Transcript
David Pakman (0:07)
Welcome to the show, everybody. Major breaking news on Medicaid and benefits. We are now moving from the of course we would never do that phase to the of course we're doing that. It's what's good for the country phase on exactly the same issue. House Republicans just dropped a plan to slash Medicaid. The Congressional budget office says 13.7 million people would lose health coverage over the next decade if this were to pass. And what's, of course, really infuriating is that we've been understanding the numbers. We've been saying, you can't cut this much money without some people either losing benefits or services. You just can't do it. It's mathematically not possible. And they've been saying, of course we're not going to do that. We're not. For months, they've been swearing up and down that this is not their plan. We're not cutting Medicaid. We want to rein in spending. This won't affect anybody who really needs it. Or don't believe the scare tactics from Democrats. And it turns out that the scare tactics were something we like to call the truth. Because now even Fox News is reporting it. They're admitting out loud this bill would gut Medicaid. If Republicans get it through, there's no more pretending. And their next position will be, of course we're cutting it. We're doing the right thing. The House Energy Committee releasing its portion of the reconciliation legislation late last night.
Unknown Speaker (1:37)
The bill cuts from Medicaid and adds work requirements and more frequent eligibility checks.
David Pakman (1:43)
Cuts from Medicaid, adds work requirements, adds eligibility checks which cost money. And this will lead, per the CBO, to nearly 14 million people losing coverage. We talked in 2017. I know it feels like a lifetime ago. We spoke in 2017 about the Republican health care plan. And when that plan was scored, it would have led to 24 million, somewhere between 24 and 32 million Americans losing health coverage over a decade if the plan had passed. It didn't because of that reality. And we never heard another plan since. Right. The plan has been two weeks away for five years at this point in time. And here we are seeing the same thing again. This is what the Republican Party has been moving towards all along. It's sort of a slow, quiet sabotage, sabotage of health care for the poor and for the working class. And they're no longer hiding it. Now. It's important to see this not as being about budgets. It's not. This isn't fundamentally a budget issue. It's not fundamentally a fiscal responsibility. Issue? No, many, no matter how many times they say that this is about taking health care away from millions of people so that tax cuts for the ultra wealthy can be protected so that the yachts and the stock buybacks are unaffected, while regular people lose coverage for diabetes care or for prenatal visits or for whatever the case may be. And the cruelty is that this is not some unfortunate consequence of what they really want to do. This is what they really want to do. This is the whole strategy. Cut programs for people that have a very low margin of error in their household budget in order to preserve goodies for people who have a very large margin for error in their household budgets. And they know exactly who it hurts. Families and seniors and people with disabilities. But they don't care. We're talking about Medicaid. That is something that pays for long term care for many people. It keeps NICU babies alive. It helps people afford blood pressure medication or chemo, depending on what they're going through. And this is what will get ripped away if this budget goes through. So if you're sitting there thinking, didn't Republicans say as recently as two, three weeks ago that they're not cutting Medicaid? They did say it and they were lying. They knew that they weren't telling the truth and they knew that this was actually the plan all along. How do we know that? Because when it's not tied to a specific budget, speaking in general terms, they say we've got to look at cutting these programs. We've got to look at entitlements, as they like to call them. And of course, they use the term entitled to mean something you haven't really earned, something you feel entitled to. But the reason we call them entitlements is you've paid into it as a, as a society. We have paid into these programs and, and therefore people are entitled to those benefits. So they're now admitting it. This is happening. Will voters realize why it's happening and will they hold the perpetrators accountable? That's a different story. That's a story that is often a question mark in American politics. So here's the deal. Government spending is way up under Donald Trump. Now, you might be saying, but David Doge, they were cutting everything. They've been talking about cuts for years. And Doge has been running full speed ahead for months. We were getting more efficient. We were draining the swamp. We were finding efficiencies and getting rid of bloat and pork and all of this stuff. Trump's government has already spent 166 billion more dollars than we had spent at this time last year under President Joe Biden. This is with doge. With DOGE slashing federal programs, pushing out workers, cutting services that people rely on. And the deficit has still grown by nearly $200 billion. So a sensible question is to say, what happened? Where's the money going? How could it be that with Doge cutting, cutting, cutting, we somehow have spent even more money? Well, military spending is up $39 billion year over year despite being told, oh, Trump would consider cutting the military. We had people on the right and some on the left saying we, we might see Trump cut military spending. No, we're not. Well, military spending is up $39 million $39 billion year over year. Border and immigration enforcement is up $18 billion. We spent an extra 18 billion bucks this year so far compared to last year at the same point in time. Now there are some who say, well, that's good, we want Trump doing the border stuff. Ok, but he said he was going to cut the deficit. He's actually blown it up. And then Social Security and Medicare are up $70 billion year over year. Why? Because boomers are retiring and boomers are drawing down more benefits, benefits that we can't cut because they're entitled to them. They've paid into them. We, we have a responsibility to provide those benefits. So the math of it is not particularly difficult to understand. Trump is cutting small, tiny, shriveled up programs, you know, a $30,000 DEI thing that they don't, that they don't like. And it's leading to the dumping of money into the deportation machine, into the military. And meanwhile, the programs that really cost the most, when you look at the totality of the budget, Social Security, Medicare, those are going to keep growing unless you're willing to cut benefits, which they sort of are, but more with Medicaid rather than with Medicare and Social Security, although we will see where that lands. You know, you ask Republicans in Congress, are you willing to cut Medicare or Social Security benefits? They say we're not going to touch benefits, we're going to touch bloat and we're going to touch waste and we're going to touch fraud, which they still have not actually found any. And that's where Doge came in. Doge came in as this flashy new efficiency department supposed to fix everything. And it kind of did a mixture of theater and sabotage. Most of the so called cuts were fake. What I mean by that is some of them were typos, some of them, you know, they were cutting 60 million. And they said we're cutting 60 billion or something like that. So that. That was a lie to some degree. There were Biden era cuts. They were already cut during Biden's presidency, which they included under the list of things that Doge had actually cut. Just another completely dishonest example. So it was sort of like a fiction put together for a press release. But what really got cut are programs like AmeriCorps, science research education Grants, Meals on Wheels, this sort of thing. But here's the real purpose of Doge and this is why, you know, the big story is Doge will cut. And then we see deficit is actually up. So what's the real purpose of all of this? It was never actually about money. The purpose of Doge was to allow Elon Musk and his allies to take over government systems that were to some degree investigating him. They didn't even hide it. That was the point. And once they got what they wanted, they neutralized some regulators, they defunded some watchdogs, they blocked some lawsuits. Elon. Who's even talking about Elon Musk anymore? He said he's stepping back, he's getting back to his businesses. Doge is winding down. He didn't need the title anymore because he'd already gotten what he wanted. He'd done the damage. There is tech sabotage here that is getting very little attention because Doge compromised some key federal computer systems. They installed new hard drives, they restructured platforms, they introduced so called efficiency upgrades into places like the treasury and Medicare and IRS servers. But this was all about access, wasn't really about modernization. Because even now, with Elon Musk supposedly out of the picture, out of the picture in a formal way, we would say those systems will be vulnerable until at least 2029. Think about that. They embedded their people, they grabbed control, and then Elon walks away. And notice what Doge never touched. The Pentagon, Border Patrol, military contractors. They went after NASA, but not after the F35. Why? Because cutting waste wasn't really the goal. Killing oversight and snatching contracts was the goal. And now we are building towards the tax cut scam. While this is all happening, Trump and Republicans are trying to pass something they call their big beautiful bill. It's basically the sequel to Trump's 2017 tax cuts. It's differentiated by them wanting to make them permanent. You might remember that a lot of what was in Trump's 2017 tax bill sunsets or expires this year unless extended. And the idea now is add trillions to the deficit by Making a lot of that tax stuff permanent. They're using accounting tricks to make it look cheaper on paper. Even Trump has floated the idea of raising taxes on people making over $2.5 million just to make the math work. That's how desperate, desperate they are to pass this thing. But big picture, big. Trump came into office claiming, we're going to cut waste, we're going to save money and government's going to run better. Instead, he's spending more money than Biden at this point in the year. He let Elon run completely wild with government infrastructure. He defunded oversight and regulatory agencies. We're going to have Dr. Zach Rubin on the show soon to talk to us about exactly how this affects the everyday person. And they tried to cover all of it up with fake cuts and now they want even more cuts and to make them permanent for the wealthiest. You can't look at this and say it's fiscal responsibility, it's a con job. And when you zoom out, you see it. Every single one of these so called reforms is a cover for someone's greed, a power grab or overt corruption. They call it efficiency. It's not very efficient. They say it's about cutting waste. It's the same story. We're going to cut waste by cutting services for regular people. We're going to funnel money to the powerful and then we'll tell you it'll trickle down and it's going to be very good for the country. And the bill is now coming due. So for anyone surprised by this, for anyone now upset, and I know that there are some Trump supporters, a few of them who are recognizing this and saying, I don't love this. We did a TikTok Live yesterday. I spoke to a couple of these sort of disaffected Trump supporters. This is what happens when you let a con man billionaire and his buddies run the government. You get a stripped down shell of democracy wrapped in gaudy gold trim. The way Trump's penthouse is handed to the highest bidder and Elon Musk was the highest bidder. So that's where we are. We've got to deal with where we are in order to figure out where to go. And I hope that there will be more former Trump voters who will say, this goes too far and we've got to put a stop to it. Let's take a quick break. Make sure you're subscribed to the YouTube channel, YouTube.com/the David Pakman Show. I love our partnership with Wild Alaskan Company. They do sustainable seafood memberships and bring high quality wild caught Alaskan seafood right to your door. Every filet you get is 100% wild, never farmed, sourced from well managed fisheries in Alaska you get better flavor and texture, but you're also helping to preserve these ecosystems. They freeze everything at the peak of freshness. It gets to you vacuum sealed. I got a box that had everything from crab fish fillets, scallops, salmon burgers which were absolutely delicious. So elevate your meals, support sustainable fishing and enjoy seafood the way it should be. Go to wild alaskan.com/pacman use code PACMAN for $35 off your first box. That's wild alaskan.com/PACMAN use code PACMAN for $35 off the link is in the podcast Notes did you know that countless commercial databases and people search sites are storing your personal information? Anyone from an employer to a former partner can use these platforms to get details about your online presence, your home address, phone number, email, license plate, family members, financial information, even political views. Europe has laws that offer some protection, but in the US the data is widely accessible. Even the FBI will buy this information from companies to spy on people without a search warrant. Our sponsor Incogni provides a solution. It takes just seconds to sign up and Incogni will send removal requests to all of the major data brokers, legally compelling them to get rid of your data. Incogni keeps you informed throughout the process. You'll get real time updates, who has complied, which ones are still pending. They'll handle follow ups, they'll handle appeals on your behalf, and this will save you hundreds of hours. Very few people have the time or resources to do this on their own. This service can also reduce the number of spam calls and emails you get, since many solicitors and scammers get your information from these very same sources. Go to incogni.com/pacman and use the code PACMAN for 60% off. That's incogni.com/pacMan for a huge 60% discount. The link is in the podcast notes well, a charter flight landed in Washington D.C. carrying 449 white South Africans who have been granted refugee status by the Trump administration, not because they were fleeing war or political violence, but because Donald Trump claims that they are the real victims of racial discrimination. Many commenters weighing in that these are not exactly folks who look like they have struggled a day in their life. That may be going a little too far. We don't know the stories of every single one of these individuals and but we spoke about this extensively on the bonus show yesterday. And now that the eagle has landed in the United States, I do think we need to talk about this and Trump's new focus on resettling white South Africans as refugees in the United States. I'm going to be completely upfront with you. If you demonstrated to me that on the basis of race, white South Africans were being persecuted, if this were a group of people in danger, I would say bring them in. We are a country that does that in the United States. That is what refugee protections are for. How would I possibly say I'm against helping people who are genuinely at risk? Except the more I research this, the more I realize that's simply not what's happening here. This group of people, these are Afrikaners. These are the descendants of, of Dutch colonists South Africa. They still hold most of the wealth and most of the land in South Africa. We are talking about a group that owns around 75% of private land in South Africa. White South Africans have an unemployment rate under 10%. Black South Africans have an unemployment rate of more than 33%. So it's difficult to argue that white South Africans are a marginalized, persecuted population that should be getting treated as refugees here. They are still the most economically privileged group in all of South Africa. But because some people don't like South Africa's land reform policies or they feel uncomfortable about democratic demographic shifts, Trump decided that that is reason enough to say that these are discriminated against racial refugees who need to come to the United States. Now, compare this to Trump shutting the door on many others. Asylum seekers from Haiti, from Central America, from Gaza, from Sudan. But when 49 white South Africans say we're uncomfortable with some of the policy changes, despite still owning the lion's share of the land and having an unemployment rate less than one third that of our black country people, suddenly the gates swing wide open when Donald Trump is in charge. So the bigger picture here, of course, is that this is not a random immigration policy. Well, we'll randomly accept some white South Africans will say no to asylum requests from Central America. This is part of a larger narrative, and it's actually not haphazard. Trump and his allies for years have been pushing the idea that white people around the world are under attack, that Christians are under attack. It's a talking point that you hear in right wing spaces online, and it is now. The calls are coming from inside the house. It's shaping refuge refugee decisions that are being made by the administration. I'm going to repeat it. If these folks were in real Danger and this were about protecting lives, it would be a different conversation. I would be saying, of course we welcome them as refugees, but it's not what it is. This is about who gets to be seen as deserving of safety. And under Trump, it's clearer than ever. If you're white, you get a plane ticket. If you're not, then good luck. So that is what this is really about. And I think that we need to dig into that. So let's do it. Here's something that would have sounded like a conspiracy theory a few years ago, but now they're saying it out loud. A Trump official was asked a pretty straightforward question. Why are the white South African immigrants, the. The Dutch descended Afrikaners? Why are they being prioritized as refugees despite owning almost all the land in South Africa, despite having an unemployment rate less than one third that of black South Africans? Why is that group now being treated as refugees who need to protected when other groups like Afghans fleeing actual war and Taliban rule are being turned away or Central American asylum seekers are being turned away? And the answer we got from deputy deputy, from the Deputy Secretary of State who said one of the criteria is we want those coming here to be easily assimilated into our country. What does that mean? What is that code for? It's not about language, it's not about skills, it's about being white. That's what they're referring to. Listen to this.
