← The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
Bonus: Inside the Senate All-Nighter Passing the One Big Beautiful Bill
00:41:18
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- [00:00]
Ted Cruz
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:04]
Ryan Seacrest
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- [00:29]
Ben Ferguson
No purchase necessary VGW group Void where prohibited by law 21/ terms and conditions apply welcome.
- [00:36]
Ted Cruz
It is verdict with Center Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you and we're doing a hybrid show this morning with the Ben Ferguson Podcast as well because I'm on family vacation in Cabo. But when the big beautiful bill happens, you do exactly what we're doing right now and that is give you the latest no matter where we are in the world of what's happening and how we got the deal done. Center I I have a feeling you are running on very little sleep. Did you pull the all nighter?
- [01:03]
Ben Ferguson
I definitely did. You and I are recording this podcast at 10:37pm Texas time on Tuesday night. I last slept on Sunday night. We were up at 9am Monday morning on the Senate floor. We began consideration of the one big beautiful bill under the reconciliation procedures. When you take up reconciliation, which, which as you know you and I have talked about before, is the principal exception to the Senate filibuster rule. The ordinary rule in the Senate is you need 60 votes to pass legislation. But budget reconciliation is a special process that you can pass legislation with only 50 votes. But part of budget reconciliation is you have unlimited amendments. And that whole process is what's known as votorama. We started at 9am Monday morning, we went all day Monday, we went all night Monday, we went all morning Tuesday and we finished the whole thing at right about noon on Tuesday. And then I went and headed to the airport, got at a one o' clock flight, flew back to Texas. I'm home tonight in Texas and have yet to go to sleep. As soon as we finish this podcast I've got a date with my bed and I intend to be unconscious very very soon.
- [02:17]
Ted Cruz
I feel bad for you, but welcome to how the Sausage is Made. So I have a lot of questions. I know everybody else has wanted to ask the same thing before we get into what is in the bill when this vote a rama's happening. You're one of the youngest guys in the Senate. Your stamina is a little Bit better, I would say, just based on AIDS and others. Do people sleep in their offices? Do you guys hang out? Do you decide to have dinner? Do you order pizzas? Do you guys go to the, to, to the basement rooms that you guys have? Like how, tell us how everybody feels the time.
- [02:49]
Ben Ferguson
So, yes, all of the above. And, and there is a wide age variation in the Senate. I'm 54, I can pull an all and I'm just fine. Look, Chuck Grassley is 90. We've got a bunch of senators who are in their 80s. And I will tell you, particularly for the older senators doing an all nighter weighs upon them. This was the longest vote a rama in history. Some of this was Democrat delays, some of this was just the fact that Senate Republican leadership was scrambling to get the bill ready. One of the things to understand is the timeframe of this bill moved very quickly because President Trump announced he wanted this done by July 4th and he was leaning on Senate leadership and House leadership to get it done. And so during the day we're taking, I think we took something like 47 votes in the 27 hours it took. And so there are periods of downtime, there are periods in between a vote when they're preparing the next vote where they're revising statutes, revising amendments. They're also getting determinations from the Senate parliamentarian. They're also getting scores. In order to have an amendment, you have to get a score which, which is the Joint Committee on Taxation or, or the Congressional Budget Office will determine how much a particular provision will cost or how much it will save before you can vote on it. In Voterama, you have to get that score. So during the day, yes, there, there are senators who are sitting back in the cloak room sleeping either on a couch or in a chair. There are senators who go down to their hideaways. Every senator has what's called a hideaway, which is a smaller office in the US Capitol building. And most of us have a couch or two couches in the hideaway. And so senators would go and, you know, get a 20 minute nap there, but. And you would see pages kind of asleep behind the Senate floor. It's going long and furious. In terms of food. The food tends to be fairly lousy. It's kind of different. People host it. They'll bring in, they'll bring in pizzas, they'll bring in sandwiches. One tradition that I started when I first got to the Senate is anytime we do an all night vote a rama in the morning, I bring in McDonald's breakfast and I just give it to all the Republican senators. So I had 75 egg McMuffins and sausage McMuffins and breakfast burritos that just showed up about 5:30 in the morning. And you know, I gotta say, there are few things better after an all nighter than Mickey D's breakfast. And I'll tell you, Ben, some advice an old friend of mine gave me, always, always, always pick up the breakfast check. And so you get some goodwill from your check. Cheaper than the dinner. Exactly right.
- [05:39]
Ted Cruz
All right. So do you guys hang out kind of in groups? And I asked this because like everybody kind of has their friends group that they hang out with. Do you kind of have a text thread and say, hey, we're all over here, hey, what do you want to do now? And I asked this for another reason. There are different centers that like to play different games. You, for example, love to play foosball. There is a foosball table somewhere in the Senate. Do you guys like have games like that while you're just waiting in between?
- [06:06]
Ben Ferguson
No, it's mostly just sitting around. Sometimes you'll be sitting on the Senate floor at your desk. Sometimes you'll be standing in the back of the Senate floor in the back of the Senate. It's what's called the cloak room. The cloak room has a couple of couches and probably 20 kind of big comfy chairs. A lot of us will sit back in the cloak room and then people will sort of huddle at different places. But it is a little bit. I mean, you hang out typically with the folks that are your closest friends. But look, it's not that big a body. There are only a hundred of us. So you end up hanging out with a lot of your colleagues throughout the course of 27 hours.
- [06:46]
Ted Cruz
In a weird way, is it kind of nice to see the Senate come together in that way where you can actually be friendlier with somebody and chat with them? Does it build relationships at all long term?
- [06:58]
Ben Ferguson
You know, sure, I guess I wouldn't mind doing it without the all nighter at this point. You know, When I was 19, 20, 21, I probably pulled one or two all nighters a week in college. And you know, I'm at a stage in life where I'm not eager to do all nighters anymore.
- [07:16]
Ted Cruz
I like that. All right, how close were we to this bill being in jeopardy? I asked that because there was a headline that came out and then it started kind of being run around 9 o' clock yesterday evening, 8 o' clock central. It set up to six GOP centers hold out on the big beautiful bill. And there was word that the President was working the phones. And was that a bunch to do about nothing, or was it really whipping votes happening in the evening?
- [07:45]
Ben Ferguson
Absolutely. Throughout the whole process, this was incredibly close. It was nip and tuck. I'll tell you Tuesday morning, you know, we thought, maybe we're going to get out there 5 or 6 in the morning. So I originally had an 8:20 flight. Well, 8:20 came and went. Then I had an 11am flight and 11am came and went. I ended up getting on a 1pm flight. And so that. And that was true for everyone. You had senators who, for Fourth of July, one of my colleagues was going to Hawaii. His wife and kids were already there. You had people flying all over the place for Fourth of July, but nobody could leave. So they're canceling their plans because we were supposed to be out this weekend. And this dragged on longer. And part of the reason it dragged on longer is it wasn't clear where the votes are. And so let me talk about some of the elements of what's in this bill. Probably the single most important thing that is in this bill is we extend the 2017 Trump tax cuts. That's a big deal. When we pass those tax cuts, we pass them under reconciliation. But. But they only lasted. They were only scheduled to last 10 years. And so if we did nothing, on December 31st of this year, the tax cuts would expire, which meant in on January 1st, there would be an automatic $4 trillion tax increase. Your taxes would go up, My taxes would go up. The taxes of working Americans across this country would go up. That would have been devastating to the country. And so we had to pass this bill to extend the Trump tax cuts. Beyond that, we made historic investments in securing the border. We put $150 billion into securing the border, into building the wall, hiring Border Patrol agents, hiring ICE agents, building detention facilities and detention beds. This is an investment. There's never been an investment like this at this order of magnitude. One of the great mandates out of this election was secure the border. And this bill provides the funding to enable President Trump to continue doing so. That is absolutely historic. On top of that, we also had a massive investment into rebuilding our military. An additional $150 billion into our military to bring it into the 21st century. And in particular, to invest in things like hypersonic weaponry, to invest in more subs, to invest in more ships, to invest in the golden dome, which President Trump rightly is advocating, missile defense for the Homeland to keep us safe. That investment is in there as well, incredibly important. Another component of that is investing in the Coast Guard. $24 billion in investments in the Coast Guard. That means, among other things, building new polar icebreakers. Right now, China is kicking our tails in the Arctic and this is gonna bring shipbuilding back to this country and give us the ability to build ships here at home and have icebreakers so that we can defend our national security. All of those investments are enormously important.
- [10:53]
Ted Cruz
You know, Senator, one, I think one of the most important things about this bill and one of the things that you advocated for and I've advocated for, and it's something the President very clearly ran on, was making the Trump tax cuts permanent. This was a massive tax cut for the American people. Now, I know the media doesn't want to talk about that there. I know they, they want to say that none of this is going to have a major impact on our economy, but it is in a ginormous way, especially for lower and middle class Americans. How catastrophic would it have been if this bill did not get passed when it comes to just basic tax policy and these skyrocketing taxes? Without this bill, well, look, a $4.
- [11:39]
Ben Ferguson
Trillion tax increase would have been enormously detrimental to the economy. Many of those taxes were on small businesses, their business tax deductions for things like investing in new factories, investing in new equipment. And those deductions produce jobs. They raise wages, they incentivize deploying capital. And so if those taxes were to go up, you would end up seeing jobs go away. In 2017, when we passed the Trump tax cuts, we saw enormous economic prosperity. We saw the lowest unemployment in 50 years and the lowest black unemployment ever recorded, the lowest Hispanic unemployment ever recorded. And, and so if we did nothing, we would reverse those gains by having a massive tax increase. Now, Ben, the Democrats talking point, which every one of them said throughout this process and which the media repeated, is this is tax cuts for billionaires. Now, I'm going to give you a hyper technical legal term for what that line is. That would be called a lie. What this did is maintained current tax rates. So the lie that it's tax cuts for billionaires is the Democrats say, well, if we do nothing, there's going to be a massive tax cut on everyone or tax increase on everyone. And since this kept the tax rates exactly the same as they are today, the Democrats and media lie and say that's a massive tax cut for billionaires. Everyone is paying the same rates. But as you rightly noted, where we provided Additional tax relief was not at the top end of the income scale, but it was middle class and working. It was President Trump's blue collar agenda. So what are some of the new tax cuts that are in this provision? Number one, no tax on tips. That's my legislation. I wrote that legislation that is in this bill that's gonna benefit waiters and waitresses and bartenders and barbers and, and hairstylists and taxicab drivers and everyone who's working and getting compensated on tipped income. That is real and meaningful relief. Also included in this is no tax on overtime. And also included in this is tax relief for seniors getting Social Security. All of those, those are not going to millionaires and billionaires. They're going to working Americans. And in fact, the Joint Committee on Taxation put out an analysis of the distributional impacts of these tax cuts. They found that people making less than $15,000 a year would get a 16.4% cut in taxes, and they're paying very little. People making between 15,000 and 30,000 a year would get a 27.1% cut. People making between 30,000 and 40,000 a year would get a 9.5% cut. And people making 40,000 to 50,000 a year would get a 7.2% cut. So those are real and meaningful tax relief. And by the way, those numbers compared to the impact for people at the top end, those making over a million was 3%. And mind you, that's not a cut for them. That's just saying that they don't have their taxes skyrocket automatically. They stay at exactly the same level they are today. That is real, meaningful middle class tax relief.
- [15:13]
Ted Cruz
You know, you go back to the campaign and that legislation that you just mentioned, the no tax on tips, and Donald Trump talked about how he wrote it down on a napkin after, I think it was, if I remember correctly, out in Nevada.
- [15:24]
Ben Ferguson
Yep.
- [15:25]
Ted Cruz
And he was just saying, this is a great idea. I'm going to write down. Yeah, he was in Vegas. And there's so many people in Vegas that work on tips. I can't tell you how many different people have talked to me about this, that work in an industry that heavily revolves around tips. Uber and Lyft drivers are a great example of that. I've had a lot of them talk to me about it. When they find out what you do, they're like, oh, man, this would change my life. Because it would. It would allow me to keep so much more of my own money. While you're trying to make it, if you've Food delivery. You do it, I do it, right? Uber eats, whatever it may be. That's another example of, of where this can have a huge impact on someone giving them an instant pay raise, especially when you need it. Look, I, I taught tennis for years and tips are a large part of, of your, your salary. You knew that. But like you want to talk about giving Americans an instant pay raise, especially when you're starting out or you're living more paycheck to paycheck, this could have a catastrophic positive impact on our overall economy, especially for people in these jobs. I don't think people understand what a big difference this can make.
- [16:33]
Ben Ferguson
Yeah, it's gonna make a big difference to a lot of people who need the relief. And I've had the same experience where people really see that as President Trump and a Republican Congress delivering on our promises. You know, there are other elements in this bill. I gotta tell you, I'm particularly gratified because I had a lot of big victories that are included in this bill. So I mentioned no tax on tips. That's my legislation that's in there. We've talked before about spectrum wireless. Now what does that mean? Every electronic device you have, your cell phone, WI fi, your laptop, streaming, satellite, everything operates over electromagnetic spectrum and, and different bandwidths are assigned to different forms of communication. Of the most valuable spectrum, the mid band spectrum, the Federal government controls 60% of it. I wrote into this bill a mandate that the federal government must auction off to the private sector. 800 MHz of spectrum. Now what does that mean? That's going to do a couple of things. Number one, that's going to generate about $100 billion to the federal government. That's real money that goes to the taxpayers that can pay down our debt, pay down, lower the deficit. Those are real dollars that come into the federal government. But I'll tell you, Ben, that's not the biggest advantage. The biggest advantage is it is gonna unleash billions of dollars of new investment and create hundreds of thousands of jobs. Because this is about winning the race for 6G and beating China. And I gotta tell you, three months ago, nobody in Washington thought we would get spectrum auction in this bill. I wrote it, it's in there. And that is gonna have a massive job creation impact. That's in this bill you talk about.
- [18:21]
Ted Cruz
No one thought was gonna be in there. There was a lot of people lobbying, trying to keep that out. And you stuck to your guns on this one. That's part of the, I think the success story of this bill.
- [18:29]
Ben Ferguson
It Is, and I will tell you, Ben, the two provisions that personally I care the most about that are in this bill that I think will be transformational are, are school choice and the Trump accounts. Both of those were my legislation that I wrote and I told this story on the podcast. A little over a month ago, Senate Republicans, we all went on a retreat and we were talking about the reconciliation bill and what we were going to do. And I stood up and I said to my colleagues, I said, listen, there are a lot of big and important things that we're doing in this bill that we need to do in this bill. And I think that's good and I think that's great. We ought to at least pause and ask about legacy, ask about what lasting difference we're gonna make. Ask about in 10, 20, 30 years, what are people going to remember that is in this bill? And I made the case to my colleagues for two different provisions, neither one of which were in the bill at the time. Number one, school choice and number two, Trump accounts. Let's start with Trump accounts. Under this bill, the federal government will create a private investment account for every child in America. And it will seed that account with $1,000 for every newborn child in America. That money then parents and friends and family can invest every year in a tax advantaged vehicle. That money is invested in the S&P 500, a broad based equity. There were two massive advantages of this. Number one, every child in America is going to experience the incredible benefits of compound growth. What does that mean? Little girl is born next year, she's born, she has this private investment account open for her. It's seeded with a thousand dollars. And her parents, or family, or parents, employers contribute 5,000 a year, every year. If you assume the historical rate of growth of The S&P 500, which is 7%, by the time that little girl turns 18, she will have $170,000 in that account. And if she continues contributing 5,000 a year, by the time she turns 35, she will have $700,000 in that account. That is massive. These are 401ks for kids. And think about how 401ks changed how we retire, how we save for retirement. This now gives the power of compound growth to every kid. But number two, this also will create a new generation of capitalists. Every child will be an owner, an owner of the largest employers in this country. That is a big deal. If you're tired of seeing all these kids that hate capitalism, that think socialism is a good idea, that think Mondame up in New York is. Boy, that sounds great. Let's elect a communist. Well, having a new generation of capitalists who are owners and have skin in the game, I think in 10, 20, 30 years we're gonna look back and say that changed this country for the better. Those Trump accounts. I wrote the legislation. It's in the bill. And it was a fight to get them in the bill, but we kept them in the bill.
- [21:41]
Ted Cruz
Choo choo choo choo.
- [21:42]
Ben Ferguson
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- [22:14]
Ted Cruz
You know you talk about financial literacy is how I was described it by a school teacher recently that said, I listened to you in the senator's show and when you guys were talking about these savings accounts at birth and what this could do, they said it also will allow us to then have curriculum that will be for financial literacy. Because we'll have something we can actually look at kids and say, this is what you have. We can show you your report, we can show you the power of compound interest. We can show you what the tax savings look like. We can show you how to plan for your future. And then things like credit card debt and how to balance a checkbook and how to save and why you don't want to take out high interest loans become a reality and understandable to these kids because they can see what happens on the opposite of that when you are saving money and watching it grow. And to go back to the point you were making, this could fundamentally change an entire country, number one, but also can change an entire generation. When you talk about generational wealth, which everybody wants for their kids.
- [23:23]
Ben Ferguson
Yeah, no, that's exactly right. And what you're talking about there is one of the real drivers of the wealth gap we have in America is that wealthy parents teach their kids how to invest, teach their kids how to save, teach them financial literacy and learning that perpetuates the wealth gap. And many low income parents don't themselves have a terribly high degree of financial literacy. So they don't teach their kids about it. They're not investors. A large percentage of Americans don't own a single stock or bond. You know, now you're gonna end up, in 10 years, you're gonna have a 10 year old boy who pulls out his phone and opens the app for his Trump account and sees how much money he's got in that account. And it'll be broken down, so it'll be the S&P 500. But he'll look and say, hey, wait, I own 100 bucks of Apple, I own 75 bucks of Boeing or 50 bucks of McDonald's. And that is a different thing. When a 10 year old says, when he goes to McDonald's and orders a Big Mac and he says, wait, I'm one of the owners of this company. And he gets to understand that, you know, a portion of those profits are accruing to his benefits because he's one of the owners of the company. That is transformational. And listen, rich kids accumulate capital all the time. But this is allowing low income kids, the kids of single moms who would never own a stock and bond otherwise, to begin accumulating earlier. And then a huge accelerator on this. So I'll tell you that the entire price tag of the bill was in the trillions. The price tag of this. So there are 3.7 million kids born on average in this country each year. 1,000 bucks a year for that is $3.7 billion. So that's $37 billion over 10 years in the scope of this bill. That is a very small amount compared to the overall size of this bill. But that tiny amount is like priming a pump. Because one of the things we're gonna see is we're gonna see employers contributing to the accounts of the kids of their employees. Think about 401ks when 401k. By the way.
- [25:35]
Ted Cruz
That's not a theory. That's not a theory. I wanna. Hold on, I wanna be clear. That's not a theory you're talking about. This is a reality because you've actually talked with CEOs of companies who are saying they wanna do this.
- [25:47]
Ben Ferguson
So there is a CEO Council of Invest America and it's a bunch of major CEOs in this country who have said if you create these Trump accounts, we will contribute to the accounts of the kids of our employees. We will match it. It's chaired by Michael Dell, it's chaired by a Texan. Michael is a good friend. Michael is committed that Dell is going to contribute to the accounts of the kids of all their employees. And think about 401. Look, 401k is just a provision in the tax code, and when it passed, it changed how America saves for retirement. There is right now, today, trillions of dollars invested in 401ks. And without exaggeration, I think in 20 years, we will see trillions of dollars invested in Trump accounts. The multiplier effect there is really potent, and I think it will become an almost standard employee benefit. Just like if you get a job at any big company, you're going to get a 401 contribution or match. I think this will be another standard employee benefit. And so it really unleashes savings early. That's a big deal. And then, Ben, I want to talk about another provision that I was fighting.
- [26:59]
Ted Cruz
And by the way. Yeah. I want to say one more thing about this real quick, just so people understand when you talk about this. A great example of this. You know, my three boys and I made a deal with all of them. I said, hey, whatever you save for your first car, I'm going to match it. If you want to drive a hooptie, you can drive a hooptie. If you want to drive a nicer car, I'll match whatever you say. But it. But you're going to match.
- [27:24]
Ben Ferguson
Ben, what exactly is a hooptie?
- [27:25]
Ted Cruz
And a hooptie is my first car when it's like a couple grand and it barely makes it down the road. My first car was a Honda Prelude with 187,000 miles with no air conditioning. And I loved it, by the way.
- [27:39]
Ben Ferguson
Is hoopty like a Memphis word or something? I'm just. I'm not sure that's English.
- [27:44]
Ted Cruz
It's. I. That's just. That's the word that when I grew up in Memphis, they call. If you had a car that wasn't very nice, we refer. It was referred to as, oh, that's a nice hooptie.
- [27:53]
Ben Ferguson
So what was your first car?
- [27:55]
Ted Cruz
The dialect that I grew up with.
- [27:57]
Ben Ferguson
Honda Prelude.
- [27:58]
Ted Cruz
Prelude. It was in 1980. 1988. 187,000 miles on it. And I could. And I could afford it because it had a busted AC and it took the old R12, which was hard to find and more expensive. I remember this like it was yesterday. And I bought that car for $2,600. And I was. And I loved it, by the way, very proud of that car. But. But the point was to.
- [28:22]
Ben Ferguson
And by the way, my first car.
- [28:24]
Ted Cruz
Look, you're gonna have ownership in this. What was it?
- [28:26]
Ben Ferguson
My first car was a 1978 Ford Fairmont, which. Which we called the Green Bomb and it was actually my grandfather's car. And when I turned 16, my grandfather gave it to me and he was kind of a gruff old Irishman and he said, boy, stick your hands out. So I stuck my hands out and he put a car key in each hand, said happy birthday. And it was, you know, they'd had it for eight years, so it was their car. And, and we called it the Green Bomb. And I drove all my buddies in high school and we got into a lot of trouble in that car.
- [28:57]
Ted Cruz
That's amazing. Well, I said, I said to my son, I said, look, you can spend money on frivolous things and you'll have instant gratification. I said, or you can save your money and I'll help you invest it in stocks. Well, my son now owns Lockheed Martin. Not much of it, but he owns some of it. He owns Ford because he thought that was a good stock that had been around. And now every day when he comes home from school in the summer, he's like, hey, how'd my stocks do today? And, and, and it's changed his mentality as we're on family vacation. I told all the kids, I said, hey, you can get one cool thing while you're here, whatever you want it to be. Here's the price range. And, and literally two of my three boys did the same thing to me today. Hey, if I don't buy anything, can I put the money in stocks and save it for my car? When you have those conversations with a six year old and an eight year old that you realize that now money is making sense to them. That's why I'm so excited about this legislation. I hope people 30, 40, 50, 60 years from now, when we're both gone, go back and they say, you know what, when Ted Cruz did this and got this in there, it changed people's lives for the better. So I want to say sincerely, congratulations on making sure this made it in there because it's huge. Because that's not the only thing that was transformative in this bill, something you've been championing. Now I would say it's part of the legacy of your career is school choice. And there's some big stuff in this bill also on school choice.
- [30:20]
Ben Ferguson
So school choice has been my passion for 30 years. I've been very active in the school Choice movement. In 2017, when we did the first Trump tax cut, I authored the legislation that expanded college 529 savings plans so now parents can save for K through 12 education. We got that through, it passed. And it was at the time the most far reaching federal school choice legislation that had ever passed. And there are millions of kids now whose parents save for K12 education using 529s. This time around I took 529s and I expanded them. I expanded what you can spend them for and I raised the cap. It used to be you could spend 10,000 a year from the account. Now you can spend 20,000 a year. But that actually is the smallest piece on school choice that would be huge in any other year. But what we got in this year is the federal government will now grant a federal tax credit dollar for dollar for every taxpayer up to seventeen hundred dollars. So Ben, you pay taxes. Every year you pay more than seventeen hundred dollars in taxes. When this goes into effect, if you write a yes. So if you write a $1700 check to a scholarship granting organization in Texas, you will get a seventeen hundred dollar credit on your taxes. In other words, it's dollar for dollar. It disappears from your tax liability. What this will do is this is going to unleash billions and billions of dollars of new scholarships for K through 12 education in the states. And the way it operates, every state has to choose to opt in. So Texas will opt in. I suspect a number of blue states will not opt in because the teachers unions will not want them to. They will not want scholarships for kids to be able to go to the school of their choice. And the way we wrote the rule the law, the state has to opt in. But Texas will have scholarship granting organizations and any taxpayer could write a check up to $1,700 a year and get a full tax credit on their irs what they owe. That is going to result in millions of kids across America, many of whom are stuck in failing schools. Schools that are not learning to read, they're not learning to write. Schools where there's violence, they're drug dealers. Schools where their future is really in peril and they're suddenly gonna have the ability to get a scholarship to go to the school of their choice, to get a real education, to get a better education, to be safe, to not be subject to violence. This is, I think school choice is the civil rights issue of the 21st century. This has never happened before. And I gotta tell you, I fought tooth and nail. This almost got stripped out of the bill about five different times. And I made clear, I'll shut this whole bill down if we don't get school choice in there. And this is, I could not be more excited about Any provision in this bill than the impact school choice is going to have for the next generation.
- [33:35]
Ted Cruz
So on these two issues, school choice and also the savings accounts, when does that start to become a reality? Timeline. There's, there's a lot of people that say, hey, we pass bills and then things that were supposed to happen don't happen, they get undone because there's a no present that comes in or you see a Senate flip or the House flip, whatever it may be. So how sure are we that we are going to see the fruits of this fight and this labor?
- [34:01]
Ben Ferguson
Yeah, these are both gonna happen and they're both gonna happen in the next year. For the Trump accounts, I wrote into it an effective date of one year from the signing. So if it's signed on July 4th, these will start on July 4th, 2026, our nation's 250th anniversary. And I think that's something particularly fantastic. I'm quite confident President Trump will make a big deal about the facts that these accounts are being opened on our nation's birthday, or if it ends up being signed at a slightly different date somewhere. Honor about our nation's birthday. A great celebration, Same thing. The tax deductions are gonna start, I believe, next year on the, on the school choice tax deductions. So these will happen. They will happen quickly. Now, one question people are asking, what happens next? The Senate passed this. What happens next? Well, we sent the whole bill to the House. They have two choices, number one, so they're coming back in session. They can take it up and pass it. And if they pass the bill that we just passed, it will go to the president and he can sign it. And he said he wants to sign it on July 4th of this year. So if the House passes what the Senate passed, that'll be the end of the process and the President will sign it. The second thing they can do is they can say, okay, we passed a bill, the Senate passed a different bill. We need to work out the differences between them. And that's, that's called going to conference. And the House could insist we go to conference. I don't know which one they're going to do. There are some real differences in the Senate right now. They're in the House right now. They're having fights. There's some aspects of the Senate bill that are really good. There's some aspects of the Senate bill that are not great. And so it's going to be a question of what can get 218 votes in the House. I know the speaker wants, if he can, to take up and pass the Senate bill and just send it to the President. That's what the President wants also. So that may happen. If that doesn't happen, then we'll go to conference. And I think conference would take the month of July for us to work out the differences. And my guess is we would pass the final bill at the end of July, right before August.
- [36:14]
Ted Cruz
So this is one of those big moments that I think we should all enjoy. Elections have consequences. This time it was for conservative values and for kids to have a better future in education or savings accounts and for tax cuts so that Americans that work hard can keep more of their own money. On a scale of 1 to 10, and nothing's perfect, how proud of you or of you are you with this bill, there's a lot of people that are saying, well, there's this, there's that or there's this, look, yeah, there were some compromises, no doubt, that had to be made. You got a tight, you know, a very, very slim majority that you're dealing with here. But overall, how happy are you with what the American people are now getting?
- [36:57]
Ben Ferguson
I think there are many very, very good things in this bill. I wish we cut spending significantly more. I was fighting hard to cut spending significantly more. I went to President Trump with $3 trillion of spending cuts we could do. I was urging my colleagues. I prevailed in some of those arguments, but not all of them. I wish we'd shown more fiscal restraint. That would have made me much happier. Look, at 6am on Tuesday, we were near the end of the amendments, and the question was, could we get to 50 Republicans? There are 53 in the Senate now. Susan Collins was a no. She is the most liberal of the Republicans. She did not like some of the reforms on Medicaid. The Democrats and the press are saying we slashed Medicaid. That is a lie. We actually are spending more on Medicaid every single year. What we did was slightly decrease the rate of growth of Medicaid in the future. And in particular, we increased efforts to fight waste, fraud and abuse and to remove people from the Medicaid rolls who don't qualify. And we also put in place a work requirement, which, which is really important and I think actually benefits people. If you look at the history of work requirements for federal welfare benefits, it, it, it ends up helping the recipients by getting them back into the workforce, which is ultimately much better for them and their families. So, so, but, but anyway, Susan Collins did not like the reductions in spending on that side. So she voted no. Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, also did not like the Medicaid changes, and so he voted no. And so with 53 Republicans, we could only lose three. The two other votes that were in play were Lisa Murkowski and Rand Paul, and they were both between 6am and noon. Nobody knew which one, which one we would get if either. But if we didn't get one of them, this bill was going down because if four senators voted against it, four Republicans, we were at 49, and it failed. So the consequence of which road we went down was really consequential because Lisa, after Susan, is the most liberal Democrat Republican in the conference. And so Lisa was bargaining for a bunch more spending. She wanted a ton of spending, particularly at Alaska. And that was the price of her vote. And she was going back and forth. Rand, on the other hand, Rand was always going to be no, always going to be a no. And Rand said at the end he would be a yes if the debt ceiling was not extended. We extend the debt ceiling throughout President Trump's term in this bill. That was a very high priority for President Trump. Rand said he would vote yes if we shorten the extension of the debt ceiling to September 30th. So we just did a couple of months of the debt ceiling. Now, the consequence of that would mean we'd have to come back in September 30th and address the debt ceiling again. And that would mean we'd probably have to negotiate with the Democrats and make a lousy deal with. With Chuck schumer. But between 6am and noon, none of us knew which direction they were going to go. Were they going to go the direction of Lisa Murkowski or were they going to go the direction of Rand Paul? At the end of the day, Lisa is the one who got to yes. But it was literally up till the moment she cast her vote, we didn't know for sure. And she ended up. She ended up increasing the rural hospital fund by $50 billion. She ended up dropping the Medicaid penalty for states that are giving Medicaid to illegal immigrants. She ended up delaying the work requirements for food stamps for Alaska. And the cost of that was billions and billions of dollars. Interestingly, if Rand had said yes instead of Lisa, we would have ended up spending much less. But the consequence of Rand being a no is that it drove. It made Lisa the swing vote. And the price of her vote was billions and probably hundreds of billions more in spending. And so, you know, I mean, that that's where votes have consequences.
- [41:41]
Ted Cruz
Incredible. Well, it certainly is interesting to see your take on this. I'm glad that we were able to do this show. You deserve to get some sleep now that it's after midnight Eastern and after the Votorama. But I'm glad that we were able to unpack all of this for everyone because a lot of people have the same question. How did this happen? What did we get that was good? Are there things that we got taken advantage of? Is this gonna help the country more? It's gonna hurt it. I think we answered a lot of those questions. So don't forget Download Verdict with Ted Cruz wherever you get your podcast. We do this three days a week. Also my podcast as well, the Ben Ferguson Podcast. You can also listen to that each and every day as well. And the center and I will see you back here in a couple of days.
- [42:24]
Ryan Seacrest
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- [42:49]
Ben Ferguson
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- [42:54]
Ted Cruz
This is an iHeart podcast.