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- [00:01]
Joy Reid
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. Okay.
- [00:45]
Elizabeth Booker
Hello, hello, hello, everyone. Welcome to the Joy Reid show. Happy Monday, everyone. Happy. Obviously it's a loaded term in this strange time period that we live in, but I'm sure over the weekend you all noticed this ultra expensive 52 million dollar wedding in the beautiful city of Venice. I was in Venice when I was a teenager. Gorgeous city which did not want this wedding. It is billionaire Jeff Bezos. These I believe he's the second richest man in the world marrying a woman named Lauren Sanchez, who is a bon vivant. I'm not sure what her career was before she dated a lot of really famous men and then she married Jeff Bezos. But they had this big, very elaborate wedding full of all the stars. We're talking Usher was in the house. Oprah, she was there as well. Many Kardashians in attendance. Multiple Kardashians with fresh new faces they had surgically enhanced to make themselves even more Kardashian. Y of course, Ivanka Trump also in the house there to witness the nuptials of the billionaire. It was a lavish event that was definitely, it spoke of a gilded age moment in American history. And we definitely are in something of a pretty wild gilded age because everyone that you saw at that wedding, all of those very, very famous people with all of their finery and all of their designer gowns that probably cost more than, you know, maybe your house and jewelry, you know, be decked, all the good stuff on their yacht. And again, in a town that did not want them, they did not want this wedding. There were literal signs up all over Venice saying, we don't want Jeff Bezos. We don't need billionaires here. We don't want them here. Didn't matter. Beatles was like, I'm a billionaire, I can go where I want. Went and had his wedding. Brought all his rich celebrity friends to toast him. Gail and Oprah, they didn't just get, get over, they got over. And Gail, all the big celebs were there. Everyone that you saw on that yacht, I think they had a pajama party to go with it. Big, very expensive 52 million dollar wedding. I think a 10 million dollar ring, I think just Lauren Sanchez's ring was 10 million dollars more than most Americans will ever earn in their lifetimes. Every single person on that yacht, at that party, at that wedding will be getting a tax cut. A giant, permanent, humongous tax cut that you're probably not going to get. The Senate right now is in what's, is in a mega vote. They're in a, they're in a, they're in a giant vote where they're going to vote. It's called a votorama. If you're not familiar with sort of Senate procedure, Votorama means they're going to start debate on amendments and discussing and reading the bill on the floor. This is like a, you know, very, very large bill, hundreds and hundreds of pages. They've got to read the bill on the floor, they've got to vote on amendments. They call it a votorama, where they're going to decide if they are going to pass this bill, which Donald Trump wants to sign on Independence Day on July 4. It is what he calls his big, beautiful bill, but it's really, there's Nothing this big $3 trillion debt hole that it's going to blow into our debt. 3 trillion dollar hole is going to blow into our debt. The overall cost of the bill is north of that and it's going to give a permanent deep tax cut, which essentially is just extending the tax cut that Donald Trump passed in 2017, the vast majority of which went to the super rich billionaires and multi, multi, multi, multi millionaires got the vast majority of that tax cut. They're going to make that tax cut permanent. Now, please remember that I told you back in the day when I was in MSNBC world, I kept trying to tell folks and I told people on socials that the main point of the previous election was not all the other stuff that Donald Trump was saying, no tax on tips. All of that other stuff he was saying that was just the ornaments, the tree, the, you know, that was the, that was the side dish, the main event, the main meal in that election. And the main thing that rich people were thinking about was that tax cut. We're still living under that tax cut right now. I don't know how much you're benefiting, but if you don't think the economy's working for you, we're living under that tax cut regime right now. But they want to make it permanent. And making it permanent is going to cost the United States. Debt is going to cost your grandchildren like $4 trillion. But in order to fit that tax cut in and make that tax cut happen, they've got to find some pay for somewhere, right? They got to find somebody to pay for it. And they decided the perfect person to pay for it are broke people, poor people. They're going to gut Medicaid all over the country in order to pay for this tax cut. They're going to make poor people pay for the people on that yacht at Bezos's wedding to get a massive tax cut. Poor folks are going to pay for it. I'm going to read to you some stuff now. I'm not going to show it on the screen, but I promise you, you can read it yourself. I'm going to put the links up and we're going to, we're going to take down any paywall so that everyone can read it. This will be a no paywall post@joyanreid.com after this broadcast is over. We're going to put it up so that you can read it for yourself, so that you can understand exactly what is, is about to happen. Because in some form, they're going to pass this bill. This bill did pass in the House, a version of it. It's gone to the Senate where they're going to make changes to it. And then just like the Obamacare and all sorts of other bills, it goes back to the House for them to pass it again. That's when a bill becomes law. The House proposes it because it has to do with, you know, with, with the fiscal health of the United States. Anything to do with spending money starts in the House. Then they pass the bill. They already passed it, barely. Then it comes to the Senate. Then once they do all their amendments and pass it, it goes back to the House for final passage. Donald Trump wants all of that done so he can sign the bill on July 4th. But here's what they're going to do to pay for that. To, to pay for it. You're going to pay for it. This is the center for On Budget and Policy Priorities. It's a really great organization that just crunches numbers. They're not partisan. They just crunch numbers. Senate reconciliation amendment and that is meaning the bill that they're going to pull together would cut hundreds of billions of dollars more from state Medicaid funding and put coverage at risk for millions of people. The federal government right now pays 90% of the cost of covering Medicaid enrollees who gained coverage through the expansion called Obamacare. Obamacare, in case you didn't know, is Medicaid. Most of what Obamacare in is, is, is expanded Medicaid. So if you are on expanded Medicaid, if You're on Obamacare. In most of these states, you are either on a private exchange where you can go on and purchase private health care, or you are on expanded Medicaid and they call it various things. Let me just read through this before and then I'm going to tell you a little bit more about that. The federal government right now pays 90% of the cost of covering Medicaid enrollees who gained coverage through the expansion, called Obamacare. Under the proposal, the 90% matching rate would be reduced to the state's regular matching rates, which range from 50 to 74% in expansion states. An expansion would be made for the costs of covering people already enrolled in the expansion group, which would continue to be covered at the 90% match rate. That's a very complicated way of saying they're going to stop matching the money that the federal government currently gives to states so that they can enroll people in expanded Medicaid, AKA Obamacare. So let me just explain to you just really quickly before we bring in our guests, because I think a lot of people don't understand kind of what Medicaid is basically, if you think about health care insurance, what health care insurance is basically equivalent to is if you go on a group trip, let's say you go on a family group vacation and you would normally like to stay in a really fancy, expensive hotel and on your own, that hotel room would cost you a lot of money. Right? It'd be expensive to stay in expensive hotel. But if you go on a family group trip, the hotel will give you a block rate, meaning that they will reduce the price of each room because you're promising them 20 or 30 or 50 or 70 or 100 guests that will all stay in the hotel during that, that time period. When you are having your family vacation, you get a cheaper rate on each room because you're all buying the rooms together. That's basically how insurance works. If lots and lots of people are in the coverage pool, everybody pays less because everybody's chipping in. And Medicaid is essentially a version of that for health care. It is not Medicare, which is part of the Social Security act, where senior citizens, when they reach 65, automatically get health coverage at a reduced rate, which can be reduced because all the seniors are in it. All the seniors over 65 are all in the pool. So all the seniors are like they're taking one big group family, old people vacation. And so Medicare is cheaper and they get cheaper health care because they're all in the group. That's how Medicare works. But when Medicaid was created, there was a huge objection for doing that for poor people. They didn't mind doing it for seniors. They actually didn't want to do either one. Ronald Reagan was like, both of these are an abomination or socialism. But they resisted doing it for poor people. And the way that Medicaid was passed is separate from Medicare. Medicare and Social Security are part of the same law. The Social Security act is part. Medicare is part of that. Medicaid is separate. Medicaid is a block grant, meaning the federal government takes this tax money and sends it to each state based on their population. And then that state administers health care for poor people. But it used to be you had to be really, really poor to get Medicaid. What Obamacare did is it added, it lifted up the cap and it said that if you made a little more money, you can get Medicaid, too. And each state named that thing a different thing. So if Jason could pull up here, we've got. What is Obamacare called in each state? Do we have that or we may not have it. So if you're in Connect, if you're in, let's say, Kentucky, for instance, your version of Obamacare is called Connect. It's still Medicaid, it's still Obamacare, but it has its own name. I don't know if we're going to have this list here, but each state has its own version of it. If you're in Wisconsin, your version of Obamacare is called Badger Care. You may not know that that's Medicaid, but that is expanded Medicaid. It's just called Badger Care. If you live in the state of Tennessee, it's called Tenncare. So you've got Tenncare. If you're in Texas, you've got Star Plus. Of course, they call it Star plus because it's Texas. If you're in Oregon, they call it Oregon Health Plan Ohr. But in each of these states, and it's up on your screen, each state calls their Medicare, their, their Medicaid, their expanded Medicaid, their Obamacare something else. Because by, to be honest, this was a way to get Republicans accepted because they didn't want to do Obamacare. They really didn't want to do it at all. But in order to sneak it through, Andy Bashir, his father, was smart enough to say, let's just call it Connect. Then people will know it's Obamacare and they'll accept it. They're going to cut that. They're going to. Instead and what the federal government does is they reimburse states for the money that they spend covering poor folks. And they reimburse them for 90% of those costs, which means a state can afford to cover the poor people in their state because they're getting 90% of the money back from the feds. What this bill would do is to reduce that reimbursement, which is going to make it really hard for states, especially poor states, to cover poor folks. Hopefully I'm explaining that correctly. But this is all about that family trip where you're trying to get a cheaper rate for health care, which seniors get from Medicare and poor folks get from Medicaid. They want to cut that because they want to find money to use to fill in the gaps that are going to be left by giving rich folks that big tax cut. They're giving them such a humongous. They're not adding a new tax cut. This is the tax cut that already existed, but making it permanent. When you do the balance sheet, when we balance our books as a country, it leaves us like $3 trillion in the hole. And they're going to do it by cutting things that help poor people. Head Start, Meals on Wheels, Medicaid, if you're with, if you're on any of those programs, if you use any of those programs, even if you don't think you do because you're on Obamacare. They're going to cut the things you need in order to afford to give Jeff Bezos and all of his guests at that wedding a massive permanent tax cut. Permanent meaning it's not going to come up again for another vote in 10 years the way this one did. It will just sit on the books and sit on our balance sheet for the rest of time. And your grandkids will be paying for it while they get less health care, while they maybe don't get food stamps. School lunches are going to be cut. They're going to make children go hungry so they can give this tax cut to Jeff Bezos. And friends. This is why we're calling it the big billionaire tax cut. It is a big billionaire bill. I guess it's four billionaires. It isn't for you. And let me play for you now. And you know, don't take it from me. I am a mere lifelong Democrat liberal. Well, I mean, I'm barely a Democrat right now, but liberal. So don't take it from me. I want you all to listen to Thom Tillis. Thom Tillis is the very conservative, right wing United States senator from the state of North Carolina. Thom Tillis is not going to run for reelection in the state of North Carolina.
- [14:11]
Mark Thompson
Why?
- [14:12]
Elizabeth Booker
Because Thom Tillis is not going to vote for this bill when this bill comes up for a vote in the United States Senate. Thom Tillis said he cannot vote for it. Why can't he vote for it? Because he understands that this bill is screwing the people of his state. And let me say this, to paraphrase Kanye west, before he went. Went left, went wrong, went right, I guess you say Thom Tillis does not care about black people. Thom Tillis is not concerned that poor black people in his state are going to get gutted. He's concerned that poor white people are going to get gutted because this bill will cause a lot of rural hospitals to close because they rely on that reimbursement money that the federal government sends to North Carolina to stay open. And he understands that his constituents, white, conservative, rural North Carolinians, are about to get hosed by this bill. And he's still got to live in North Carolina. And he has decided he would rather go back home and hang out with his grandkids, then vote for this bill and have to live with the infamy for the rest of time for having cut rural health care, rural hospitals, and white Medicaid recipients off of their access to any health care at all in some cases. Let's play Thom Tillis telling on this bill.
- [15:27]
Thom Tillis
Between the state directed payments and the cuts scheduled in this bill, there's a reduction of state directed payments and then there's the reduction of the provider tax. They can't find a hole in my estimate. So what they told me is that, yeah, it's rough, but North Carolina's used the system. They're going to have to make it work. All right, so what do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years when President Trump broke breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding's not there anymore in the White House. Advising the president, are not telling him that the effect of this bill is to break a promise. And you know, the last time I saw a promise broken around health care, with respect to my friends on the other side of the aisle, is when somebody said, if you like your health care, you can keep it. If you like your doctor, you can keep it. We found out that wasn't true. That made me the second Republican speaker of the House since the Civil War, ladies and gentlemen, because we betrayed the promise to the American people. Two years later, three years later, it actually made me, a US senator, because in 2010 it had just been proposed and just anticipation of what was going to happen was enough to have a Sea Change election that swept Republicans into the majority for the second time in 100 years. Now Republicans are about to make a mistake on health care and betraying a promise. It is inescapable that this bill in its current form will betray the very promise that Donald J. Trump made in the Oval Office or in the Cabinet Room when I was there with finance, where he said, we can go after waste, fraud and abuse on any programs.
- [17:40]
Elizabeth Booker
So I want to just note for you that Tom Tillis objection to passing this bill is that it will hurt Republicans politically. So he's thinking politically. And I love the little dig at Obamacare in there that he got in as well. Let's bring in our guest, Elizabeth Booker. You know her as Booker Squared on these social media streets. But she's also a really great expert on all this stuff. So, Elizabeth, thank you for jumping in. And just correct me if I got anything wrong in my description of Medicaid and Obamacare.
- [18:15]
Mark Thompson
No, I think you've hit the nail on the head with Medicaid and Obamacare there. First of all, let's talk about just the misnomer of Obamacare that they have used over and over again to describe the Affordable Care act, which the Republicans were very sneaky with back when this was first being put out. So that you hear folks constantly saying, oh, I'm for the aca, but I'm against Obamacare.
- [18:35]
Elizabeth Booker
Right.
- [18:36]
Mark Thompson
And the way that the marketplace is intertwined with what's going on with Medicaid. So I. It's so hard sometimes to really parse through the disinformation and misinformation that we're seeing so that people understand exactly how their healthcare is affected.
- [18:52]
Elizabeth Booker
Yeah, it is. It can be difficult. And turn your mic up if you can just give us the loudest mic you can, because it's a little low on our end. Talk to me about the passage of this bill, how this is gonna go, because we do have a Vote A Rama right now. If you could just explain that a little bit. What are we seeing happening right now in the United States Senate?
- [19:11]
Mark Thompson
So right now I'm actually in the Capitol over here in the Senate, and we are seeing them go through Vote A Rama. Senator Angela, also Brooks was actually just in the room a moment ago. And so what we're seeing is the Democrats are trying to delay a vote on this bill. And that's what Vote A Rama is. Where they just keep bringing amendment after amendment after amendment to the floor so that it just delays this vote and allows us to continue to put pressure on, on the Republicans, which it's after hours now. So of course, I've been telling folks you don't want to put pressure via the phone lines. I know usually say, we usually say to call the Capitol switchboard, but it's after hours, so we're saying to put pressure on social media. And so this is estimated to go until about 1am sometime in that, that range. And that's when they will actually do a final vote and we will find out if they're going to kill the bill or if they're going to pass it.
- [20:00]
Elizabeth Booker
So, and here's this is where I think it's really important because people get One of the things I think that is that we cannot do is give people false hope and say, oh, we can kill this bill. Let us be clear. We likely cannot kill this bill. I just want you all to be very clear about that. But if you go back to the history of Obamacare, of the Affordable Care act, the bill that passed the House was a lot more liberal. It had a lot more provisions that look like pure universal health care, lots of lots more act. They had a public option. It was supposed to have a public option where you could buy through a public option, not a private health care company. When it went to the United States Senate, that bill moved to the right. Because what's happening now, this exact same process, Republicans were throwing on amendments, raising objections to parts of the bill, trying to claw back pieces of the bill and use this voterama process, this process of actually arguing the bill on the floor floor to pull the bill to the right so that the final bill that went back to the House that Nancy Pelosi had to whip votes for was to the right of the bill that her caucus passed in the first place. And the, the sort of genius of what she had to do is she had that lady had to make those Democrats pass that bill because when they saw that bill, they were like, we don't like it no more. And she made them pass it because they understood that they had this one, one little window because they had 60 votes in the Senate, even though there were some turncoat Democrats and independents on the other side who refused to go along with some of the more liberal provisions of the bill. They had to appease those people, right, including Joe Lieberman, whose wife was in the health care industry, who didn't want a public option. They had to take the public option out to appease Lieberman. This is when Democrats had 60 votes. So they sent back a bill to the House that they had to pass that. Talk to me about some of the things, the drama we've seen, Elizabeth, where you've seen horse trading. For a minute it looked like Lisa Murkowski was going to get bought off by letting her constituents in Alaska still get full Medicaid. That did not work. But she was going to vote for the bill based on that. Are we seeing any of those kind of machinations happening still?
- [22:08]
Mark Thompson
Not in this moment. It seems that in the last several hours, from what I understand, we're not seeing any of that, that going on. What we're seeing is a lot of scrambling. There's a lot of scrambling going on right now. And I think it's interesting you talk about how they argued the bill, the ACA back in the day to push it further to the right. I feel like that's what Democrats are doing here is to also try to push this further to the left because as you said, we don't want to give people false hope and say that this won't pass, that it won't go back to the House. But it doesn't mean that it's in its final form. It doesn't mean that we can't create change. It doesn't mean that we can't force the changes that we need to see to, to make sure that we protect Americans and their health care access. I do think that Republicans are waking up to the fact that one, their constituents are not stupid. We kept seeing over and over again this very similar rhetoric where they would say, oh, you know, we're not actually cutting Medicaid. The benefits won't change. And that was I called a few Republican offices weeks ago and I put a recording up of calling Senator Marsha Blackburn because I wanted to hear what they said. And they said, well, the benefits don't change. And a lot of constituents said, oh, okay. And they were okay with that. But I pushed back and I said, I not talking about the benefits that are covered, I'm talking about the funding. Can you confirm that the funding won't change? And that's when I got the pause and they finally admitted that they were making, you know, millions, billions of dollars in cuts to Medicaid. And then we found out later that it also affects Medicare because of something known as a pay go rule. So I think what we're seeing is a little less of that, especially because the parliamentarian kind of came in at Lisa Murkowski's little dealings and said, this is not going to work. So it seems that that's kind of dead in the water as of right now. And they're those games in the moment, but the night is still going on, so we'll see.
- [23:48]
Elizabeth Booker
And they don't have 60 votes. I mean, this is something to really remember. If you go back and look at history, every single benefit that you have, that is what can be considered a liberal sort of generous benefit in this society. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, Food stamps, you name it, all of them passed when Democrats had 60 votes in the United States Senate. Just go back all the way to fdr. The same thing happened with Obamacare. If you guys don't, I mean, you guys may not remember this history, but Democrats did not have 60 votes until Al Franken won a lawsuit to win his seat in the United States Senate. The minute he got that seat, they started cooking on Obamacare to try to get it through. Harry Reid in the Senate, Nancy Pelosi in the House. They started working to drag this bill over the finish line because again, they had turncoats in their midst and the Joe Manchin types, the Joe Lieberman types. And so this bill does not have a 60 vote majority and Republicans don't have 60 votes. How is it that they would be able to pass it, Elizabeth? Because have they changed the rules? Tell us about this rule that's letting them pass it without 60 votes.
- [24:55]
Mark Thompson
So this is what's known as the reconciliation process. And when you go through the reconciliation process, it only requires a simple majority of 51. You don't need those 60 votes. It also means that the Dems cannot filibuster this, because again, it does not need 60 votes. I had a lot of people in my comment section say, can't they filibuster? Unfortunately, they cannot. The vote A Rama is the closest that we can get to it, and they're doing it right now. And this process was created in order to make sure that the government could get certain funding passed without the extraneous extras of different things that were not considered to fall under the category. That's what happened to Lisa Murkowski. They found out that what they were trying to put in the bill fell outside of the confines of what would be considered reconciliation. And so that's why the parliamentarian said we would strike that and it would require 60 votes to keep that provision in there. So that's where the 60 votes would come in. A lot of people were asking me, wait, I heard, because of what happened with Murkowski? Now 60 votes are required for the entire bill. That was not true. It would have just been required for that provision. But for the reconciliation bill as a whole, only a simple majority of 51 is needed. @ the time that this was thought up, the idea was that, oh, this will keep government from being bogged down and that we can make sure that things are funded in a proper manner. Right. And that we can get this funding through while Congress can argue about the other extraneous things later on. But we're now seeing that the Republicans are using this process that was supposed to really, really benefit Americans and protect the benefits that we need. They're using it as a sword to just slash everything that Americans need, whether it be health care, snap, what have you.
- [26:31]
Elizabeth Booker
Republicans have 53 votes in the United States Senate. They have 53 votes. If they lose four votes, then they can't pass the bill because they need a simple majority, as Elizabeth just explained. So Tillis is a no. Do we know of any other hard nos?
- [26:48]
Mark Thompson
My understanding is that it seems that Paul is still leaning in the no. Rand Paul, excuse me, it was still leaning and no. I've also been told that Senator Susan Collins might be wiggling toward no. She might be feeling the pressure. There's a few other senators that people have pointed out who are not for sure no's but could be persuaded. Senator Rick Scott was one that came up. I don't know.
- [27:13]
Elizabeth Booker
But that's the name that keeps.
- [27:15]
Mark Thompson
I doubt it too, but that's the name that people keep floating around. So I was like, I will mention it, but I'm not sure about that. Obviously Senator Lisa Murkowski, because now she's been burned. She didn't get what she wanted for her state. So people are saying that she could be persuaded. We're also seeing that they're talking about Senator Ron Johnson potentially. So, you know, that's just a few names that have been tossed out there. But as of right now, it seems that Tillis and Paul are the only two for sure no's that we're hearing right now.
- [27:41]
Elizabeth Booker
So that would make it pass. And so what we're the goal right now, Elizabeth, as you understand it, is to amend the bill so that it's less harmful and to try to get some of these key amendments that Democrats are posting or proposing passed so that it will reduce the harm. Am I getting that right?
- [28:01]
Mark Thompson
Yes. And also we need to just remember this is a time for everybody to kind of stretch their legs and understand how to put pressure on our members of Congress because we need to focus on longevity with this. We're not at the end because it would be amazing if we could pressure them enough to get two more Republican senators to vote no and kill the bill. Fantastic. But as you said, we don't know that that's likely. So if they do go ahead and pass it with these changes, it will go back to the House. And all of this practice that we've gotten of coming after these senators for the last few days, we need to make sure to keep that, keep that strength up and go after the House members the same way and put this pressure on until we see, you know, get to something that is actually workable for Americans. We can't give up. That's why I don't like giving people false hope. I don't like to say, oh, if you just do this, everything will be okay. That is not true. And we are going to keep seeing this. We're going to keep seeing these games. I mean, the fiscal year for the federal government goes from October 1st to September 30th. Every single year, September 30th. You know, it's going to roll around. We, we are going to keep seeing this over and over again. And we need to make sure that we're consistent, that we understand how things work, that we make sure that they know that we understand how things work and that the American people are not going to stand for it. Because ultimately that's going to be what gets us through the next few years.
- [29:20]
Elizabeth Booker
And by the way, a lot of folks have been calling this a slow motion, low key repeal of Obamacare because Republicans, if you'll recall, good friends out there, took about 60 votes when they had control of the United States Senate and House to try to repeal Obamacare. They kept saying they're going to repeal and replace it. They never had anything replaced with, they just wanted to get rid of it and they never were able to do that. And then the Supreme Court and I believe again this past week reaffirmed the legality of Obamacare, that it is constitutional. So they haven't been able to get rid of it. This seems like to me, Elizabeth, a way to just chip away at Obamacare to say, okay, you have your connect, you have your 10 care, you have your s, your star plus or your badger care. We're just going to make it really hard for you to use it. Apple care, we're just going to make it so that your state maybe can't afford it and then that way we get rid of it. Is that Fair.
- [30:11]
Mark Thompson
That is extremely fair to say. And we're seeing, you know, it's, it's, it's so funny because we're seeing so many parallels with the attacks on the aca. Yesterday I was on the Capitol steps with Senator Jackie Rosen, Senator Amy Klobuchar, and, and they had the little lobbyists there, which are families and children who, the children have complex medical issues and disabilities. This is the same group of disabled children and their families who were here to protest against the Republicans dismantling the aca. I mean, it truly, it truly is just the same thing over and over again. And so they're obviously trying to go after ACA slash Obamacare. I try to put those names together all the time to drill it into people's minds that the ACA is Obamacare, that this is very much a slow creep into making sure that we take away not only Medicaid, but these private health insurance plans that people can access on the marketplace that they pay their own money for and make it impossible for them to really use it. Because again, the majority of hospitals rely heavily on Medicaid funding. Lots of clinics, lots of medical providers. If they lose funding, they're going to have to close hospitals, they're going to have to close clinics and it won't matter. But whether you have an employer sponsored plan or a plan on the marketplace, you can't get care where there's no care to be had.
- [31:26]
Elizabeth Booker
Elizabeth Booker, where can people find you on these, in these social media streets if they want to follow the things that you do?
- [31:32]
Mark Thompson
Yes, they can find me at Booker Squared is my handle on all social media. I've had people ask about that. My maiden name was Elizabeth Booker. Booker. I'm just putting it out there. That's where the name came from. But I'm married now, so the second Booker was dropped. But you can find me at Booker Squared.
- [31:45]
Elizabeth Booker
Your name was Elizabeth Booker Booker?
- [31:47]
Mark Thompson
It was. That was my legal name. Middle name, last name Booker.
- [31:49]
Elizabeth Booker
I respect that because my mother's name was Philomena Lomina. She managed to find a man with the last name Lomana when there was a lamina in our name. So Philomena Lamina Booker Booker. It's a thing that some of us do.
- [32:01]
Mark Thompson
It is, it is.
- [32:03]
Elizabeth Booker
I love it. Thank you so much, Elizabeth. We appreciate you. Thank you very much. We're going to bring in Mark Thompson who is literally on the floor of the House. I want him to come in, but I want to just give you guys, as we bring Mark in, just some information you need to know. Here are the states with the highest number of Medicaid, Louisiana, West Virginia, Kentucky, Arkansas, Alaska and Montana. Note that these other than Louisiana are not states with large numbers for black people. For almost 16 years, I think West Virginia, 6% population. But the vast majority of poor people in America are white. They just happen to be white. The, the vast majority of recipients of snap, recipients of welfare, as they call it, are white women and call a white friend is what I like to say because this is not going to uniquely hurt just black and brown people. And there is a rumor going on on these social medias that is being pushed on X, Twitter and other social media that the only people that are going to have their Medicaid cut are undocumented immigrants. That is not true. This is going to cut anyone on Medicaid. And people who are in the country undocumented don't get Medicaid because in most, at least especially red states, they don't qualify. They're not allowed to get it. So if you think that this is going to hurt somebody and not you, you're not paying attention. Mark Thompson, what is going on there on Capitol Hill where you are?
- [33:35]
Joy Reid
Well, first of all, Joy, thanks for having me and congratulations on starting the Joy Reed show and all that you've been doing. Appreciate you and thank you. We're going to keep this going. Now I'm right outside the Capitol. As you can see behind me, it appears that they are trying to wrap up Rama and go to a vote. I've just been informed that it's not 100% clear how this is going to pass, if it is going to pass. Meanwhile, the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, is appealing to senators to make sure this bill, which it doesn't at the moment, matches the House bill so he can pass his bill in the House because his the passage of his bill is not guaranteed. I think that it's working that constituents, not just immigrants, not just black folks, but some of those constituents you just named in states where there are a large number of white constituents, even some who voted for Donald Trump are going to be impacted. I was just looking at a headline, you know, it's always, I know you like to do too, Joy, to see what the international press says about this country. The BBC headline, Trump's budget. Nearly 12 million estimated to lose health coverage. And again, people around the world looking at this, at this country said what in the world? What's happening? Why is this, is this taking place? And Joy, we're thankful that you're on our state of the PEOPLE marathon at simulcasting there. Now, folks will be on through the night, but I just want to share something. I was, I paraphrased an LBJ quote. I didn't have it exactly, so I found an exact quote. I'll share it on your short show. Some of you, well, a lot of us aren't old enough to remember this, but some of you may have heard variations of it. This is what lbj, Linda Bay Johnson said, if you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he will notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on and he'll empty his pockets for you. So the very people who are activated and radicalized by ice, you know, it's like an ongoing COPS marathon, just grabbing people off the street, demonizing people of color, immigrants, demonizing black folk, Haitians. That's what they see and don't realize Donald Trump is picking their very pocket as we speak. They're going to lose their health care coverage. You articulated it in the first half hour of the show how this is going to affect regular everyday people, how badly it's going to affect them. And this health care, it's also really a slick way. What we know for years they've been trying to repeal Obamacare. Right?
- [36:35]
Elizabeth Booker
Right.
- [36:36]
Joy Reid
So this is sort of a slick back doorway to do it without actually, because they never could. But this is sort of a backdoor by hitting Medicaid, not to mention SNAP benefits. You know, it's not, it's not called folks, usually called food stamps. Everybody understands what food stamps are. But now it's snap. And people, what is snap? I don't know what they're talking about. So this is going to be devastating across the board.
- [36:58]
Elizabeth Booker
Let me go through once again. I'm going to read it. I don't know if we have the, with the graphic here. But again, the highest Medicaid recipient, these are the states with the largest number of Medicaid recipients. Number one is Louisiana. Who is represented, which is represented by the speaker of the House. Mike Johnson is a congressman from Louisiana. He is begging for this bill to pass which will gut Medicaid in his own state. Largest recipient of Medicaid in the country is Louisiana. Then West Virginia, Kentucky, Arkansas, Alaska, which is why Lisa Murkowski, senator from Alaska, was trying to get her folks exempted. And Montana, it's not black folks in Montana that are on Medicaid. It's rural white communities. Understand? This is why I don't believe Rick Scott, Mark is Going to vote against this bill. Rick Scott used to run a massive health care company which had to settle a lawsuit against them by the federal government for record. Medicaid fraud. They committed fraud by submitting false requests for reimbursement. Again, what I told y' all, the federal government reimburses the states for what they spend on insuring poor people. They get a reimbursement from the federal government. Rick Scott's company defrauded that system, also defrauded it for Tricare, which is the way the military gets health care, a socialist program where they get, they pay for military folks health care, and defrauded Medicare, which as I explained, is the way older folks get their head. His company defrauded all of them because they wanted profits. They wanted profits more than they had morals. So this is a guy who has no respect for Medicare, Medicaid. He, he wants to get rid of it and wants to privatize all of it. Understand that the medical establishment never wanted there to be universal healthcare. They never wanted there to be a Medicare or a Medicaid. Because as I, to go back to my analogy, what I gave you guys before, hotels love the premium rate. The same training goes into becoming a plastic surgeon as becoming a heart surgeon or becoming a regular doctor. Similar training, much more training to get us to be a surgeon. But you pay a bigger premium for plastic surgery because it's not covered by your health care. And so because it's not covered by insurance, you pay top dollar to get plastic surgery. You want them bbls, you get a, you want a bbl, your plastic surgeon is not covered by your health care. Well, this bbl, right, which we're calling the big billionaire legislation, this kind of bbl, a big billionaire law they're trying to pass is also not going to allow you to be covered and it's going to take away your coverage and, and force you to pay the premium rate for healthcare. Mark, what do you make of this? Of the fact that if you look at that and then you look at the largest states that get snap, which you just described what used to be food stamps again, Louisiana, then West Virginia, then Oklahoma, then Alabama, then North Carolina. These are the states that are gonna be hurt the most by this, Mark.
- [39:51]
Joy Reid
Well, again, it's baffling because the math doesn't match. You're gonna impact your voting base if you are a Republican. So Tom Tillers doing what he did, you're right. I mean, it's politics for him, but he knows the cost, the price. He'd have to Pay in North Carolina. It's, what do they know if you're disaffecting your own base and possibly killing them. I was here early with Bishop Barber. They did an action. They had about 100 caskets out here in front of the Capitol symbolizing those who would lose their lives from this bill from Medicaid to snap. If you're killing your own base and thereby enabling them from voting for you, what is really going on? How does that benefit you? What is it that we don't know, Joy? I mean, we start killing folk that we need to vote for us and letting them die and subjugating them to the worst conditions. We really need to drill down on that. And, and what assures them that could just be that these guys live for the moment they're in. They won this past election, but we want money now. We want to leave here with our pockets line. We don't. We'll let the next generation of Republicans worry about that. But Rick Scott, I want to get paid again. Mike Johnson, I want to get paid again. That's what they may be saying to themselves, but it's something very sinister that's going on. It's, it's a form of politics by death. It's, it's frightening, and I'm not sure what it will take. And I saw a statistic earlier, you might have seen it in one of the many, many threads you and I are in, where about 49%, at least, of the country doesn't even know this is going on right now.
- [41:39]
Elizabeth Booker
They don't even know it's happening and.
- [41:40]
Joy Reid
Is not aware that it's happening and does not understand what is. Yeah.
- [41:44]
Elizabeth Booker
So let me answer your question for you.
- [41:45]
Joy Reid
You're not getting the outcry.
- [41:46]
Elizabeth Booker
Let me give you my estimate of the answer. I don't have an answer. I don't know. I can't, I can't read these people's minds. But if you think about the three kinds of Trump voters, there are three kinds of Trump voters. There are the cultists. This is a religious cult. And if you're in the religious cult, you're willing to die in order for Donald Trump to get his, quote, unquote, big, beautiful bill, for him to get what he wants to please Donald Trump. You are willing to lay down your life. You don't care. And so those people are gone. They are willing to lose their health benefits. They're willing to see their own children die. They're willing to see their lives ended, their financial futures ruined, and it doesn't matter and even if it happens, they will still turn around and vote. Thom Tillis would have gotten reelected by those people because they genuinely don't care what you do as long as they think it's going to hurt black people more. In their minds, all welfare recipients are black or illegal, quote unquote. And if they believe it's going to hurt black people and brown immigrants more, they will literally shoot themselves if they think you're behind them. And the shot will get you too. So that's that people. Then you've got the super rich, you've got the people who just vote for money, the 50 cents of the world. Like I want taxes, I don't care what happens. Give me tax. Because if it gets Medicare and it destroys us financially, they don't care. Right. And I think there's that third group that are the most vulnerable who are going to feel this, but they're not necessarily voters. If they vote, they float back and forth between voting for Republicans and Democrats. They just vote their pocketbook and try to find who's going to help them survive. And let me just give you a couple statistics, guys. And by the way, as I say that, I want to welcome the State of the People Power Tour. The State of the People Power Tour. The State of People folks are live and live simulcasting this program right now. I want to welcome everybody from State of the People all over the country. Thank you all for tuning in. And we're going to have more content coming up for you in the next hour where we're going to keep going on the State of the People tour where we're going to try to give you guys some ideas of what to do to survive this mess because some version of this is going to pass. But let me read a couple of statistics. Statistics for Mark SNAP Supplemental Assistance Program. SNAP reportedly is going to be cut by about 20%. It's the largest cut to SNAP in history. Again, I'm going to post all of these links on joy re joyannreid.com these cuts would increase poverty, food insecurity and hunger, including among children. The so called big beautiful bill is anything but beautiful. It will cause widespread harm by making massive cuts to Medicaid and snap, which would raise costs on families and make it much harder for them to afford the high cost of health care and groceries. So in addition to the cuts to snap, you're also going to see revisions to the Senate Agricultural Committee Chair John Boseman made to comply with the Senate parliamentarian rulings, meaning they're also going to cut services to children, seniors, veterans and people with disabilities. So they're going to see the food assistance that normally goes to kids to seniors, veterans and individuals with disabilities also slashed to pay for this bill. They're also going to cut funding for new farm programs. They're going to take food assistance away from people with low incomes and do all of that. Mark, to your point, they're hurting a lot of black folks, to be sure, but they're hurting a lot of white people, too. I'm not sure they believe they're going to need another election. I don't know that we're going to have free and fair elections in 2026. I think they assume they're going to stay in power, powerful life. And so it doesn't matter what they do to their people and for the cult part of their base, they know that those people don't care, even if it kills their own families.
- [45:08]
Joy Reid
Folks, Joy Reed said it before me. I teed it up for it. A lot of times. I don't say it first because folks think I'm too conspiratorial, but you're right. They. They know something. They know what they did this last time. Some of that math still don't matter. You're right. Obviously, they think it does. But I want to. I'm gonna just, you know, we. I shared lbg, lbj. But, but let me just also share, you know, what Dr. King said at the end of the march for selling Montgomery. You know, we. A lot of times people only quote one of Dr. King's speeches. But one of his most powerful ones was in 1965 on the steps of Montgomery State Capitol. He said, it may be said of the slavery era, that the white man took the world and gave the Negro Jesus. This is a preacher saying this, a Baptist Christian preacher. The white man took the world and gave the Negro Jesus. Then it may be said of the Reconstruction era that the Southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow. He gave him Jim Crow. And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man better than the black man. He ate Jim Crow. And when his undernourished children cried out for the necessities that his low wages could not provide, he showed them the Jim Crow signs on the buses, in the stores, on the streets and in the public buildings. And his children, too, learned to feed upon Jim Crow, their last outpost of psychological oblivion. So Here in America, we're still seeing all this. We're seeing people who would rather see black folk harmed and immigrants harmed. Immigrants of color harm even at their own expense. Because you're right, it is a cult. Trump. Those who belong, many belong to Trump are in a cult. But even when Trump it be someone else. It was Ronald Reagan at one time. I'm old enough to remember that, even though I don't look it. There's this cult. White supremacy itself is, is a. You and I were in Jackson, Mississippi over there over the weekend, Jordan, for the centennial of mega evidence. And I looked at it a hundred years ago versus today. We're going back once again. 100 years ago, we were going back from reconstruction. That was the pier. When Meg Evans was born in the early 1920s to mid-1920s, that was the nadir, the lowest point in race relations. Reconstruction had been completely dismantled after having black elected officials all over the South. All our right to vote was taken away from 1877 on up to the 1920s, as Rayford Logan and John Hope Franklin described it. And so now we're going back again. Mega Evans comes along, gets killed. In 1963, we get the Voting Rights Act. In 1964, a hundred years after the end of the Civil War, we got it back. Now we've seen systemically and very, you know, as one of the courts said with, with a scalpel like effect, the dismantling of our voting rights. Now we're having a dismantling of the basic protections to human needs, human health, people already poor, not to mention now, let's be clear, this thing also gives a big tax break, as you said, to bake. I mean, I couldn't believe in 2025 folks are going to a billionaire wedding. Even some folk. Well, I mean, we don't know these folks, but we know who they are. Folk who look like us going to a billion with all right here, people about to lose their snap in their Medicaid. And y' all are going, yeah, y' all going to weddings and, and, and, and celebrating with a man who is also taking our money. We, we did a target. Jamal Bryant and Tamika Mallory and Nina Turner and leading target fast. But Amazon may have to be next. They don't take care of their workers. Look. Yeah, you look at that. Y' all look at it.
- [49:11]
Elizabeth Booker
Look at it, right?
- [49:12]
Joy Reid
They don't take care of their workers. We spend money with Amazon. They are exploitative. He takes our money when we go to Amazon every day and goes up in outer space. Right? So, and all these guys use devices and batteries. Musk bezos. They come from a mineral in the Congo that's killing the Congolese people. So we. We've got to do something. By the way, folks, as we celebrate July 2, 2025, July 2, 2019 25, the birthday of Mega Evans. Also the birthday, very same day, the birthday of Patrice Lamouk.
- [49:51]
Elizabeth Booker
July 2, 2025, killed by the CIA in the Congress.
- [49:55]
Joy Reid
Kill by CIA.
- [49:55]
Elizabeth Booker
Yeah. Let me say this really, Mark, because I think what you're pulling on the thread is I think it was interesting that you said that the white man was told that he could eat Jim Crow when his wrinkled belly cried out for food in the current era. I mean, I think I said at the very first show that we did when I launched this show, that you've got to think of all the different stories that you're seeing as one story. The entertainments that MAGA will eat, the entertainments that they will dine on when their children are hungry and do not have health care, will be the snatching of brown people off the streets. They will enjoy, as you called it, their sort of new version of cops watching brown women and children run down the streets, running from ICE agents, watching them tackle brown and black people in the street and drag them off, off into random vans. They'll enjoy those entertainments instead. Ron Desantis is building a prison camp, essentially a concentration camp in the state of Florida. Those are the entertainments they will eat. While Florida itself is suffering from a lack of workers, Farms are going untiled because people are afraid to show up to work. In Florida, in Alabama, in California, in Texas, farmers are now suffering because their workers won't show up. People who own restaurants are suffering because people are scared to leave their houses if they are brown. The fear and terror that has been forced on anyone who has brown skin in this country, those are the entertainment's MAGA desires. They desire to watch those people suffer. They love watching them get arrested. They love watching Monica MacGyver be prosecuted. They drink this up, it's like blood to a vampire. Because they're angry that the January 6th people went to prison. They just wanna see Democrats get arrested. They loved watching not just the United States Senator from California get arrested, but JD Vance disrespect him by calling him Juan. They love watching JD Vance be an absolute jerk to anyone who isn't white, to women belittling them for not having kids. They love watching the Transportation Secretary while neglecting transportation. One of our guests, Jamal Bryant, was stuck on a flight like I was for 20, almost 24 hours yesterday trying to fly out of Jackson. They don't care that this guy is an incompetent boo who cannot do his job. They love it when he goes out and lectures young women to have more babies, have 10 and 12 kids like he does to lecture women to get out of the workforce and stop and get an Mrs. Degree. That's the purpose of this administration. There's a reason it's all entertainers. There's a reason it's all Dr. Oz and weirdos like RFK Jr. They're not governing the country, they're looting it. They're not governing the country. They're robbing the bank. They're taking all the money. They're handing it to Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. Can we put this up? Elon Musk is now whining about the bill, saying the bill will destroy the country in debt. It's damaging. It's bad. He's turned on the bill. Why is he turning on the bill? Because the bill also cuts all the subsidies to electric vehicles. It cuts all the electric vehicle subsidies. So the thing he needs for his failing business now that he's destroyed Tesla by being a, you know, by doing his arm thing, whatever he's calling it, that everyone else saw as a Nazi salute, which he said was saluting people or whatever he was doing, doing that, and also backing Donald Trump with $250 million of his own money has cost him Tesla. Tesla is destroyed as a brand, and now the subsidies are getting cut. That's what he's mad about.
- [53:31]
Mark Thompson
He doesn't.
- [53:31]
Elizabeth Booker
He's getting a tax cut. You know what I mean? Anyway, Mark, back to you, because the thing that is so sort of sad is that what we're seeing is the entertainments that the right will get is the renaming of army bases for Confederates. They love the fact that Confederate names will go back on army bases, that Medgar Evers name will be stripped, that Harvey Milk's name will be stripped. That's what they're getting instead of Medicaid, Mark.
- [53:57]
Joy Reid
Yeah, they're getting that. And. And it's unfortunate and again, a little scary that that fulfills them. Where is the humanity? And mind you, some of these folks would identify obviously as Christians or evangelical. What is that? What is the. The morality or the faith. Faith or the Christianity in something like that? And the rest of the world is looking at us. We're talking about other parts of the world that have their own history of enslavement and colonization, saying you know, we kind of passed that. Why is America American and still doing this to people, doing this to innocent people? It is, it, it's, it's really sad. And it speaks to just a lot of the depravity that half the country still suffers from. But I'm, you know, I'm encouraged that in these past few hours, people have gotten mobilized. People are responding. Some folk are still asleep since November. I get it. Some folks are still suffering from ptsd. I get it. Joy, you make a difference now that you're back on the air. Everyday people can be fed with real information as posted disinformation. We've been hearing all of our colleagues here on this State of the People marathon. We're going to stay on, folks, through this process because people need to be informed, must know what is happening to us if we're going to defend ourselves and if we are going to defend others. And, and if, and if we don't stand up, who will? WB Du Bois once said, always fight because even if you lose, people will see that there was blood spilled on the ground and someone fought here. So we are here to fight. We can't just let this man take over everything. And again, folks, we're looking at a Putin clone. We don't, like you say, we don't even know they're going to be elections. We don't know what he's going to do. I've been saying to some of the legal teams and others, get a cadre of people working right now on what happens when he decides that he doesn't want to leave office, that he's just going to stay.
- [56:12]
Elizabeth Booker
Yeah.
- [56:12]
Joy Reid
And maybe that's what emboldens them now, that they can do the things they're doing. But in the meantime, I'm going to be here. We're going to watch this process. We should be on the outside tomorrow.
- [56:22]
Elizabeth Booker
Okay.
- [56:25]
Joy Reid
And then we'll report from there as well and hopefully talk to some members. I'm going to talk to Shaquita Brooks Lasure. Laquita Brooks Lasure. In just a little while, former Medicaid and Medicare administrator. And in just a little while and, and get her thoughts and get more detail on how devastating this legislation is going to be once it's passed. But folks, stay tuned right here not only to the Joy Reid show, but the State of the People marathon.
- [56:55]
Elizabeth Booker
Well, I appreciate you, Mark, Mark Thompson, and don't go too far because we're going to be popping back on with you. And as Mark just teed up, we are going to keep this live stream going because we are being broadcast right now on the State of the People marathon, all the multiple platforms that are running that marathon. Thanks to everyone who put that together. It's kind of a miracle that within a couple of days folks were able to pull that together. Mark Thompson, thank you very much. We're going to come back to you later because we're going to be going now to see some of the local efforts that are happening all across the country. Just understand that while this bill is likely going to pass in some form, that does not mean folks are not doing anything. What people are doing is they're trying to figure out within their state, within their locality, how to survive this era. Because what you're seeing is the super rich gutting the country, selling it for parks. Donald Trump wants to sell off our natural resources, sell off our parks, sell off everything in order to basically graft all the money for himself and a few billionaires. If you look at Russia, nobody but Putin and his friends are rich. Most Russians are poor and they live in poverty. And some of them get caught up in the religion of Putinism. And he has them whipped up in a religious frenzy such that they don't mind being poor. In Hungary, it's the same thing. They're so focused on making sure that gay people aren't in public, on the public square that they don't even seem to notice that they have nothing. But who is investing in Hungary? Who is investing in Russia? Why would anyone invest in the United States that's replicating that? I want to answer a couple questions in the chat before we sign off here. We've got tax cuts on overtime. What about salary, employees? We do we not need a break? This is GT asking. That is a great question. What you need to understand about Obamacare. Obamacare is three things at once. On the one hand, it is accepted, expanded Medicaid. It allows people who are a little bit less poor to get into Medicaid. Those are the Medicare. That's the bulk of what Obamacare is. The second thing is, is Obamacare is rules, rules that are put on private insurance companies. You know that free mammogram you get every year, you get that because of Obamacare. The fact that you can go in and get free health screenings. That didn't happen before Obamacare. Think about it. You have to pay a copay for that when you go get your mammogram or you go get a heart screening. Now, if it is a mandatory needed screening for your health, you can get it. And you do not pay a copay. That is Obamacare, because it's rules that require that. The third thing that Obamacare is are private exchanges, as Elizabeth was explaining. So if you're like our kids who have aged out of being on your parents insurance, you can buy private insurance or like a lot of freelancers, you know, probably a lot of freelancers out there, they can purchase private, private health insurance, not Medicaid, but private insurance through these exchanges in each of the states that run some statewide state run exchanges and some private exchanges. So Obamacare is all three of those things. This bill hurts all three things. So if you are a person that's got private health insurance, understand that your premiums are about to go up because like I said, the family group trip is getting smaller and when you take those other people off of the group trip, everybody's cost for those rooms goes up. So even if you are privately insured, you're about to get dealt by you're about to get dealt dirty by this bill. Thank you all for listening to the Joy Reid Show. Don't go anywhere because this live stream is going to continue on the State of the People Power Tour. We're going to keep it rolling, but I'm going to sign off of this portion and you will see me in my next guys, which will be as a part of the State of the People process. Thank you all for tuning in. Be sure to like and subscribe. Subscribe Share this this channel. Make sure that everybody subscribed to the YouTube channel. 70% of people are lurking watching these shows and not subscribing. Why would you do that? So make sure that you like, subscribe and throw some comments. And thank you all for joining the Joy Reed Show. See you on the next one and goodbye for now. Be back in a minute. Sa.