BREAKING: MAJOR UPDATE on Republican budget bill

BREAKING: MAJOR UPDATE on Republican budget bill

i’m joined now by Senator Elizabeth Warren Thanks so much for joining me
You bet
So we we are right now in a five alarm fire situation as Republicans are looking to pass this budget bill today You have some breaking updates about what this newly scored version of the bill would do Can you explain what what you uh what you know now so the latest because the Republicans have added more this and more that to try to make sure they’ve got all their members covered is that the cuts to Medicaid remember that’s little babies people with disabilities seniors in nursing homes cuts to Medicaid will be almost just shy of a trillion dollar And then there will be cuts to Medicare on top of that again also that billionaires uh can get tax breaks Jeff Bezos really needs that right now with $50 million wedding going on
Right Exactly You know they have they have avoided Medicare in the past and and I I I believe that you and I have spoken about this uh when we last interviewed but the reason that they avoided Medicare was because that’s a stronger voting block These are seniors uh more difficult to target uh than than the recipients of Medicaid which to your exact point these are children these are the disabled and so less of a potent voting block And so what is your message to Medicare recipients out there in light of this new news that clearly Republicans are hoping uh they won’t find out because you know introduce this this legislation and try to quickly vote on it before it really uh before Democrats have the opportunity to explain to people what’s in the bill That’s right You you got that one exactly right So this means now is the moment Call your senator all across the country call your senator and say vote no And it’s the cuts to Medicare But I want to give you one more reason to pick up that phone There’s one more analysis that has now come out And that is if these cuts go through one out of every four nursing homes in the country is expected to close Not not suffer not not struggle close And think about what that means We already have waiting lists for nursing homes are already struggling with seniors who need care and particularly seniors who have outrun their savings and that’s what is getting cut in this bill Nearly a trillion dollars in cuts to Medicaid and more cuts to Medicare Taking away health care from millions of seniors taking away health care from people with disabilities taking away health care from little babies That’s what it’s all about for the Republicans right now
Can you also speak about what we would see in terms of hospital closures and kind of as as an add-on to that republicans have introduced kind of some stop gap funding to prevent these hospital closures or or to to to save off the hospital closures for for a temporary amount of time But what does the fact that they would even need to introduce this funding say about the reality of what their own bill would do yeah You know so you’ve got it exactly right So here they are They’re going to make about a trillion dollars in in cuts to Medicaid and like we said and to Medicare beyond that And the reason that matters so much to hospitals is hospitals have got no room to cover uncompensated care So right now they’ve got people who’ve got their private insurance right that’s part of it And then we’ve got Medicare Medicaid covering everybody else right
you make cuts to Medicare Medicaid people still get sick People still have heart attacks People are still in car accidents They show up in the emergency room There’s no one who will pay the hospital bills And so this means hospitals that are already operating at the margin are going to start shutting down
right because otherwise they would be on the hook for these costs that wouldn’t that would normally be covered by Medicaid or Medicare but now they’re not
Exactly So so what are the hospitals going to do part of what they’ll do is some of them will just have to shut down some and that’s most likely going to be in a lot of rural areas places where they’re already on the economic margins they’re also going to start shutting off services So they just say “You know what we can’t do that kind of procedure We can’t deliver babies anymore We’re not going to be able to uh take people uh for certain kinds of surgeries anymore.” So they start shrinking up the hospital of the hospitals that survive Third thing that hospitals are going to start pushing toward is can they charge the people with private insurance more So right now you get your insurance personally you get it off the market or you get your insurance through your employer There’s a lot of talk right now in the healthcare industry They’re saying the price of your insurance is going to go up because of the cuts to Medicaid That’s because the system is woven together here And there’s no way to take a trillion dollars out of this system and say “But that’s okay the system will still survive right
it will not And the people who will get hurt will be everyone
And I think the the the point I wanted to also make was was Republicans are are at the same time that they’re trying to pass this bill claiming that none of this will happen but simultaneously trying to offer up some stop gap funding to prevent the very thing that they are saying will not happen
Exactly Right So they’ve said they’ve tried to buy a couple of Republicans to get back uh in the voting with them by saying “Okay okay we’re going to create this special fund for rural hospitals That’s how we’re going to fix it We’re going to cut a trillion dollars but we’re going to give all of the rural hospitals in the country $15 billion to fight over.” Now two things you got to say about that First of all we’ve had different Republican senators who’ve held up a hand and say “Wait a minute In my state alone the cuts are going to be more than $40 billion Are you kidding me in one state that’s not enough money.” But the second point is a one-time infusion of a tiny little bit of money
isn’t going to cut it We talk about a trillion dollars in cuts That’s because it’s over the period we measured But those cuts they intend them to stay there forever
right
and so that just means the hospitals some will have to shut down in the first few months some in the first few years some a little later if we really are if they really are going to withdraw a trillion dollars from our health care system
And you know what the the most depraved part is even this insufficient amount of money that they’re infusing into the system to just barely keep it afloat in these in these rural areas there’s a major drop off from 2028 to 2029 And I don’t know if it’s because maybe they think that they that the pendulum might swing from Trump to a Democrat but all of these these cuts are really going to really going to land most like the the hardest in 2029 when presumably there may very well be a Democratic president But it basically buys them enough time so that they can get through the the rest of Trump’s administration and then kind of kick the can down the road that way And if there is a Democrat in office well that’s when the brunt of these cuts are really going to take hold And so who are people going to be mad at are they going to be mad when Democrats say “Oh you don’t understand These cuts were enacted 3 years ago or four years ago by Republicans and it just took some time to to settle in.” Or are we going to see a situation where Republicans go “Hey wasn’t weren’t things better when Republicans were in charge weren’t things better when Donald Trump was in charge
you know you are so right on that point But you know who gets theirs right now the billionaires on their tax cuts In fact you talk about obscene provisions in this bill
This bill also has something called R&D expensing which is supposed to incentivize businesses to take on research But what it does is it’s retroactive So Meta is going to be able if this bill becomes law in its current form Meta is going to get a check on day one ready to go for $15 billion for activities that they had undertaken back in 2022 2023 and 2024 Think about that So the billionaires get theirs right up front and then whatever happens you know case whatever happens happens
right
but they’re going to get their money while the geton’s good and they’re going to push off the costs onto families And it’s just like you say they’re going to try to roll out as long as they can before it really bites and starts shutting down hospitals all across the country until right after the next election They’ve got some of this triggering in 2026 but most of it is after Trump is gone You know it the the cynicism in this This is about this is about Republicans who just don’t care about people What they care about is how they can play the game Yeah
So that their billionaire donors are still solid with the Republicans and that they can put off the political effects of how they’re going to take away health care how they’re going to kill people just move it on down the line
I mean talk about a good ROI Mike Mark Zuckerberg donates a million dollars to Donald Trump’s campaign and right off the bat as soon as this bill uh possibly passes he’ll be getting a you know a 15 billion dollar check for for things that he already already spent money on thing a cost that was already written off So um I I I do want to put uh put a spotlight on a statement that uh your Republican colleague Josh Holly made and I’ll put it right here on the screen Uh Josh Holly says that he will vote yes on the bill but that he’s not pleased that it will take away healthcare from working people quote “This has been an unhappy episode here in Congress This effort to cut Medicaid and I think frankly my party needs to do some soularching If you want to be a working-class party you’ve got to deliver for working-class people You cannot take healthcare away from working people And unless this has changed moving forward this is what will happen in coming years So I’m going to do everything I can do to stop that.” And apparently what he’s going to do to stop that is to advance and vote for the very legislation that would do the thing that he’s complaining about
Can I Can I have your reaction to that look everything you can do vote no Just vote against this Use the power the biggest power you’ve got and that is the power to say no It’s not enough to hand ring It’s not enough to talk about about uh how we’re going to have these uh uh soularching No this is about action And the American people the people of your home state need your vote And they need it to block this bill that’s going to take a trillion dollars out of the health care system and crash health care for millions of people all across this country Look he talks about this is a bad episode in Congress No this is Republicans Every single Democrat is locked arms on this We are all voting no And we have said that from the beginning We are doing everything we possibly can Right now we’re going to demand that they have to read the bill Just everything we can do to slow this process down And the reason for that is we want everybody to have a chance to hear more about what’s in this bill how many terrible parts are in this bill and get a chance to call their senators and tell their senators to vote no It’s it’s not about later on tell me how sorry you are It’s about do something now while you can tell your senator to vote no There’s also a a new piece of opposition to this bill and that is uh an in an unlikely ally for Democrats Elon Musk has just come out and tweeted “The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country Utterly insane and destructive It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future And this is uh likely predicated on the fact that that the Senate draft raises taxes on all wind and solar project projects that haven’t be begun dra uh construction yet while at the same time offering up new subsidies to uh to coal industries So can I have your reaction to Elon’s intervention here
so actually let’s let’s talk about what Elon is talking about first The provision got even worse than the one you just cited It’s now taking away all support for basically clean energy projects that can’t be finished by the end of this calendar year So all the big projects are just going to lose their support Yeah
Why does this matter because this takes away energy at a time we need it Uh and this means that people’s utility bills are going to go up The estimates before the latest twist in the Senate bill was that most people would pay somewhere between 220 and $450 a year more on their utilities because of the Republican bill Now it’s just getting more and more extreme And look on this I think Elon is exactly right undermining clean energy at this moment and adding a subsidy for the oil and gas industry It just makes no sense except for political donations You know because there’s another provision in here You remember how
uh what’s it been about four years ago when the Democrats still had the majority we got my minimum my corporate minimum alternative tax through Do you remember this so
I think it was 15% if if that’s correct Yeah
Any business that had more than a billion dollars in profits regardless of what other deductions and so on they had to at least be paying 15% of those profits as taxes It was just a minimum tax saying in effect we’re not going to let you guys just keep working your way through the system And uh so you get loophole after loophole after loophole You tell your investors “We made $3 billion,” and then you tell the IRS “Nah we only made a dollar and a half.”
I mean remember the the New York Times report it was either the Times or the Washington Post that showed that even the Trump Organization paid something like $750 in in their corporate taxes
Exactly So these guys were paying Amazon one year was reporting 11 billion in profit and paid zero in taxes
So it the idea is to say we’re going to have corporate minimum taxes Do you know what’s in this bill in this bill is except for the oil and gas industry they are going to get a special carve out because that was the price of getting Senator Langford’s vote Langford from Oklahoma’s vote in this And that’s what this bill is You know how people talk about bills that are full of of pork this thing has just become obscene It’s carveouts for the wealthy carveouts for the big donors big special giveaways to the richest and the most powerful And how they pay for it the onetwo punch and that is take nearly a trillion dollars out of the health care system more than that when we add the cuts to Medicare and deficit finance the rest of it to the tune of trillions of dollars put it on the credit card and let our kids and our grandkids pay for it This bill is mean This bill is unkind And frankly this bill is just economically not how America builds a strong future We’ll leave it there for everybody who’s watching right now If you if if you haven’t yet spoken to your senator if you haven’t yet called their office especially if you live in a red or purple state call 202243121 That is the Senate switchboard the congressional switchboard They can get you in touch with your senator’s office Please make sure to call Today is the day that this action is required Senator Warren I appreciate your time today Thank you so much
Oh I I appreciate And can I add one more thing
100% And if you’ve already called call again and call again Make sure they know how much you care about this because this is everybody’s future on the line Whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican or an independent or don’t even like politics it’s everybody’s future on the line It’s healthc care for everyone It’s clean energy for our entire world It’s whether or not we build a future in which somebody besides the billionaires actually has a chance to prosper So call and call again
Perfectly put Senator Warren Thank you again
Thank you

INTERVIEW: Brian interviews Senator Elizabeth Warren about the pending GOP budget bill.

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