already have and haven't necessarily raised prices. If they bring in the stuff and they're paying a lot more for it, they will pass along at least part of those price increases. So it could very well be that next month the inflation numbers look way worse depending on how businesses respond.

[Tim Miller]

Sure. All right. Moving over to Capitol Hill, I want to get through some of the lies that you're debunking, but just first I would like the global Katherine Rampel take on the big beautiful bill slash reconciliation bill slash turd.

[Katherine Rampell]

So the way I have been describing it is that it is essentially a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, from the young to the old, and from the future to the past, which I think is a nice way of summing up basically all of the moving parts in this bill.

[Tim Miller]

Great news for old rich.

[Katherine Rampell]

Yeah, exactly.

[Tim Miller]

Congrats. We've got some old rich listeners out there. All right, this is your lucky day.

[Katherine Rampell]

And in the White House and buddies with people in the White House. Well, in the sense that, you know, there are tax cuts in this, they go technically to everyone, but they are most valuable to people at the very top end of the income distribution. And then they are partly offset by cutting programs that most benefit people at the bottom of the income distribution. So cutting Medicaid, cutting food stamps, other safety net programs, et cetera. And Democrats have been, have finally caught on to some of this and have been talking about it. But there are also a lot of cuts to programs that disproportionately affect children, for example, and some of those are the same programs that I mentioned. Children are disproportionately large participants in the food stamp program as well as Medicaid and chip, which is by definition a program for children. All of those things will be affected as well. And then there are like changes to the child tax credit that Republicans will say increase the child tax credit, but it also takes it away from millions of kids because if one of their parents is an immigrant and doesn't have a Social Security number, then they don't get it, which by the way affects children of legal immigrants as well, not only those who are undocumented.

[Tim Miller]

You don't count as a human if you're a child of two parents and one is an immigrant and one is an American citizen. I'm sorry, you're a half, you're a half human.

[Katherine Rampell]

There are a lot of things that they are doing to go after that particular group, including trying to claw back birthright citizenship and things like that. That's not related to this bill, but that's part of a broader agenda. And then robbing the future for the past. Some of that is about literally future generations of taxpayers, again, today's children who will have to pay off the additional debts that are incurred because of this bill, either in the form of higher future taxes or lower future spending on programs they might otherwise be able to access. But also taking away a lot of renewable energy related tax credits, which are, I would say, an investment in the, in the future of our energy security and not just how our energy sector will be structured, but how the rest of the economy will be structured. So there's a lot of like very short termism at the very least. And as I alluded to before, there are intraparty debates within the Republican Party about a lot of these pieces. So we don't know what the final bill will look like. We know, for example, that it'll probably have some degree of heartlessness when it comes to Medicaid. But how much heartlessness and when will it materialize? Will it be before the next midterms, will be after, et cetera?

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, some listeners have been giving me feedback. There's a lot of like random Christmas tree stuff in the House bill.

[Katherine Rampell]

Yes.

[Tim Miller]

I really just don't think it's gonna get through the Senate like I did. We were talking about AI forget it was on yesterday's podcast or recently and people were like, well, there's this bill that like guts AI regulation for a decade. I'm like, is that going to get through the Senate? I don't know. You know, there's some things overseeing what the judges can do. Like none of that is technically reconciliation. Like it's possible that the Senate will break their own rules and jam through a bunch of stuff that does not fit in. Reconciliation, which would be functionally ending the filibuster that Republicans have said that they're for. Maybe that'll happen and that'll be something that we'll watch, but I think that the economic stuff is the most likely to get jammed through. The thing you talked about, the intra part There's a lot of time spent on kind of like the intra party cleavages and issues. Right. Like, you know, the Josh Hawley's of the world don't love the Medicaid cuts, the Ron Johnsons the world don't love the debt. Who likes this bill? It sounds like a sarcastic question, but I'm kind of serious. Like who is really excited about it? Like, I don't see on my social media anybody that's like, I am the biggest BBP Stan, because I represent this part of the MAGA faction. That's the most confusing thing about it to me.

[Katherine Rampell]

Well, Donald Trump says it's big and beautiful and so to some extent everybody else in the party has to fall in line with that. And you'll hear people like Speaker Johnson sing its praises and this is the best thing we're gonna get.

[Tim Miller]

What do they like about it? Just that it extends to Trump tax cuts, I guess.

[Katherine Rampell]

I think it's mostly that, but they.

[Tim Miller]

Could have just done that.

[Katherine Rampell]

Well, that would be extremely expensive. So that's part of the issue here. It's already extremely expensive. And then there are a bunch of.

[Tim Miller]

Other tax cuts they added on top.

[Katherine Rampell]

Yeah. That Trump had promised on the campaign trail which make it even more expensive. And then there's like the whole fight over state and local taxes which were capped in the 2017 tax overhaul that is now being extended. So if you live in a state with, you know, high property taxes or high state income taxes, et cetera, you can only deduct up to $10,000. But that is expiring this year. And that was kind of a knock on blue states. Right. It was a way to shake down blue states because that those are the ones that tend to have higher state taxes. But there are some Republicans who live who who are represent swing districts like in New Jersey or Maryland or California, whose own constituents are also hurt by this. And so if you raise the cap as they have agreed to do, then that makes it even more expensive.

[Tim Miller]

So I guess they really like it. That's the answer to the question. Mike Lawlor really likes the bill.

[Katherine Rampell]

Well, I know that they compromise to. I forget what the latest is, but it was like a. You can deduct up to $40,000 if your household makes up to 500 grand. I don't remember it was some kind of compromise. I don't remember if he was super jazzed about it or he was like, this is the best we're going to get. But I think it puts him at less risk. In any event, in the next midterms. So there are a lot of these warring constituencies. They. They want kind of mutually exclusive things, whether that might be even more tax cuts or potentially lower hit to the deficit. So it's a trade off. And again, it's not clear to me necessarily which faction will win out in a lot, like on the Medicaid thing in particular. But I think their main motivation, besides they wanna cut taxes, is they wanna keep Donald Trump happy.

[Tim Miller]

Which is why I think it's interesting, the corporate Republican faction was pretty excited about the original Trump tax cuts. Like, you remember them singing the praises. And that was true in the Bush era, too. This one is just. It's a little. It's a little confusing. You know, usually think they're like niche constituencies of people. You're like, oh, yeah, Grover Norquist was really happy about this. But, like, you're not. You're not seeing this this time.

[Katherine Rampell]

Okay, again, there are also some really weird things tucked in there, even on the tax side, like these kind of punitive taxes. So even the tax guys are worried about, like, some smaller provisions here, how they might be weaponized. Will they make it harder for foreign investors, for example, to buy US treasury debt? Like, there's a lot of other weird stuff in this bill.

[Tim Miller]

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[Russ Vote]

Look, one out of every five or six dollars in Medicaid is improper. We have illegal immigrants on the program. We don't have. We have able bodied working adults that don't have a work requirement that they would have in TANF or even snap. And those are something that's very important to institute. That's what this bill does. No one will lose coverage as a result of this bill.

[Tim Miller]

No, nobody will lose coverage.

[Katherine Rampell]

Is that correct? That's again Congressional Budget Office, which is a nonpartisan sort of like scorekeeper referee research group within Congress. They have said something like from the Medicaid provisions alone, I think around 8 million people will become uninsured. If you include a bunch of other provisions and policies related to health insurance like the Affordable Care act, enhanced medical premiums, expiring, like other boring things like that. The numbers are like double anyway. Yeah. So yes, people will lose their insurance. That is not up for debate. I think what's interesting here is that now that Democrats have kind of caught on to the fact that, hey, there's some stuff in here that's pretty bad for the public and, and that we can use as a political cudgel, including on Medicaid. More people in the public seem to be worried about Medicaid, quite understandably. And they're showing up at town halls and asking about it. And the response from Republicans is one of the three following answers. One, no one will lose coverage, which as you just heard, two, it's a thrust vote. Okay, some people will lose coverage, but it's only the, the freeloaders and welfare queens not deserving people like you. And then three, we're all gonna die anyway, so who cares? That was Joni Ernst who responded that way. So I'm not sure any of those are in the realm of both truth and a winning political strategy. It is true, we were all going to die anyway. Not sure that's gonna get you a lot of voters.

[Tim Miller]

Well, if you converted to Christianity, that wouldn't be a problem for you because you would have everlasting life in heaven, I guess.

[Katherine Rampell]

I don't know what. I'm sorry that you're in heaven though, so maybe you're still worse off.

[Tim Miller]

I'm sorry. Sorry that you're godless or not the right God at least. Okay, well, Mike Johnson was making the same claim. We don't need to listen to him. But I guess the point of it is you're not in a particularly strong place when you just have to bald face lie about what is in the bill. And like that's where they're at. And I guess the bet here is that they can just lie. And this really. You hate to hand it to Ron Johnson, but this is kind of the case that Ron Johnson is making complaining about this bill over in the Senate. Is that what they're going to do in the House is they're going to tell you that they're going to cut everybody's health care but like after the midterms. Right. And then who knows, 27 might come along and assuming we have elections in 2028, whether that's J.D. vance or Donald Trump Jr. Or whatever will decide. They don't want the baggage of it. So they kick it down the path and end up not actually doing it, which I guess is possible. So you can lie about that now because you end up keeping kicking the can and anytime it's actually going to happen, you don't do it. And then the result of that is the massive skyrocketing of the debt, which, which has the other problems that you just laid out. And so I guess that's a critique of the bill from Ron Johnson. Like there's no way to make, to make the case for the bill that doesn't just acknowledge the cuts.

[Katherine Rampell]

Right. Well, that's sort of why I summarized it as how heartless are they willing to be? And all of these choices have trade offs. If you don't want to take health insurance away from poor people, then you're probably going to add more debt unless you decide not to cut all of these taxes, which it seems like that's the red line, right Already. Even before this bill, our deficits were not sustainable. And politicians at some point will have to make really hard choices about reducing deficits. That might mean higher taxes, that might mean lower spending or some combination of the two. And everybody wants this elusive get out of jail free card, which is just like we'll grow our way out of it, which is just not gonna happen based on our demographics, among other things, especially if we're deporting all of the immigrants because you need a large workforce, you need future generations of children, all sorts of other Things in order to grow the economy. So that just assumes a bunch of fairy tale things that are not going to happen.

[Tim Miller]

The on the debt thing, you're on a panel I was watching to prepare. I've watched a couple of your things recently to prepare. We're going to get to one of them at the end. But the panel you were saying that you think it's very unlikely that Democrats kind of take up the mantle of caring about the debt and deficit. If these guys go forth with this deficit exploding bill, that might create issues in the bond markets and all the other issues you just laid out. I'm kind of inclined to agree with you on that, though. I'm doing a one man's journey to make that not happen. Every Democrat crowd I have on the podcast, I asked them if we can negatively polarize. Can we negatively polarize you into caring about the debt and deficit in an actual way? Not in a Bill Clinton did a good job with this 30 years ago kind of way, because that's true, but like not really relevant to what would be required now to address the debt and deficit.

[Katherine Rampell]

And also part of the reason why we had a temporary budget surplus coming out of the Clinton years was about the demographics of the country. Like, boomers were in their prime earning years, so they were paying a lot in taxes. Now they are retired or retiring and birth rates are low.

[Tim Miller]

The good news is they're sticking around and working a lot. You know, they're not just quitting working at 65, they're rolling 81, 82, running for president again. So that's nice.

[Katherine Rampell]

Refuse to retire. But I'm not sure how much additional productive capacity they are adding to the U.S. economy.

[Tim Miller]

Okay, so anyways, here's my counter pitch about why we can maybe get back to the Simpson pulse glory days. Is that like your point in that panel was that it's hard to get people to care about that. It's not tangible, it's not affecting their lives, but it kind of is starting to affect people's life right now. Right? Like that. If the yield stays high and people so already people's eyes have glazed over. So let me not use the word yield. But if we get into a place where no matter what happens with the economy, the interest rates on people's car loans, student loans, mortgages stay high, that is going to impact people in a real way and it's impacting people. Now, I talk to people all the time that want to move houses, either upsize or downsize or have an issue at their house and can't because they're like, how can I move? Like I'm stuck given the interest rate environment. So that will affect people. They just have to like learn that the debt is part of the reason that that's affecting them. Maybe that's the challenge.

[Katherine Rampell]

I think that's part of the challenge. The bigger part of the challenge is all of the things that would be required to solve the problem, you know, to get deficits down are just fundamentally unpopular. And again, that includes soaking the rich.

[Tim Miller]

Is popular.

[Katherine Rampell]

Okay, it is popular. But even Democrats are like, well, we're only the rich, are only the billionaires, you know, and look, I agree, billionaires could probably afford to pay higher taxes, but there's just not enough money on that money tree to get the amount of revenue we need.

[Tim Miller]

How about making all the boomer assholes that want to keep working into their 80s? You don't get Medicare as, as long, as long as you're working, you know, so how about that? That would save us some money.

[Katherine Rampell]

Would be very unpopular. All of the things.

[Tim Miller]

That's not going to be.

[Katherine Rampell]

No, I don't know how you would carve it out just for politicians or something like that.

[Tim Miller]

I'm talking about private sector workers too. There's no.

[Katherine Rampell]

But we need more people working. Like I think probably we should not be leaning so much on 80 year olds to fulfill that role. But yeah, it's like everything that you would do to solve the problem is really unpopular. Neither party wants to take the short term political hit to get those things through because it feels like a long term problem. It used to be that politicians feared that it would become a big issue in the short term. Right. That like, who was. It was James Carville who said he wanted to come back, die and come back. The bond market was, was so powerful and this is kind of what he was referring to. But what's happened in the many years since then is that the rest of the world has continued lending us money even when we have these huge deficits. So they're kind of like keeping us in the habit of spending more than we take in and never having to deal with the consequences. Or it feels like never having to deal with the consequences. And at some point it will become a problem. But nobody knows when that point is going to be. As you pointed out, like interest rates, yields are rising and that's painful. But it's not like Greece level or Argentina level or other places that really had major debt crises. And the United States has our own exceptionalism and maybe we'll be Different. And so far that has been the case in part because people have trusted us and the dollar is the global reserve currency. And that basically makes it more likely that people will keep feeding our habit when everybody else changes their mind. And at some point I think they will. But I could be tomorrow, it could be 30 years from now. That's the only thing that I think will get politicians to act. And probably by then it'll be way too late.

[Tim Miller]

Right. This is why we have Catherine on. This is why you're an economic analyst of choice. Just the dark.

[Katherine Rampell]

Well, because I depress everyone.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. The darkest possible outcome. Well, I've got good news for you. I was listening to the all in podcast, the Tech Bros. And I was, I was encouraged that they did not like the bill and they have concerns about the debt and the interest rates, among other things. And David Ball Sacks, the like, the most willing to carry Trump's water was like, AI is going to solve it. And then just kind of like moved on. It's like, we don't know yet. We don't know. It's a nice thing the techno optimist crowd is they can just be like, AI will solve it. So I can do whatever I want right now and. And the super intelligent computer will figure out later. I've got some other issues people are bored with. Yield talk. I can already tell.

[Katherine Rampell]

I know it's important. It's really hard to get people to.

[Tim Miller]

You're in the TV business. What is it called when you look at the ratings for like every three minute segment, whatever that is, that just was tanking during that period. So we're trying to recover it. Immigration, I want to talk to you. Some science stuff you wrote recently for the Post about how Trump has created a surge in illegal immigrants. Kind of, it's kind of a cute way of putting it because he's taken away the legal status of many immigrants, particularly the Venezuelans, who are given temporary protected status. That is happening for the Afghans as well. Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti are on the chopping block. So we've got that happening on the one hand. Well, actually, let's just sit with that for a second. I want to get into some Stephen Miller stuff. This policy is pretty crazy.

[Katherine Rampell]

Yeah, well, Trump has been warning fear mongering for years that the United States is being overrun by illegals, you know, illegal immigrants. And he is now manifesting those fever dreams into reality by literally taking people who are here legally and rendering them illegal. So yes, in the past week And a half, two weeks, we have added something like 800,000 more, quote, unquote, illegal immigrants or undocumented immigrants. But that's because he de. Documented them. And, and I think people don't realize this, besides this being inhumane and destroying lots of people's lives, including the lives potentially of many of our friends and allies and people who, you know, assisted our military in Afghanistan, etc. That will also have big effects on the economy. Because when he's taking away these people's status, what if they're on these programs called like temporary protected status or their parolees or whatever, that comes generally with the ability to work. So he has now effectively taken 800,000 people potentially out of the labor force. Now, like when employers will start to realize that, I don't know, I don't think that happened overnight, but that's going to have big effects on the economy in addition to, again, you know, the human facts that I'm more concerned about. And then he's also done a bunch of other things to try to make it harder for legal immigrants to come into the country. Whether we're talking about refugees, people who may be more penniless and desperate, and we want to let in because it's the moral thing to do. It helps our moral standing in the world, or for that matter, scientists and students and, you know, quote, unquote, higher skilled people who are also very critical to the US Economy. He has made it a lot harder for them to come in legally. The line from Trump is always, or Trump and Trumpers is always. We don't hate immigrants. We only hate those who haven't followed the law. The criminals, you know, the gang bangers, people living in the shadows. But the truth is he has taken away every legal pathway to come in here, quote, unquote, the right way, and is stripping legal status away from people who didn't, in fact, do exactly that.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, I want to get to the scientists, but one thing on this point, on the criminals, there was a Washington examiner story. You know, I hate citing some of these outlets, but it's kind of like in Men in Black, where you get the real news from the, from the National Enquirer. That's kind of where we are right now. Sometimes we get the real news from these places because they.

[Katherine Rampell]

Or the Onion, you know.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, because they actually talk to the fucking freaks that are populating our government. But apparently there was a report from inside a meeting between Stephen Miller and ICE and some DHS officials where Stephen Miller was yelling. You can really picture this. I want people to kind of get this scene in their head because he gets really mad. I'm thinking about the scene. Have you ever seen the scene of him in high school where he's screaming about how he doesn't want to have to clean up his food? Like, what the hell do we pay the janitors for? Why do I have to clean up my own food? Have you ever seen that video?

[Katherine Rampell]

I like that.

[Tim Miller]

It's a good one. It's worth Googling. So I'm picturing him in that kind of tone, shouting at the ICE officials who actually are people that have experience as police. Right. As opposed to him. What do you mean you're going after criminals? Why aren't you at Home Depot? Why aren't you at 7:11? So I guess in private they belie the idea that they actually even give a fuck about whether or not the people they're deporting are criminals. They don't care.

[Katherine Rampell]

And in public, in many ways, they're arresting people when they show up for their routine check ins with immigration agents, which by definition means that they are trying to follow the law. And so you'll see stories like, I think in this past week or the week before, there was a high school student in the Bronx who showed up for his regular ICE or immigration court hearing, something like that, had no criminal record. He had come in with permission under, I believe, a Biden era program, and he was arrested and detained. And there are a lot of stories like this throughout the country. The issue is, besides the fact that, like, Stephen Miller wants to just round up everyone, whether they're criminals or not, when ICE has these quotas to fill, which reportedly they do, you know how many arrests they have to make per day. The people who are abiding by the law, who are showing up at their hearings, et cetera, they're the much lower hanging fruit. It's hard to find the rapists and gang bangers and drug dealers who are actually public safety threats, who are in the shadows and not voluntarily going to ICE offices. It's really hard to hunt those people down. Even if I think there's widespread bipartisan support for finding those people, it's really easy to find people who are voluntarily telling the government where they live, where they work, they're here legally, or they have some kind of temporary status that allows them to be here legally and to work legally. Those people are, ICE knows where they are, so just arrest them. And so you can see that in the numbers. Actually, if you look at the ICE detention data from January, before Trump took office, versus sometime, I think mid May, the number of people in ICE detention who have criminal records has gone up. You know, it's like one and a half times what it was when Trump took office. So it's higher. The number of people in ICE detention who have no criminal records and no criminal charges, they're only there because of some alleged immigration violation, which is generally a civil violation, or, you know, may, may not even exist at all, has gone up sevenfold. So the biggest increase in detentions is among people who are by definition not criminals.

[Tim Miller]

Ugh. From one depressing topic to one that's even maybe more, there's a New York Times story out this morning. I'm going to read a little bit more from it than I usually do just because it's so affecting. It's like Kate Zernicki. The story is about how the US Used to light a beacon for science from immigrants throughout the world. And now some fear it's dimming, maybe understated there on the, on the subhead for from the New York Times, here's how it starts. Artem Padapucian story is not just the American dream, it's the dream of American science. He arrived in LA at age 18 after fleeing war torn Lebanon. Shout out to the Lebanese, I'm a quarter Lebanese. He spent a year delivering dominoes to become eligible for the University of California. He went on to get a postdoctoral fellowship in neuroscience. He started a lab in San Diego with a grant from NIH, discovered the way humans sense touch, and in 2021 won the Nobel Prize. The Trump cuts got rid of his federal grant to develop new approaches to treating pain. He posted about this on Blue Sky. He said within hours he had an email from a Chinese official offering to move his lab to any city, any university he wants with a guarantee of funding for 20 years. Padapoutian declined, said because he loves America, but he's worried many other scientists just setting out on their careers, however, are not going to have any option but to leave. That's pretty depressing.

[Katherine Rampell]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

And the story goes on with many more examples of it.

[Katherine Rampell]

Yes, look, over the past century, science and research have basically been America's golden goose in the sense that they have contributed way outsize to their, to their like actual part of the economy, to the broader economy. You know, like that's why we lead in, in tech, in science, in a lot of other fields. And that's why it's been so easy in many ways to attract the best and brightest to come here. Like it feeds on itself that we attract the best and brightest to come here. They do cutting edge research and that is an engine for the US economy. And then that it begets more and more scientists to come here. And those who do come here not only are successful in their own right, but there's a lot of evidence to suggest that they make American born talent more productive as well. There's a lot of research from an economist at NYU named Petra Moser that looks at how changes in immigration law have actually affected all of this over the years. And among other things, like the arrival of a lot of Jewish, German, Jewish emigres who fled the Nazis revolutionized US science and innovation. And probably the Manhattan Project could not have existed without them. So it's not only about the economy, it's also about national defense, whatever you think of the Manhattan Project. And that if you look at the quota acts in the 1920s when we really clamped down on external immigration disproportionately, immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe, the scientists who came from those places were more likely to be in some fields than others. And as a result, those fields in the United States suffered disproportionately. So basically, like this is not a hypothetical concern about this brain drain solely on this for now, I'm just talking about immigration here. We actually have lots of evidence that American innovation, American productivity, American research benefits when we are able to bring in global talent and suffers when we're not able to. That's like you can see it in the patent records, for example. And then on top of that, you mentioned the grants. And this is another example of slaughtering the golden goose. Trump has purged a lot of scientists from within the federal government who work on research, work on medical research at nih, agricultural research at the usda, et cetera, has pushed a lot of those people out, has made it much harder to get grants or explicitly cutoff grants from private research institutions. Whether that's related to like supposed DEI concerns. There were a lot of grants, science and research grants frozen because of that initially. And then there's more punitive stuff targeting specific institutions. All of that is going to affect our ability to cure diseases to come up with the next iPhone. You know, the iPhone is based on lots of research done by scientists, researchers at private universities. It's, you know, Steve Jobs, brilliant guy, Apple, very innovative company. But a lot of what went into innovations like that comes from research being done at these public research institutions. So we are going to basically turn off this spigot of talent, turn off the spigot of research that we're developing here. Some of that's going to move abroad. Maybe we'll have new labs set up in China and they'll be nice enough to give us to lend us the results of those great discoveries. Like, you know, I think Europe is also poaching a lot of our scientists right now. Canada, I think Canada. Actually one of those papers that I mentioned, I think Canada was like a big beneficiary of the quota X, as I recall from the 1920s, because a bunch of scientists went there. So other countries will benefit, but probably on net, the world will be worse off because we have proven ourselves to be really good at this stuff in ways that benefits us, that has spillover effects for the rest of the world, particularly when it comes to medical breakthroughs. And for what, I have no idea.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, the kicker quote in that story, all the medicines. This is from a biologist at Harvard who is an immigrant from Czech Republic or probably Czechoslovakia at the time he came. All the medicines that people take, they were developed in the US there's essentially nothing developed by anywhere else. We're on top of the whole thing and we're really risking it all.

[Katherine Rampell]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

So that's pretty ominous assessment. You just mentioned a lot of the Jewish scientists that have come here. Do you have any? And I'm sure you have many thoughts on kind of the spate of anti Semitic attacks we've seen recently. Anything in particular that strikes you?

[Katherine Rampell]

It's very ugly. I'm Jewish and I've been getting a lot of it lately from both the far left and the far right for very different reasons. And one thing that's very scary about all of this stuff is, you know, if you're a journalist, if you're somehow in the public eye, you get a lot of hate mail no matter what. But in a country where it's very easy to secure weapons, firearms, it's really hard to know when these kinds of threats are people just blowing off steam and when they are actually going to act on their expressed desire to do harm to various out groups, whether that's Jews or anyone else. I guess in Colorado, the guy used a Molotov cocktail or, you know, flamethrower or something, and not a firearm. But, you know, it's very disturbing. Personally, I find it disturbing from perspective of like, everybody should feel safe at night when they go to sleep. It's very disturbing. And I wish I knew what the solution is. But meanwhile, as we are seeing a rise in antisemitic incidents here in the United States, the Trump administration has been sort of weaponizing that rise to do completely unrelated things. Right. So, you know, to punish Harvard, to punish Columbia, like, say international students can't come here. And none of that makes me feel safer as a Jew, you know, having people kidnapped off of the streets and punished for their speech, historically not good.

[Tim Miller]

For Jews, you know, yeah, we're gonna be targeting students at Ivy League schools because we wanna protect Jews. It's like, wait a minute.

[Katherine Rampell]

Oh, well, the administration actually sent a survey to all of the professors at Barnard, which is part of Columbia, asking them if they were Jewish. Like, ostensibly because, you know, like, they were trying to identify if there was a rise in anti Semitism on campus. But, you know, my view is when the government is making a list of Jewish intellectual elites, it usually does not end well, whatever their stated purpose is. So, yeah, I don't know what to say except it's terrible. And we've seen this story before. Again, it's not only Jews who are at risk right now, but if you are a Jewish person and you want to go to synagogue or like the JCC or whatever, it suddenly feels a lot more dangerous than it used to be. And nobody's doing anything about it. And instead I feel like you have politicians capitalizing on it. You see these mobs on the Internet cheering it on. And I do worry about more copycat behaviors and also this sort of, like, glorification of political violence, not only being used against Jews, but against other groups, whether they're like, pro Palestine students or anyone else. And I just feel like the whole country right now feels really on edge and feels like any match could be lit and, you know, you could have something really disastrous happen. And that's not a great feeling right now.

[Tim Miller]

All right, running out of time. I just want to close with something really quick. I feel remiss, not to mention this being down here in Louisiana. We had a story from Reuters yesterday. The staff of the Federal Emergency Management Agency was left baffled on Monday after the head of that agency said he had not been aware that the country has a hurricane season. According to four sources familiar with the situation, David Richardson, the newly named FEMA director, has no disaster response experience. So there you go. You feeling good now? You ready? Are you feeling good about sleeping at night now with this guy with the best and the brightest in charge?

[Katherine Rampell]

Yes. The meritocracy at work. Bring back dei. I don't know, whatever concerns the public may have had with dei, it seemed like it resulted in slightly more competent people running the Department of Transportation and the military and FEMA for that Matter than whatever we have now.

[Tim Miller]

DEI versus foxei. You know, I don't know exactly how that works. Final thing, you were with Ezra. You did Ezra's show as well as mine, which I appreciate. And, you know, we're just monitoring Ezra right now. He's maybe gone dark. Ezra, he's flipped. He's the foil of the left on the Internet now. He's grown a beard. He told Hasan Minhaj. I think he's taken the creatine. He's working out. You know, what did you make. You were in his presence. Did you feel kind of a dark energy or a glow up coming off of, you know, podcast host competitor Ezra Klein?

[Katherine Rampell]

I think Ezra has always been glamorous. So what can I say?

[Tim Miller]

Do I need to grow a beard, do you think, to compete? Or is it start taking. Start taking any supplements?

[Katherine Rampell]

I think intellectual curiosity is the best glow up one can have. And you have it in spades, and Ezra has it in spades. And this fight with the left is a whole other issue that we could do a different conversation on that. I feel like Democrats kind of learned nothing from the last election, but that's a whole separate issue.

[Tim Miller]

We should do another group on that. We can have a little.

[Katherine Rampell]

Oh, my God. I have much to say that's gonna get me in trouble. But whatever, I'll say it anyway.

[Tim Miller]

That is a nice tease for your next visit to the podcast, and I'm going to endeavor to get you in trouble when you come back. Thank you so much, Katharine Rampel.

[Katherine Rampell]

Thanks, Tim.

[Tim Miller]

Everybody else, we'll be back here tomorrow for another edition of the podcast. See you all then. Peace.

[Jason Brown]

So much. You bought it. Do you ever have a good time? But this voice that telling you you don't deserve this kind of love I'm trying and now I'm crying in the back street of a city I don't know and I'm trying to go to parties in a place said I don't belong you said it's just a bad day trying not to fix it But I'm crying in the back seat of a taxi in Tokyo in the bar I asked you why you're always on your phone and you told me that you think you'd like me to be more confident Think you made it like a good thing but it sounded so me like you wish you were someone with a different body.

[Tim Miller]

The Bulwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.