Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

main story tonight which concerns a piece of legislation dear to President Trump’s heart
The one big beautiful bill is among the most important pieces of legislation in our country’s history I don’t think there’s ever been anything bigger And I said “Let’s make it one big beautiful bill.” We’re voting essentially on the big beautiful that gorgeous big beautiful bill
Stop it Stop it right now First the one big beautiful bill sounds either like a lumberjack with an Only Fans page or a Pornhub tab for people who come to Twoucans but it is truly massive and it’s currently moving through Congress after passing the House by the narrowest of margins With cheers of USA House Republicans passed their sweeping version of the president’s agenda Republicans in the House held two overnight sessions In the end Speaker Johnson eaked out his biggest victory yet winning by a single vote Though the dark of night cost him One member who would have voted yes overslept and missed it
It’s true It passed by a single vote Even though one representative Andrew Garberino slept through it which is a little surprising given his official portrait seems less sleepy and more high on expired cough medicine The bill’s currently in the Senate and Trump is pushing them to pass their version as soon as possible Posting to my friends in the Senate “Lock yourself in a room if you must Don’t go home Pass it immediately No one goes on vacation until it’s done.” This whole process has been rushed to the point that some House members who voted for the bill later had to admit that they hadn’t read all of it Marjorie Taylor Green arguably one of the worst things to come out of Georgia since the Trail of Tears was upset when she learned the House version included a provision prohibiting states from restricting AI for the next 10 years This past week I have come out in full transparency and said “When I voted for the one big beautiful bill I didn’t know about this clause.”
Yeah that’s not great Although to be fair who among us hasn’t approved things that we haven’t read properly it’s why none of you noticed Apple’s new terms and conditions technically give them rights to your firstborn child It is true Tim Cook is pulling a rumple stiltskin right now and he’s coming for them as soon as they can hold a tiny little screwdriver But a lot of people don’t know what’s in this bill About twothirds of the public say they’ve heard little or nothing about it But when they do they don’t like it As polls show those who’ve heard a great deal or good amount about it oppose it by a roughly 2:1 margin Even some Senate Republicans will admit that not all their colleagues are thrilled about the bill’s contents
We could spend four weeks we could spend four years and when we’re done done not every Republican senator is going to want to French kiss this final product It’s just not going to happen
That is such a weird way to phrase that Why would you force us all to imagine lawmakers tonguing a stack of paper but as regular viewers know Kennedy loves gratuitous sex talk From inserting the phrase I like omelets better than sex into a discussion about and this is true USID cuts to this memorable moment
I can’t wait to have your in my mouth
It’s always always good And it is important to remember that in the records of Congress there is an answer to the question what if Faulhorn Legghorn was a power bottom and look as of taping the bill still needs to clear the Senate and then go back to the House And things are still coming in and out of it But the broad contours are clear It is a massive redistribution of wealth upward accompanied by gigantic cuts to critical programs for the most vulnerable So given that tonight let’s talk about the one big beautiful bill what it contains and what it will actually do And let’s start with the fact when Trump talks about this bill the main thing he emphasizes that it will extend the tax cuts Republicans passed in 2017 and add some more which he claims will be good for everyone The White House recently said it’ll deliver a blue collar boom all caps which sounds like a new special at IHOP tied to the Smurfs movie that’ll make you immediately yourself But that is more than a little misleading because while the bill does contain tax cuts for basically everyone their benefits are massively concentrated among the wealthiest Americans In fact 60% of the tax cuts would go to the top 20% of households And you should know just about every independent analysis agrees this bill would add trillions to the national debt And to the extent the bill’s tax cuts are going to be paid for at all it’ll be through slashing programs that benefit the poor And I want to talk about two key areas they’re targeting Health care and food assistance When it comes to health care there are lots of cuts both big and small For instance the bill fails to extend tax credits for healthcare premiums under the ACA while adding burdensome paperwork that would make it hard for people to remain on the plans they already have And I know that might not sound like much to you but it’s estimated those tweaks alone will lead to 4.2 million people becoming uninsured which makes them pretty consequential tweaks It’d be like changing RuPaul’s drag race to Rand Paul’s drag race You you can call it just a tweak but it’s about to make everything way worse But the big target here is Medicaid the public insurance program providing health coverage to among others people with low incomes and disabilities Though this bill’s defenders will insist Medicaid is safe
I’m going to say this very clearly Our legislation preserves Medicaid strengthens Medicaid for the people who actually need it and deserve it Look we’re going to do everything we can to strengthen Medicaid to preserve it for those who need it the most Medicare Medicaid none of that stuff is going to be touched Nothing
I want you to have to
Okay but there’s a few problems there Starting with the fact following through on a promise not to touch something has never exactly been one of Trump’s strong suits Also the math just doesn’t support those claims As one analysis puts it major Medicaid cuts are the only way to meet House budget resolution requirements And the big way this bill tries to do that is by adding work requirements for many low-income recipients who got coverage under Medicaid expansion Effectively removing a lot of them from the roles Basically under the bill to get Medicaid they’d have to prove they worked volunteered or went to school for 80 hours a month That alone is projected to cause over 5 million Americans to lose coverage by the end of the decade Though to hear Mike Johnson tell it that’s just not a problem because they’re just targeting one specific group You don’t want able-bodied workers on a program that is intended for example for single mothers with two small children who’s just trying to make it That’s what Medicaid is for Not for 29year-old males sitting on their couches playing video games We’re going to find those guys and we’re going to send them back to work Okay 29-year-old male sitting on the couch playing video games How is it possible that Mike Johnson always sounds so old and out of touch while also managing to look like a 12-year-old who dressed up as Steven Colbear for Halloween the problem with that argument is that most Medicaid enrolles are working The most recent data shows that nearly two in three work and most of the rest have a disability are caring for family members or are attending school And yet Republicans won’t stop painting lurid scenarios of Medicaid freeloaders For instance here’s the current head of Medicare and Medicaid services who remember is inexplicably Dr Oz unloading the single weirdest hypothetical you will ever hear in your life Here’s a metaphor You get home at night with Lou and there’s someone sitting on your couch in the basement You don’t know them and but they have health insurance that you’re paying for And you say “Listen to keep his health insurance I want you to apply for a job You don’t have to work Just apply for a job go get an education volunteer somewhere be involved in the community or take care of one of the kids in the family help out a little bit If they say no you say “Well I’m taking your insurance away.” That’s not an unreasonable deal to make Okay let’s just pause together for a moment and unpack what he just described In that scenario you get home at night to find a complete stranger sitting on your couch in your basement Naturally the first thing they say is “Hi I have health insurance that you’re paying for.” But instead of screaming and immediately calling 911 you calmly say “Okay person I’ve never seen before I’ll let you keep the health insurance I just found out I’m paying for without asking who you are or how you got into my house My one and only requirement is that you apply for a job You can use my Wi-Fi as apparently you live in my basement now.” And that’s a reality I’ve quickly accepted Or you can go get an education or volunteer or take care of one of my kids Naturally I trust you a complete stranger unexpectedly in my home with the lives of my children And then this individual says “No that doesn’t seem reasonable to me.” So you say “Okay well you leave it with no other option I’m going to have to take your insurance away.” Obviously you can still live in my house That goes without saying your family now but you’ll have to find a way to pay for your own health insurance That’s not an unreasonable deal to make But honestly the weirdness of that scenario is actually preferable to what it sounds like when Dr Oz gives you a glimpse into what he really thinks work requirements are for I have confidence in the American people You give people a chance to work And we know we have twice as many jobs as there are people looking for them Go out there do entry level jobs get into the workforce prove that you matter get agency into your own life It’s a much more enjoyable experience If you’re going through life thinking you control your destiny and you’ll get better insurance at the same time
Hold on Prove that you matter So a person only means something if they work That is not true at all In fact if ever there were proof that you could work for decades while adding exactly zero value to society it is Dr Oz himself who as we’ve mentioned before wanted an episode of his show where he asked Cameron Diaz this
Does this ever happen to you
um luckily no I’m not a girl that gets constipated
That is the perfect facial response to that That was on daytime television that played in restaurants and waiting rooms And as if work requirements weren’t bad enough many are worried that federal cuts to Medicaid will mean that states are likely to cut things like home and community based supports which will have huge consequences for those who rely on those services to literally keep them alive as they have been trying to make people understand
20% of Erie County residents receive Medicaid services including more than 100,000 children but that funding is now in jeopardy Advocates for people with disabilities say cuts to Medicaid could mean cuts to home health care services that literally enable some residents to get out of bed each day
I really truly believe that without Medicaid without my my direct care workers my personal care assistants I would be dead
Yeah that woman clearly deserves to have health care that keeps her alive Even in the insane theoretical situation that she somehow moved into someone’s basement with no warning which to be clear has never happened to anyone and never will that would still be the case And as if that weren’t bad enough and it really is It is worth noting people not on Medicaid will be affected too as it’s a major source of funding for hospitals across the country So with these cuts rural hospitals are likely to be forced to reduce the services they offer cut staff or close altogether And when you take all of the bill’s provisions concerning healthcare together the CBO estimates they’ll result in 16 million more uninsured people in the year 2034 than would otherwise be the case And it is not like people haven’t tried to warn Republicans of the consequences here A few weeks ago we showed you this clip of Joanie Erns delivering a bonkers response to concerned constituents at a town hall We people are not
Well we all are going to die For heaven’s sakes for heaven’s sakes folks
Yeah it’s pretty bad It’s pretty bad But incredibly it’s still not as bad as the sarcastic follow-up video that she posted the next day
Hello everyone I would like to take this opportunity to sincerely apologize for a statement that I made yesterday at my town hall I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that yes we are all going to perish from this earth So I apologize and I’m really really glad that I did not have to bring up the subject of the tooth fairy as well
What the is wrong with you first did you actually drive to a cemetery for your fun little video there and second no one was under the impression that we’re all immortal nor do we think the tooth fairy is real nor indeed the Easter Bunny Now do I happen to believe that leprechauns exist yes But that’s because of a personal experience I once had in Dublin I don’t want to get into it now Suffice to say I’m down one pot of gold and I know what I saw But in any case the problem isn’t being naive to the concept of death is that this bill could make people die sooner than they otherwise would So that is healthcare What about the other crucial program on the chopping block here involving food well this bill also includes massive cuts to SNAP the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or Food SNAPS Currently more than 41 million people receive benefits through it It’s the nation’s largest food aid program And this bill would reduce federal spending on SNAP by $287 billion over 10 years Like the Medicaid cuts a lot of that is being done through work requirements SNAP already has those but this bill’s about to expand them significantly including raising the age limit at which they apply from 54 all the way up to 64 The Senate’s version would also strip exemptions from work requirements for veterans people experiencing homelessness and former foster youth And guess who is completely fine with all that if you’re going to get free food on a SNAP program you have a work requirement It’s an obligation to try to work You might not get a job but you got to try
Yeah Dr Oz is back with his pull yourself up by your own connections to Oprah That man is a real piece of Which piece of who can say exactly one estimate found more than 5 million people would be at risk of losing at least some of their food assistance And on top of that for the first time the bill would require states to pay for a portion of SNAP benefits and cover more administrative costs In fact the CBO estimated that in a 10-year period this would shift about $121 billion in costs to state governments which has a lot of people worried because states may not be able to afford that And those added costs could force them to shrink SNAP eligibility or even leave the program altogether And it is not like food banks can easily pick up the slack here as the head of one in Iowa will tell you
SNAP is the most effective tool that we have to fight hunger uh in the United States Riverbend Food Bank President Chris Ford says for every meal his food bank provides SNAP gives out nine meals
We would not be able to meet the needs of all those individuals It would be unprecedented times for food banks Yeah it’s not great to hear the phrase unprecedented times for food banks given they just survived a global pandemic In the same way that I’d be nervous to hear that it’s going to be an unprecedented year for Katy Perry What more can possibly happen to her she went to space and fumbled this historic baddy Orlando I need you to contact me urgently One of my writers is single and is pointing a loaded gun at me as I read this to you And at this point it is worth pausing to explain what’s really going on here with both Medicaid and SNAP Because even if you’re thinking well maybe work requirements are needed and limits should be put on who gets these benefits there are some important things you should know First study after study has shown work requirements do not increase work What they do cause is large drops in program participation including crucially a lot of people who are actually still eligible to receive help And the reason for that is something called administrative burdens basically all the obstacles between someone and a program they’re qualified to receive from paperwork to interviews to regular check-ins and reertification which can wind up kicking them off This happens much more than you’d think One survey of people who were eligible for but not participating in SNAP found that 40% were deterred by the paperwork involved and another 37% noted that the application was too timeconuming given their family and work responsibilities and SNAP’s administrative burdens have meant that even those who do keep trying can still wind up going without as this couple with five children learned during the pandemic
For a family of seven to qualify their income needs to be under $52,000 What’s your best estimate of your yearly income now
it’s like 20,000 or under
for the two of you That’s combined
For that’s combined
That’s combined
You’ve applied for the SNAP program We’ve been denied several times It said that I need to turn in verifications of end of employment for jobs that Barry hasn’t had in years
In years Company doesn’t even exist anymore
Has it been hard to get people on the phone
yes Yes
Yeah No I have no idea how I’d get the last company I worked for on the phone either especially as that company was AT&T I guess my best bet for contacting them would probably be to whisper my complaint into a bottle and throw it into the Hudson River I can’t see any other way So basically this bill is taking all that bureaucratic and somehow making it even worse And Republicans will insist these new work requirements will work and that no one truly deserving will be left behind But we know that is not true And maybe the best way to show this is to look at Georgia and a state program called Pathways to Coverage It’s a program that rolled out there a few years ago and Republicans apparently used it as a possible template for restructuring Medicaid Pathways offers health insurance with work requirements and it launched with testimonials from people like this man who owns an auto repair shop
Uh became a member of Pathways in the last year Pathways is is a great program that offers offers insurance to lowincome and uh working professionals such as myself but I highly recommend it because again it offers that avenue to you for you to have uh health insurance uh where you otherwise would not
Now on his face that sounds good A working man getting health insurance Dr Oz would call him someone who matters Mike Johnson would call him not 29 and playing Halo both would presumably think he’s a good candidate for health insurance It’s no wonder he became the deacto face of the program Unfortunately it quickly became clear Pathways had significant problems particularly regarding how its work requirement was getting administered People 50 and older had an especially hard time proving they met the requirements which forced them to provide paperwork verifying their work status every single month That can be hard especially if you’re not computer savvy or don’t have reliable internet There were stories like the man who had to spend more than an hour every month uploading employment documents to reconfirm his eligibility often using the free Wi-Fi at his public library And this director of a clinic for low-income patients reported that none of her patients had enrolled And she wasn’t surprised
The qualifications are just too steep You know I have patients that I have to put A on the pill bottles if they take them in the morning and P on the pill bottles if they take them at night And you expect these people to be able to upload documents and renew their health insurance monthly It’s not going to work
She’s right Benevolent Anna Wintor is right because just think about it No matter who you are uploading documents can be challenging Have you ever tried to upload new patient forms to a doctor’s online portal it is a nightmare You click the upload button and select the PDF of your form but then the site says something like PDF files not accepted Please upload Gulp files Except you’ve never heard of Gulp files before So you Google how do you convert PDF to Gulp And the results say that you need an app called Gulp Transformer that cost $9.99 And so you go back and search free PDF to Gulp converter and finally find a site that says you can do it with Adobe Acrobat First you have to convert the PDF to a muks file and then convert the mukes to a gulp And at that point you just throw your computer out the window Even people savvy enough to navigate George’s system found it hard One single mother wasn’t able to enroll because she said the portal crashed each of the three times she tried to apply And after calling the customer service line she bounced around from one robot voice to another before ultimately giving up Even that repair shop owner had his benefits canled twice due to bureaucratic red tape He described one of those times saying “My head exploded I didn’t get a text or an email I did what I was supposed to do but that wasn’t good enough.” Which is a pretty startling U-turn from the face of pathways to coverage It’d be like Jane Goodall suddenly saying “You know what chimpanzees They’re stupid hairy and if I could strangle everyone until they went extinct I would Jesus Christ Jane what happened and this administrative cluster wasn’t cheap either By the end of last year the Pathways program cost federal and state taxpayers more than $86 million 3/4 of which had gone to consultants And 18 months into the program a mere 6,500 participants had enrolled And remember that’s the program Republicans apparently modeled their new Medicaid policy on So if that’s what’s coming on a national scale that is terrifying As one source put it to us the term people use is work requirements but that’s a misnomer You should really think of it as a paperwork requirement And look I would say that eligible people losing coverage is an unintended consequence But I think it’s the whole point here because the vast majority of cost savings that you’re getting from instituting something like a work requirement don’t come from kicking people off Medicaid and SNAP who don’t qualify They come from kicking off people who do but who now can’t get it because of the burdens you’ve just put in place It’s death by a thousand cuts And the true hypocrisy is it is not like Republicans aren’t up in arms about administrative burdens in other contexts Because when it comes to regulations on businesses they just never shut the up about it I was tired of hearing small businesses say we can hardly make it because of the stack of paper we have to fill out
Every hour spent on paperwork is an hour not spent on growing their business
This paperwork and red tape will bury workers and businesses trying to make a living Small businesses continuously list Washington red tape and regulation as a top issue keeping them from growing and in too many cases simply surviving
You know it is pretty striking how horrified Joanie Ern sounds at the idea of businesses struggling to survive But when it comes to vulnerable human beings all of a sudden she’s like “You know what grow up Death happens Worms will eventually eat everything you love Someday a real rain’s going to wash the scum from these streets Erns 2026 We’re all going to die And look I get that red tape can be a problem for businesses but this is medicine for the sick and food for the hungry The stakes are just higher And the burdens this bill is about to impose won’t just be kicking 29-year-old gamers and Dr Oz’s imaginary basement squatters off the rolls They can impact single moms working people and those who fear that they would be dead without assistance Right now Republicans are trying to rush this bill through because they know how toxic it is It may have even passed the Senate by the time you are watching this And while I know there is a lot going on right now it is worth paying attention to this bill because if it becomes law we’re going to be looking back on it decades from now the same way we look back at all the destructive that Reagan did And when that happens Republicans cannot say they didn’t know what was in it or what it would do Everyone who votes for this should be held accountable Or to put it in terms that John Kennedy can understand if you’re going to vote for this bill you better French kiss it Help You might as well put its whole in your mouth because you’re going to be married to it for the rest of your life

John Oliver discusses Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” what will happen if it’s passed, and what it has in common with Apple’s Terms and Conditions.

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