July 10, 2025 • 54 mins
Matt and Billy discusses the positive and negative impact of the newly passed budget bill.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
This is interrupted by Matt Jones on news radio. Wait
forty was now here's Matt Jones. Welcome Episode eleven of
Interrupted by Matt Jones. We are here on podcast and
on WHAS eight forty am. Thank you guys very much.
(00:22):
We finally got the new name actually situated. It is
now called interrupted by Matt Jones. And I think that's
a better name because honestly, most of the people that
we have on I end up interrupting, which hopefully I've
gotten better at. But you know what, I'm not sure.
So there's a lot of stuff. By the way, we
are presented by Cornbread Hemp. This is the good life,
(00:43):
thanks to our friends at Cornbreadhimp. And there's a lot
of stuff we could go on about today. But you know,
if you followed the news over the last couple of weeks,
I think the most important thing is probably the budget
bill that was passed last week. As Trump called it
the Big Beautiful Bill. I do find it hilarious that
(01:05):
he just named it something stupid and then everybody just
went with it, Like even in the mainstream press they
call it the Big Beautiful Bill, like that is an
official name for the budget. But it is actually just
the budget bill. It's just what you do. Presidents do
this usually every two years in order to pass a budget.
(01:27):
And I thought today we go into a little bit
about sort of what is in it, and also, you
know what, I think ninety percent of it is a negative,
But I think it's important for people to understand why
it's a negative. Sometimes it's just people in politics go, well,
this is bad. Why is it bad? Because I'm a
(01:50):
Democrat and you're a Republican and it's your bill, it's bad.
I think it's important for people to understand what's in
it and how it ended up coming about because a
lot of how we got to this point is an
example of what's wrong with politics in general and how
we pass laws in general. So I'm gonna use my
(02:11):
friend Billy, our sports Billy Rutleds to sort of talk
about this bill through. So let me start with this, Billy,
because you follow the news, but I'm sure didn't follow
the details of the passing, et cetera. So if I
were to give you a big picture when you heard
about this and you heard it past, what was your
what was your initial thought and what would you say
you knew about it? Just from following the regular news.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
The initial thought was kind of like how you started
with what a ridiculous name this is off the bat
beautiful Bill.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
You can call me that if you want to instead
of Billy, But I'm.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Not going to call you a big beautiful bill. I'm sorry,
that's not gonna happen.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
No, that's disappointing.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Well, at the same time, I could say, I don't
know a ton of the specifics. I know a lot
of the general out generalities, So like, did.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
It seem like when you knew the generalities that you
thought it was a positive.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Well, you know, for some of my friends that are
waitresses and waiters, I thought the thing on tips sounds great,
you know when it comes to things like you know,
there were some specifics about space programs and Golden Dome
missile defense systems.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
I like those things.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
But when I saw the cuts to medicaid, I've heard
you talk about rural hospitals being impacted in a lot
a big way, then it made me think that maybe
this isn't the best thing.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
So are you saying overall? If I asked you a
question on a poll, are you in favor or against it?
What would you have said.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Not don't know enough about it to have no No.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Okay, well that's a good answer. I mean, I think
I saw a poll that said, uh, twenty nine percent
of Americans were in favor, like something like fifty four
percent against, and then there was a group of maybe
seventeen or eighteen that were don't know. You would be
a don't know, And I don't think there's anything wrong
with being a don't know if you don't know. So
let me let's go over and I as we go through, Billy,
(03:56):
I'd love to hear your reactions on this stuff, because
I think a lot of people don't sort of know
a lot of this. So let's just start with what
the bill is. Every two years, in order for the
government to exist, they have to pass a budget, and
budgets are passed by Congress. Specifically, budgets are written by
the House of Representatives. That's in the Constitution, and so
(04:19):
everything the government funds has to go through the budget.
So it determines everything from social security to the national defense,
whatever it is, it has to go through the budget process.
And the budget process historically was something that both parties
kind of tried to agree on. They all figured out
(04:41):
what they wanted in the budget. They took stuff in,
they took stuff out. But over the years, as bipartisanship
has kind of gone away, it's become basically the leadership
of the House and the leadership of the Senate just
get together and do it. As a matter of fact,
most of the bill is only written by a handful
of people, the committee chairs and their staff and lobbyist.
(05:04):
So most people in Congress, I think, if you held
them under oath, don't even read the bill. Billy, I
think you saw it was nine hundred pages long.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Do you think many people in the House in sid
it read all nine hundred pages?
Speaker 3 (05:20):
No, if any.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
But I think that's ridiculous that they can vote on
things that they haven't read prior.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
That seems like a gap.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Well, let me explain why that happens, Because it happens
because of kind of the breakdown of our political process.
So for a bill to pass in the House, all
it needs is a majority. But over the years, something
called the Hast rule has begun to apply, which says
they won't pass a bill unless the party in control
(05:48):
is a majority for it. So basically on the House side,
whether it's the Republicans or Democrats, whoever's in charge of
the House, they decide the minority party basically gets nothing.
So when you're in the minority in the House, you're
basically worthless. But in the Senate, on all bills, Billy,
you have to get sixty votes to avoid a filibuster. Right,
(06:09):
so fifty one wins, but you get sixty to avoid
a filibuster. However, there is one exception to that, and
the one exception is something called reconciliation, which is boring.
I won't explain what it is. But the budget can
actually be passed without sixty votes. Now why does that matter, Well,
(06:30):
it matters because you don't have to be bipartisan and Billy,
because it's the only type of bill that does not
have a potential filibuster, you have an incentive to pack
everything you don't think would pass regularly into that bill.
You only have to get fifty one votes for that.
(06:52):
For other things you might have to get sixty. And
so there is an incentive for politicians to if they
have something that's kind of unpopular or maybe even very unpopular,
throw it in that bill. Make it nine hundred pages.
People want the budget to be passed and then all
of a sudden it'll get through. So what ends up
(07:14):
happening is, at least in my experience, the worst parts
of what government does happens in the budget bill because
you don't need as many votes to do it. Now, Billy,
I think that's awful. And one thing it is, oh,
it's very devious. And what ends up happening is during
the process where they write it. It's happening very quickly.
(07:34):
It's usually in like a week. It's like a kid
who turns his paper in late, you know, and he's
scrambling in the last day or two. And that's when
people can sneak in provisions that they want and they
hope nobody reads them. So, for instance, in the big
budget bill, there was a provision that took away the
tax on suntanning beds. My guess is, and I don't
(07:56):
know this, there's somebody in either the House or Senate
who really likes to tan or who own sun tanning
beds and wanted it taken out. And you know what,
people are in a rush to pass the bill, and
they just go, is it worth ruining this bill for
sun tanning beds? So for people like Thomas Massey and
(08:16):
Ran Paul on the conservative side, and even people like
AOC on the liberal side. The budget bill really infuriates
them because it gives people an incentive. It gives people
an incentive to do the worst things. It gives them
an incentive to put in the worst parts of bills
into one bill. And Billy, when I tell you that,
(08:37):
does that not seem ridiculous?
Speaker 2 (08:39):
No, no, it doesn't, like it doesn't seem ridiculous, or
it does, so it does. It does seem ridiculous. It
does not seem like something that should be going on.
I use the word devious a second ago because it
feels like, you know, with a lower amount of vote
totals and a focus on other things, that you could
get whatever you want in whatever personal interest you have,
whatever tanning bed you know. I mean, love the hips
(09:00):
thing to go forward, but the fact ICE is getting
so much.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Exactly so like there might be people out there who
are for the TIPS thing, not for the ICE thing,
And the idea is if we put them both in
this bill, maybe they'll just both vote for it because
they don't have a choice, or vote against it because
they don't have a choice. So it is very devious.
And here's what's even worse. Guess how many bills the
(09:26):
House and Senate have passed together up through July first,
when they did the budget.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Right before the budget, they've probably passed a few. May
What if I told you zero zero, They've got nothing done.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Zero, this budge zero, this is it. And the reason
is because they understand that the incentive now is to
just do it through that Just everything you want to do,
do it through the budget. So as a fundamental thing,
whether you're for the bill or not, it is wrong
for democracy that we pass everything in one bill. I'm
(10:00):
with Thomas Massey, which is a sentence. I don't say
a lot, but Thomas Massey says, I think everything should
be its own bill. You want to give tax breaks
on tip, it's a bill. You want to fund ice
triple the time it was before, it's a bill. You
want to cut Medicaid, it's a bill, and then everybody
(10:22):
votes on each one. To me, that needs to happen. Now,
obviously things might be combined if it's one particular area,
but the idea that you would throw in taming beds, ice, tips,
defense systems and all of that billy into one bill
is ridiculous in my opinion, but it's what we do.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
So because they have they can get a lower vote
total to pass it.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
That's why it's all.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
That's why everything is in one everything, so these bills
become the most important. That bill will be the most
important thing the US Senate and House do in the
first two years of Trump's presidency. And it has almost
no transparency and I think even the leaders did not
read it. That should infuriate people. It infuriates me, and
(11:11):
I think it would infuriate most Americans if they knew it,
But most people don't know it. So well, then all right,
so what did the bill do. Well, let's start with
a couple things that Billy said that I'm not gonna say,
I'm against everything. It did. Lower the tax on tips
for people who make tips via cash, you now won't
(11:35):
have to declare them or you won't have to pay
taxes on them up to an X amount of money.
That's positive. I work in you know, I own a restaurant.
I want those people to be to do it. With
that said Billy, I think the isn't this positive goes
down a little bit because how many people pay by
cash anymore.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
How many?
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Not many? And let me tell you a little secret.
A lot of servers who get tips of cash they
never declared them any way, So let's be real. A
lot of that. It'll help some people, but the amount
of people it will help is probably not all that
many people.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
They're also a caped I'm sorry interrupt.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
I was gonna say it's capped at twenty five thousand
for tips and twelve point five thousand for overtime.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Okay, why do they cap it like that?
Speaker 1 (12:24):
They cap it because it costs money. I mean, it
costs the government money.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
You.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
The overtime is especially a big one because there are
the professions like the police and some construction where they
get a ton of overtime, and they cap it because
they want more money to come into the government in general. Though,
I'm for the cap of the tax and on the
tips and the overtime, but it's actually a very small
(12:50):
part of the bill. So what's the biggest part of
the bill. Well, I think, Billy, the number is something
like seventy percent of the government's money goes to three sources, Medicare, medicaid,
and defense. Now Medicare, people don't like to cut medicare.
Why it's old people. And you know what old people do?
(13:14):
They vote? So people do not cut medicare. Oh I
said three things, it's four things. The second thing social security.
Who does social Security help mostly? It also helps disabled,
but it also helps old people. Guess what old people vote.
So politicians do not want to cut Medicare or social security,
(13:41):
social security, Defense. Everybody wants the country to be safe,
right when you talk about when you talk about defense, though,
nobody wants to cut it. You remember when DOGE came
in and they were going to check every part of government.
Guess what's the one part of government they wouldn't let
them check because there's a lot of waste in defense,
(14:03):
but we don't want to know about it because you
don't want to be somebody that's seen is not strong
on military. So the three and those are, by the way,
the three largest sums of money. So those three sums
of money nobody's going to touch. So now you're left
with medicaid, which is the easiest one for politicians to
touch because it affects the poor, and medicaid allows the
(14:28):
poor and the folks who for whatever reason are not
able to work and get private health care to get
health care. Now, I won't bore you with the details,
but for a long time, the only people that could
really get medicaid were people who didn't have jobs at all.
And then Obamacare expanding it to say you could make
(14:49):
a like you could be a working poor and still
get medicaid. We added twenty million people to the medical
We took away excuse me, twenty million uninsured Americans since Obamacare.
So leading right now, there's like twenty two million Americans
without health care. So what does this bill do. Well,
(15:11):
some people have said this bill Billy makes it to
where illegals can't get medicaid. Well, guess what. Illegals never
got medicaid. When you hear a politician say, now, illegal
immigrants do not get medicaid, here's a little secret. They
never got medicaid. Politicians who tell you they did, you
(15:31):
can now know they lied to you.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
They're lying to me.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
They're lying. Illegal immigrants never got medicaid. It now imposes
work requirements on people that get medicaid. Okay, now that
sounds on paper good, right. We want people to work,
We want people to work, But what does that mean?
How do you prove that people have a job to
(15:57):
get Medicaid. Well, the answer is they have to fill
out paperwork. Right, You're gonna have to somehow prove to
the government you work. Well, what if I told you
that thirty percent of the money that's been saved by
these work requirements will be used to fund the people
to find out whether or not these folks are working,
(16:19):
because somebody has to look it up, right, somebody's got
to call your employer and see if you're really working.
So thirty percent of that savings is gonna be on
is gonna be lost on administrative costs? That ain't that good.
But I want to take a more fundamental step back
for people to understand why the Medicaid provision is bad.
(16:44):
Billy in America, if you get sick, like right now,
what are you gonna do? Go to the er? You're
gonna go to the er. Are you gonna go to
the emergency room? My friend Mario's sitting in here. You're
gonna go to the emergency room. What happens when you
go to the emergency room when you walk in insurance? Okay,
you have your insurance card, but you know if you
(17:06):
do not have insurance, the hospital still has to treat you.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
You know that, I did not know that. That's good
to hear that.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
In America they cannot turn anyone down at the emergency room.
And by the way, this is good. We don't want
people to die just because they don't have a car.
So people who don't have insurance, people visiting the country
from foreign countries, right, immigrants, If you go to the
(17:38):
emergency room, they have to treat you. So Medicaid so
when you go to the emergency room, it is paid
for the hospital, does it. So the question then, well,
what does medicaid do. Medicaid allows billy. Let's say you're
on Medicaid. That allows you to go see the doctor
before you go to the emergency room. Isn't that better?
Speaker 3 (18:03):
It is?
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Yeah, it's preventative care. So people are on Medicaid don't
just have to wait until they're about to die. They
can actually go get health care before. But if you
take Medicaid away from people, what happens? They can still
go to the emergency room, but now they can't go
see a doctor otherwise. Is that positive?
Speaker 3 (18:28):
No?
Speaker 1 (18:29):
No, in my opinion. So while we talk about people
deserving Medicaid or not, really we're saying, are we going
to make people wait till they're an emergency to go
to the hospital or can they go before? Now, let
me go back to the emergency room. You go to
the emergency room, you don't have insurance. What does the
(18:49):
hospital do? They still have to treat you. Let's say
they treat you. Let's say it costs the hospital ten
thousand dollars. All right, you leave. Now what happens? I
get a huge bill, and they'll send you a bill.
But now what happens if you don't pay?
Speaker 3 (19:11):
A collection service eventually calls me.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
And what if you don't pay that? I don't know
the answer is nothing. But the hospital is still out
ten thousand dollars. Now, what medicaid does is Medicaid says, hey, hospital,
you spent ten thousand dollars. We ain't giving y' all
ten thousand dollars, but we'll give you three thousand dollars.
(19:35):
And thus you get that three thousand dollars back. And
if you're a hospital, you've treated this person and you've
gotten some of your money back. Let's say you take
Medicaid away from Billy, the hospital will get zero dollars back.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
You're not gonna want to treat me.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
They still have to they have to treat you, but
now they will get no money for treating you. So
then what happens. That's how hospitals close. They are forced
to treat a population that doesn't have health insurance and
they don't get the money back. So they have two choices.
(20:18):
One people like Mario who have health insurance. They will
now charge them twice as much to make up for
the fact that the person with no money and no
medicaid gets them nothing. So now when Mario comes, instead
of being charge ten thousand, they might charge him twenty thousand. Wow,
(20:40):
and the person that did not have Medicaid is still
in there for free. So when you take medicaid away
from people, the politicians act like you're punishing the people,
and I guess to some extent you are because you
don't get to see the doctor. But you know who
(21:00):
else you're punishing the world. The hospitals have to close.
So when we say rural hospitals are going to close,
why are they going to close. Let's take my hometown
in Middlesborough, Kentucky. I have been told, and I don't
know if this is true, but I've been told that
something like sixty percent of the people who go to
(21:23):
the hospital in Middlesbrough have either Medicaid or Medicare. Let's
just say forty percent or on medicaid. If you make
it to where those people don't get medicaid, the hospital
has to close. They don't have enough pain patience. So
(21:44):
they either have to raise the rates on the people
with money and people in Middlesborough don't have enough money,
or they have to close. So when you say why
will these hospitals close, why will these doctors choose not to?
If you're a doctor, if if all of a sudden
(22:04):
thirty percent of your population can't come see you anymore,
you're not gonna have enough patience. You're gonna leave. You're
gonna go somewhere where there are rich people so they
can pay you. So by doing even if you don't
believe the individual people deserve healthcare quote unquote deserve medicaid,
(22:30):
all you are doing is you're punishing the people who
do pay by seeing higher insurance rates, or you're punishing
the hospitals and the doctors by not reinimbursing them when
they come. It's a horrible policy.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
So if my insurance rate is gonna go up to
pay for this.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Your insurance rate is going to go up because of this.
That's the thing. Nobody says, your insurance rate is gonna
go up. So the whole point, the theory behind Obamacare,
whether you were Ford or not, was the theory was this, billy,
we're all paying for everybody's health care anyway, right when
(23:12):
you go to the emergency room, we're all paying for it.
Me you elon musk Joe that works at McDonald's. Everybody
is paying for these hospitals. So why not make it
to where more of these people can get preventive care
so that they don't show up and go to the
(23:32):
emergency room where everything's so expensive and they're maybe about
to die.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Do you think that there's a segment of the population
that wouldn't go to preventative care even if it was offered.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Maybe not. But you can't lead a horse to water,
but you can't make them drink, right, You're right there
are people who only go to But I think you
would agree if you have access to preventative care, you're
more likely to go than if you don't.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
I think a lot of times democrats focus on does
this person who doesn't work deserve or not deserve medicaid?
I would argue, human beings on this earth are created
by God and we are all equal, and of the
things that we should all have, it's the ability to
live a healthy life. I would argue, even if you
(24:23):
don't work, you should have an ability to live. But
let's say you disagree with me on that. It's still
the worst system in the world to make it to
where the only time people can get care is that
the emergency room when it's the most expensive. It makes
no sense. It's why no other country in the world
(24:45):
but US does it this way. So now they've put
in work requirements. Let me ask you a question. How
many people do you think that work jobs where they're
making very little money the time or knowledge to fill
that fill out internet work requirements to get their medicaid.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Again, I think there's a segment of the population that
does work but would not be doing that paper Well.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Maybe they would just miss the paperwork. Like I used
to sometimes just not pay my power bill and then
all of a sudden they come and turn it off
and I'd go. But here's the problem under this new bill.
If you miss the paperwork, you can't get it again
for a year. So just missing the paperwork for the cracks,
(25:35):
you can fall through the cracks. And guess what have
you ever been to a government service that's efficient? At
these places where you have to prove that you work,
you think that's going to be efficient. No, you think
there's gonna be long lines to prove that you're working. Yes,
how much is it going to take to staff all
of these offices around the country to prove that the
(25:59):
people are working.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Probably good amount of money that you saved from actually
making the cuts exactly.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Which is why even if you don't have the position
I do, which is everyone deserves healthcare as one of
the people on this world here by God, even if
you don't believe that cutting medicaid is dumb, and where
it will affect people the most is rural Kentucky and
(26:27):
places like rural Kentucky. In New York City, the hospitals
in New York City, when somebody shows up without medicaid,
you know what they'll do in New York City, They'll
just raise the rates on the wealthy people and everybody
will move on. But what are they gonna do where
there's no wealthy people. What are you gonna do when
there's no upper middle class people are very few? The
(26:50):
hospitals are gonna shut down. What are these nursing homes
gonna do if the people they're gonna shut down? The
doctors are gonna move. Why would you practice in Harlan
If fifty percent of the work you do you don't
get paid back for, You're gonna go somewhere else. So
(27:15):
the effect of this is going to crush these rural places.
And let me give you the last point on this
and then we'll take a break. If you want to
know how cowardice this is. I just learned today that
most of the things they did in cutting Medicaid, they're
(27:38):
waiting until after the twenty twenty six elections to do it, to.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
Go in December thirty December thirty first, twenty twenty six,
they're waiting until they all can run for reelection before
it comes into play.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
They're hoping that in a year and a half everybody
will forget and more specifically, they're waiting until Donald Trump
is no longer president so that the next guy has
to deal with it. And that to me, if you
really believe in this, why are you waiting a year
(28:11):
and a half to do it right.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Implement it now.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
The rest of the budget goes into effect, I believe
September first, but this provision doesn't start until after the election.
That should tell you how negative it is and how
they know that what they're doing is going to have
bad impacts. Interrupted by Matt Jones. Is sponsored by Clayton
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(29:00):
Clayton and Crew. All Right, so I gave you that
was a long kind of segment here on, interrupted by
Matt Jones about the thing I hate the most about
the bill, which is the Medicaid. But there's some other things.
First of all, they extended the tax cuts for the
wealthiest Americans. In my opinion, the wealthiest Americans should pay
(29:22):
more tax I'm not of the wealthy Americans that some
people are, but I do find for myself, Billy, I
think I should pay more tax. The money that they
the money that they take from me, if they took
a little more, would not affect me like it affects
the working poor. The working poor in this country get
(29:43):
screwed more than any other people in the lower middle
class people people who go up get up every day,
they go work somewhere, they come home. They're the people
that get screwed the most. They pay the highest percentage
of their money in taxes. So the very poorest people
in America don't really pay taxes much. But the people
(30:03):
who make somewhere between twenty five to thirty thousand and
fifty thousand, those people pay the greatest percentage of their
income and taxes of anybody. Does that make sense?
Speaker 3 (30:18):
No, No, no, it doesn't.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
And now you're taking their health care from them, some
of them.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
How do you stimulate the economy when you're taking all
the money away?
Speaker 1 (30:28):
Well, because there's this belief that well if you get
if the rich people get to keep more of their money,
they'll invest and create jobs and all that it's a
trickle down theory. Here's the problem. It's been tested multiple
times in history, and it's never worked. It's literally never worked.
It's a great theory because it can never work, and
(30:50):
people can still say it works. It's never worked. The
best economic times we've had in history have been when
we have invested in things that helped give middle class
people more money. Why because they spend their money. Yeah,
what are the best times in our economic history? Well,
(31:13):
one was the New Deal when the government invested all
of this money in helping get out of the depression
and we had economic stimulus. Then post World War Two,
the GI Bill, we sent people to college. We got
all these people educated, the middle class was able to
(31:34):
get created. And then the third time was during the
nineties during the tech boom when Clinton's policy changed a
lot of the things, gave tax cuts to the middle class.
What has never worked is giving rich people more money. Ever,
and now we're doing it again, and it won't work again.
(31:56):
It won't work.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
But that's how you get something past, right, the people
with special interests.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Because they spend the most money on it. And now that,
in my opinion, building Now this isn't tested, This is
just Matt Jones's opinion. Now, giving wealthy people a lot
more money makes less sense than it ever has. Why
Because in the world of globalization, they don't have to
spend it in America. They can go create companies in
(32:23):
other countries. Right, So the wealthiest people in America are
often putting their factories in Vietnam or in India, or
they're going and buying a yacht in France. So the
idea that, well, if you give Americans, wealthy Americans more money,
(32:44):
they'll spend it in America. I don't even know if
that happens anymore, you know, I've.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
Heard Trump talk about this, you know, and tariffs help,
you know, making people come back to the United States
to build things.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
Does that help in that regard?
Speaker 1 (32:58):
In theory it could, but you'd have to be willing
to tear iff at an extremely high rate, and you
would have to basically say, you know, you'd have to
essentially bribe companies. And I think it's I think that's
(33:18):
poor judgment because you know who will suffer in the
short term for tariffs, Americans, because we're the ones paying
for them, right, we pay them. I mean when they
say Vietnam or Japan or whatever they pay, they don't
pay the tariffs. Americans pay the tariffs. I also think
in today's like AI world, the days of like factories
(33:39):
sprouting up in America making T shirts, that's just not
gonna happen. This is not gonna happen. But I tell
you what I know won't work. Giving rich people more
money to go spend it in other countries. So that's
another reason I don't like this. The debt. Usually it's
only Republicans that talk about the debt, but as somebody
(34:00):
who owned businesses, the debt's a big deal. Now, the
debt's boring. I'm not going to go into all the
debt except to say this, this bill raises the debt
by more than any bill in the history of America,
by twenty five percent, more than any bill in the
(34:21):
history of America by twenty five percent. It is a
four trillion dollar a year addition to the debt, just
for example. You know, the only other two bills that
have been more the post COVID bill, the Economic Stimulus Act,
(34:43):
and Trump's last budget. Okay, Trump, the debt has two
of the three largest debt editions ever, which is why
when the Republican Party gets up and says, there for
stopping the debt and balancing the budget, they are liars.
They just are lying. Nobody in Washington cares about the debt.
(35:06):
But I'll tell you who should is us. Right now,
we spend three percent of our gross domestic product on debt.
By twenty forty, that number is gonna be six percent.
It's gonna double in fifteen years. Your kids, I don't
have any kids, Billy, but your kids coming one day
(35:26):
or somebody listening here, your grandkids, they're gonna be one
paying for all this. You're gonna start having to wear.
Six percent of every dollar produced in America will be
sent to our debt, which most of which is held
by China. That's not good to the debt and most
people are hot, most people are but you know what
(35:48):
you're gonna We're paying it, and we're gonna pay more.
And one of these days China owns like, I don't
know what the number is, but a huge percentage of
our debt. The fact that we continue to increase it,
this is one thing. Elon Muskin, I agree on the
fact that we continue to increase it will be the
(36:08):
downfall of the country. If we're not careful and will
Massi and ram Paul talk about it all the time.
They're exactly right. Most Democrats don't care about the debt.
I do because somebody's gonna have to pay for it.
And there are people who believe our debt payments will
double in the next fifteen years. You mentioned the ICE spending.
(36:31):
Under this bill, ICE, which is the Immigration enforcement will
now become larger than the FBI and the CI. They
are tripling the amount of money that goes to ICE, tripling.
There will now be more ICE agents in America than
(36:52):
FBI law enforcement. Is that good?
Speaker 3 (36:55):
Hard to wrap my brain around.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
It's ridiculous. And by the way, you give Trump some credit,
they have closed the border pretty much. The border is
much more secure, which makes the reason of why let's
triple the force even weirder. Right, right, We've done a
pretty good job with what we got. Why are we
going to triple it?
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Well, now they're going into home depots and kind of
like the other episodes.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
And we've talked about that, you start going into home depots,
that's going to have a bigger part. But triple who
in America wants immigration enforcement to have more people? Than
law enforcement at the moment, at the most generous, like you,
if you think they're the most illegal people here that
(37:42):
you could, you might say, it's twenty thirty million people.
That's like ten percent or eight percent of the regular population.
You're telling me we need more agents for those eight
percent than the other ninety two. Oh well we have
at now thanks to this budget, student debt for all
(38:05):
of you listening, if your kid is about to go
to college and you make less than one hundred and
fifty thousand dollars, this is going to affect you. Under
Biden in twenty twenty one, and it was continuing an
Obama policy that to be fair to Trump, he continued
(38:27):
to they made it to where if you made between
thirty and one hundred and fifty thousand dollars you could
get a lower student debt rate for college than if
you made over one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. That's good,
isn't it.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
I like that premise.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Yes, they've just taken it away now, student debt relief
or the ability to get loans. People think of it
as forgiving the loans. It's not forgiving it. It's just
giving you a lower interest rate right, that's gone. Everybody
will get the interest rate of the market, which means
(39:05):
rich people will get a lower interest rate than middle
class people because they're more likely to pay it back.
Is that good?
Speaker 3 (39:13):
I don't like that? No, I want it should be
the opposite. It should be the opposite. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
So I saw this study that said if you make
eighty thousand dollars a year, if your family makes eighty,
so it could be one person or two people, your
child's yearly loan payment will now be two and a
half times higher than it was before when they graduate
(39:40):
because they won't be able to get as good a rate.
Who thinks that's good? Who thinks that's good? I'll tell
you who thinks it's good. Who thinks it's good? Or
banks because they can charge a higher rate to people
that probably won't pay it but will end up spending
more of their money on loans. That's in the bill.
(40:04):
The people who still can get the low rate are
very poor people or very rich people. But those people
making between like fifty and one fifty, your rates are
about for your kids are about to double, almost triple.
Makes absolutely no.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Sense, especially with student loans that are already a little predatory,
you know what I mean, Like, you know, yeah, there's
no relief from them. I mean, I don't think that
we should just wipe them clean, like some people say.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Here's another thing when you raise when you raise loans Mario.
Let's say Mario has a loan for fifty thousand dollars.
When he graduates, he owes fifty thousand dollars. Let's say
he spends four thousand dollars a year on his loan.
Guess what. He's not spending that four thousand dollars on
(40:54):
things that will stimulate the economy, true food, good uds.
He's just giving it to a bank. That was the
premise behind Biden's student loan relief. I know some people
are against it, and I get that. I don't know that.
I was totally for it. But the premise behind it was,
(41:14):
if these people don't have to spend their money on
the student loans, they'll spend it on something that will
help the economy. That's not a crazy premise, is it.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
No, Especially when you're already giving people money to stimulate
that economy.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
It's not a crazy premise. Now. I didn't like it
because I thought it punished working class people. Who didn't
go to college. But that's a different argument. But now
the loans go up, I'll do two more and I'll
call it a day. But before I do that, if
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Two more things. One clean energy. A lot of people
when you start talking about clean energy billy, they're like, oh,
these hippies, you know, these liberal environmentalist But there's something.
(42:36):
One of the good things about clean energy, especially solar
and wind, is guess what, We're not gonna run out
of billy sunlight and the sunlight in the wind. It's
not going anywhere, going anywhere. Now, other things like oil, coal,
we're gonna run out of those. There's only so many
(42:57):
much of them. And when it comes to oil, guess
where most of it is not here, not here, It's
in other places. So we become dependent on countries that
maybe do really bad things because we have to have
their oil. But guess what, everybody has sunlight and when.
(43:24):
So the theory behind clean energy is not just save
the environment. The theory is that when you make it good,
when it becomes a thing, you don't have to rely
on the rest of the world for your energy. You
can get it from what God has given us naturally.
Thomas Massey man, I am praising him so much. Did
(43:46):
you know he runs his entire house on solar energy.
He is not even on the grid, and he's not environmentalist.
He just says it's smart, it's cheap, it doesn't make
me rely on other people. So all of the credits
(44:07):
that we were giving in America to encourage people to
develop clean energy have now been taken away in this bill.
No more credits for clean energy. I think that's unbelievably
stupid for the reasons I just said. But let me
tell you a reason why it's stupid that a lot
of people don't realize. You know who is now leading
(44:30):
the world in clean energy by an exponential margin is China.
China is producing its own energy at unbelievable levels. China
is going to get to the point in the next
twenty five years where they're not even going to use oil,
(44:54):
and they're not even going to use I don't know
how much coal they use now, but they're not going
to use much of it. It's going to be fine.
And we are so far behind them, and we were
trying to catch up and now we put the kebash
on it.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
Yeah, but does that displace a lot of people that
are in the energy sectors like coal and like oil.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
Well, here's yes, And here's what we should have done.
Here's my biggest complaint with Obama. When he kind of
ended the coal industry and it wasn't just him, it
was market forces, but he spurret it along a little quickly.
They didn't do anything to replace it. If it were me,
I would have done what they did with the tobacco industry,
(45:38):
which is when they ended it, they helped train and
teach the farmers to make something else, right, what we
should have done in the mountains is as coal was
going away, we should have made it the king place
for solar energy in the entire America. We have mountains
high up in the air. That's what we should have done.
(45:58):
We've done it a little, but we haven't done it though. So, yeah,
is it gonna be hard, Yes, But then you help
those people because ultimately we're gonna run out of coal.
We just are. And you know, and here's the other thing.
It is so expensive to make coal plants. If they
don't exist now, they're not gonna exist. The coal plants
(46:19):
that are left, new ones are gonna be very hard.
I'm not saying there won't be any, but there won't
be many. They cost too much. You know why solar
energy is cheap. You just put up the infrastructure and
then the sun comes. You don't have to pay to
dig all the stuff out of there, you know, all
the things that are part of it. So it's just dumb.
For the future, it's dumb. And I'm in a coal area.
(46:42):
We need to do nine million times more things to
help coal former coal miners and coal areas than we do.
But saying, hey, China, you get to have all of
the future energy source that the rest of the world
is gonna use. You get to have it and we don't.
Is stupid.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
It just seems short sighted, very short sighted. Or it's
fine for the next five ten years.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
But and then finally I'll finish with this. You know, Doge, billy.
I think when Doge started, you and I talk some
about it, and you know, everybody likes the idea of
we should get rid of waste fraud and abuse. I
think that whoever came up with that slogan, that was
a very smart slogan, waste fraud and abuse. And it's
(47:28):
clear that they took a lot of things out that
were not waste fraud and abuse. But you know they
probably did make some efficiency better. Now, a billy, when
I just hear about four trillion dollars of new debt,
forgive me if I don't believe that they care about waste,
fraud and abuse.
Speaker 3 (47:48):
The debt man.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
But be let me give you an example of some things.
What this bill did is they took Elon's cuts and
they made them permanent. Okay, well, let's talk about some
of the things that are about to get cut. The
Appalachian Regional Commission. The Appalachian Regional Commission exists to help
(48:10):
encourage businesses to come to Appalachia and to provide projects
that range from education to infrastructure. They've done a million
great things in Kentucky and in Appalachian. Their budget is
being cut from two hundred and fifty million dollars to
twelve million dollars. Wow, that is a cut that will happen.
(48:33):
Government cuts at Social Security and Veterans administrations, not to
the actual money, but to the support system. Ask somebody,
I'm sure there are people listening who are on Social Security.
Ask them how hard it is to get somebody on
the phone. Staff is going to be cut by forty
to sixty percent over the next three years. You think
(48:53):
it's hard to get some may on the phone, Now
see what's going to wat. We don't think these things
are bad, then go look at the people who voted
for the bill and what they made sure to sneak
in at the last minute. Lisa Murkowski was the last
vote to get it passed. She's from Alaska. You know
(49:16):
all this stuff I just said to you about Medicaid
and student debt and commissions and Social Security. Here's a
little say she got a provision put in the bill,
so it doesn't apply to Alaska.
Speaker 3 (49:31):
What the heck?
Speaker 1 (49:33):
She got a provision in the bill, so it doesn't
apply to Alaska, and she was the fiftieth vote. Now,
if this were something that was good, well, why does
she need to exempt Alaska. On the one hand, I
guess you could say, way to go for you for Alaska.
But b if it's not good enough for Alaska, why
(49:56):
is it good enough for America? How about some more?
Remember what I just told you about veterans and social Security?
How about coal mine offices, miners' offices? The budget for
minor safety offices has been cut ninety percent in all
(50:18):
over America except in one state, West Virginia, where the
two senators said they would only vote if West Virginia
got exempted.
Speaker 3 (50:29):
Oh, another one, another state got exemptions.
Speaker 1 (50:32):
From the coal mining part. So Kentucky with coal mines,
we lost it. Pennsylvania lost it. A lot of coal
mines there. Why, I don't mean got coal mines out there.
But it won't apply in West Virginia because the West
Virginia senator said, well, it's not good enough for West Virginia.
(50:53):
The fact that these people would vote for a bill
and then exempt their own state from it. Hey, you'd
sit there and go, hey, Mitch McConnell, why didn't you
have to get do that for us? Since voted for it,
ran Paul vo against him. But it also goes to
show how ridiculous this is. So you know, I encourage
(51:21):
and then I'll stop preaching. I encourage people, whatever the
issue is. You've listened to this, you've come this far.
It's very easy in this world to go I love Trump,
I hate Trump, I love Democrats, I hate democrats, and
to just decide what you feel based on whether or
(51:43):
not your side is for it or not. I would
really encourage you not to do that because that is
what leads to a situation like this. And I'll finish
with Lisa Murkowski again, Senator from Alaska. When she became
the fiftieth vote for it, she was interviewed and she said,
(52:03):
what do you think about this vote? Right after she
had voted for it, and she said, I don't like
the bill. I don't think it's a good bill. I
voted for it, but I hope it will get changed.
After she had already voted for it, she said she
wanted it to be changed after she had voted to
(52:27):
make it to where it wouldn't be changed.
Speaker 2 (52:29):
It seems like a lot of people with their own
interests at heart instead of what America's interest was.
Speaker 1 (52:34):
Senator Josh Holly in Missouri, he wrote an editorial Go
look it up in the New York Times where he said,
the cuts we are going to do to Medicaid are
going to devastate rural Americans, and we have to stop them.
It's not fair to poor Americans. He wrote it, and
then he voted for it, and afterwards he was asked why,
(52:58):
and he said, I just felt like I needed to.
It becomes a team mentality where they feel like you
have to win and they have to lose, and the
people that suffer are always people like those of you
that are listening right now. Thank you all, speaking of
(53:21):
listening very much. We will next week. I'm off on vacation.
When we come back, I'm going to bring a couple
people on to do a little preview of the football season,
and I'm sure there'll be a lot that has happened. Billy,
after all of that, would you if you were now
polled and said do you approve of the bill or
(53:42):
not would you still go don't know, would you say
yes or no?
Speaker 2 (53:46):
I would say no at this point, and going back
to the you know, putting provisions in before people could
even read the bill, counter productive provisions like cutting clean
energy but yet slashing departments that focus on the health
of than safety of coal mines like that. It seems
like that while they're trying to find money, they're cutting
(54:06):
a lot of things that can that really hurt the poor.
Speaker 1 (54:09):
Like you said, yeah, well this one will be bad.
This might be the worst budget we've had in a
long time. And what pains me is it's going to
hurt the people who, in my opinion, need it the most.
Thank you all very much for listening on that uplifting note.
We'll see you next week, uninterrupted by Matt Joe
This is interrupted by Matt Jones on news radio. Wait
forty was now here's Matt Jones. Welcome Episode eleven of
Interrupted by Matt Jones. We are here on podcast and
on WHAS eight forty am. Thank you guys very much.
(00:22):
We finally got the new name actually situated. It is
now called interrupted by Matt Jones. And I think that's
a better name because honestly, most of the people that
we have on I end up interrupting, which hopefully I've
gotten better at. But you know what, I'm not sure.
So there's a lot of stuff. By the way, we
are presented by Cornbread Hemp. This is the good life,
(00:43):
thanks to our friends at Cornbreadhimp. And there's a lot
of stuff we could go on about today. But you know,
if you followed the news over the last couple of weeks,
I think the most important thing is probably the budget
bill that was passed last week. As Trump called it
the Big Beautiful Bill. I do find it hilarious that
(01:05):
he just named it something stupid and then everybody just
went with it, Like even in the mainstream press they
call it the Big Beautiful Bill, like that is an
official name for the budget. But it is actually just
the budget bill. It's just what you do. Presidents do
this usually every two years in order to pass a budget.
(01:27):
And I thought today we go into a little bit
about sort of what is in it, and also, you
know what, I think ninety percent of it is a negative,
But I think it's important for people to understand why
it's a negative. Sometimes it's just people in politics go, well,
this is bad. Why is it bad? Because I'm a
(01:50):
Democrat and you're a Republican and it's your bill, it's bad.
I think it's important for people to understand what's in
it and how it ended up coming about because a
lot of how we got to this point is an
example of what's wrong with politics in general and how
we pass laws in general. So I'm gonna use my
(02:11):
friend Billy, our sports Billy Rutleds to sort of talk
about this bill through. So let me start with this, Billy,
because you follow the news, but I'm sure didn't follow
the details of the passing, et cetera. So if I
were to give you a big picture when you heard
about this and you heard it past, what was your
what was your initial thought and what would you say
you knew about it? Just from following the regular news.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
The initial thought was kind of like how you started
with what a ridiculous name this is off the bat
beautiful Bill.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
You can call me that if you want to instead
of Billy, But I'm.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Not going to call you a big beautiful bill. I'm sorry,
that's not gonna happen.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
No, that's disappointing.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Well, at the same time, I could say, I don't
know a ton of the specifics. I know a lot
of the general out generalities, So like, did.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
It seem like when you knew the generalities that you
thought it was a positive.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Well, you know, for some of my friends that are
waitresses and waiters, I thought the thing on tips sounds great,
you know when it comes to things like you know,
there were some specifics about space programs and Golden Dome
missile defense systems.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
I like those things.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
But when I saw the cuts to medicaid, I've heard
you talk about rural hospitals being impacted in a lot
a big way, then it made me think that maybe
this isn't the best thing.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
So are you saying overall? If I asked you a
question on a poll, are you in favor or against it?
What would you have said.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Not don't know enough about it to have no No.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Okay, well that's a good answer. I mean, I think
I saw a poll that said, uh, twenty nine percent
of Americans were in favor, like something like fifty four
percent against, and then there was a group of maybe
seventeen or eighteen that were don't know. You would be
a don't know, And I don't think there's anything wrong
with being a don't know if you don't know. So
let me let's go over and I as we go through, Billy,
(03:56):
I'd love to hear your reactions on this stuff, because
I think a lot of people don't sort of know
a lot of this. So let's just start with what
the bill is. Every two years, in order for the
government to exist, they have to pass a budget, and
budgets are passed by Congress. Specifically, budgets are written by
the House of Representatives. That's in the Constitution, and so
(04:19):
everything the government funds has to go through the budget.
So it determines everything from social security to the national defense,
whatever it is, it has to go through the budget process.
And the budget process historically was something that both parties
kind of tried to agree on. They all figured out
(04:41):
what they wanted in the budget. They took stuff in,
they took stuff out. But over the years, as bipartisanship
has kind of gone away, it's become basically the leadership
of the House and the leadership of the Senate just
get together and do it. As a matter of fact,
most of the bill is only written by a handful
of people, the committee chairs and their staff and lobbyist.
(05:04):
So most people in Congress, I think, if you held
them under oath, don't even read the bill. Billy, I
think you saw it was nine hundred pages long.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Do you think many people in the House in sid
it read all nine hundred pages?
Speaker 3 (05:20):
No, if any.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
But I think that's ridiculous that they can vote on
things that they haven't read prior.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
That seems like a gap.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Well, let me explain why that happens, Because it happens
because of kind of the breakdown of our political process.
So for a bill to pass in the House, all
it needs is a majority. But over the years, something
called the Hast rule has begun to apply, which says
they won't pass a bill unless the party in control
(05:48):
is a majority for it. So basically on the House side,
whether it's the Republicans or Democrats, whoever's in charge of
the House, they decide the minority party basically gets nothing.
So when you're in the minority in the House, you're
basically worthless. But in the Senate, on all bills, Billy,
you have to get sixty votes to avoid a filibuster. Right,
(06:09):
so fifty one wins, but you get sixty to avoid
a filibuster. However, there is one exception to that, and
the one exception is something called reconciliation, which is boring.
I won't explain what it is. But the budget can
actually be passed without sixty votes. Now why does that matter, Well,
(06:30):
it matters because you don't have to be bipartisan and Billy,
because it's the only type of bill that does not
have a potential filibuster, you have an incentive to pack
everything you don't think would pass regularly into that bill.
You only have to get fifty one votes for that.
(06:52):
For other things you might have to get sixty. And
so there is an incentive for politicians to if they
have something that's kind of unpopular or maybe even very unpopular,
throw it in that bill. Make it nine hundred pages.
People want the budget to be passed and then all
of a sudden it'll get through. So what ends up
(07:14):
happening is, at least in my experience, the worst parts
of what government does happens in the budget bill because
you don't need as many votes to do it. Now, Billy,
I think that's awful. And one thing it is, oh,
it's very devious. And what ends up happening is during
the process where they write it. It's happening very quickly.
(07:34):
It's usually in like a week. It's like a kid
who turns his paper in late, you know, and he's
scrambling in the last day or two. And that's when
people can sneak in provisions that they want and they
hope nobody reads them. So, for instance, in the big
budget bill, there was a provision that took away the
tax on suntanning beds. My guess is, and I don't
(07:56):
know this, there's somebody in either the House or Senate
who really likes to tan or who own sun tanning
beds and wanted it taken out. And you know what,
people are in a rush to pass the bill, and
they just go, is it worth ruining this bill for
sun tanning beds? So for people like Thomas Massey and
(08:16):
Ran Paul on the conservative side, and even people like
AOC on the liberal side. The budget bill really infuriates
them because it gives people an incentive. It gives people
an incentive to do the worst things. It gives them
an incentive to put in the worst parts of bills
into one bill. And Billy, when I tell you that,
(08:37):
does that not seem ridiculous?
Speaker 2 (08:39):
No, no, it doesn't, like it doesn't seem ridiculous, or
it does, so it does. It does seem ridiculous. It
does not seem like something that should be going on.
I use the word devious a second ago because it
feels like, you know, with a lower amount of vote
totals and a focus on other things, that you could
get whatever you want in whatever personal interest you have,
whatever tanning bed you know. I mean, love the hips
(09:00):
thing to go forward, but the fact ICE is getting
so much.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Exactly so like there might be people out there who
are for the TIPS thing, not for the ICE thing,
And the idea is if we put them both in
this bill, maybe they'll just both vote for it because
they don't have a choice, or vote against it because
they don't have a choice. So it is very devious.
And here's what's even worse. Guess how many bills the
(09:26):
House and Senate have passed together up through July first,
when they did the budget.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Right before the budget, they've probably passed a few. May
What if I told you zero zero, They've got nothing done.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Zero, this budge zero, this is it. And the reason
is because they understand that the incentive now is to
just do it through that Just everything you want to do,
do it through the budget. So as a fundamental thing,
whether you're for the bill or not, it is wrong
for democracy that we pass everything in one bill. I'm
(10:00):
with Thomas Massey, which is a sentence. I don't say
a lot, but Thomas Massey says, I think everything should
be its own bill. You want to give tax breaks
on tip, it's a bill. You want to fund ice
triple the time it was before, it's a bill. You
want to cut Medicaid, it's a bill, and then everybody
(10:22):
votes on each one. To me, that needs to happen. Now,
obviously things might be combined if it's one particular area,
but the idea that you would throw in taming beds, ice, tips,
defense systems and all of that billy into one bill
is ridiculous in my opinion, but it's what we do.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
So because they have they can get a lower vote
total to pass it.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
That's why it's all.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
That's why everything is in one everything, so these bills
become the most important. That bill will be the most
important thing the US Senate and House do in the
first two years of Trump's presidency. And it has almost
no transparency and I think even the leaders did not
read it. That should infuriate people. It infuriates me, and
(11:11):
I think it would infuriate most Americans if they knew it,
But most people don't know it. So well, then all right,
so what did the bill do. Well, let's start with
a couple things that Billy said that I'm not gonna say,
I'm against everything. It did. Lower the tax on tips
for people who make tips via cash, you now won't
(11:35):
have to declare them or you won't have to pay
taxes on them up to an X amount of money.
That's positive. I work in you know, I own a restaurant.
I want those people to be to do it. With
that said Billy, I think the isn't this positive goes
down a little bit because how many people pay by
cash anymore.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
How many?
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Not many? And let me tell you a little secret.
A lot of servers who get tips of cash they
never declared them any way, So let's be real. A
lot of that. It'll help some people, but the amount
of people it will help is probably not all that
many people.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
They're also a caped I'm sorry interrupt.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
I was gonna say it's capped at twenty five thousand
for tips and twelve point five thousand for overtime.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Okay, why do they cap it like that?
Speaker 1 (12:24):
They cap it because it costs money. I mean, it
costs the government money.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
You.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
The overtime is especially a big one because there are
the professions like the police and some construction where they
get a ton of overtime, and they cap it because
they want more money to come into the government in general. Though,
I'm for the cap of the tax and on the
tips and the overtime, but it's actually a very small
(12:50):
part of the bill. So what's the biggest part of
the bill. Well, I think, Billy, the number is something
like seventy percent of the government's money goes to three sources, Medicare, medicaid,
and defense. Now Medicare, people don't like to cut medicare.
Why it's old people. And you know what old people do?
(13:14):
They vote? So people do not cut medicare. Oh I
said three things, it's four things. The second thing social security.
Who does social Security help mostly? It also helps disabled,
but it also helps old people. Guess what old people vote.
So politicians do not want to cut Medicare or social security,
(13:41):
social security, Defense. Everybody wants the country to be safe,
right when you talk about when you talk about defense, though,
nobody wants to cut it. You remember when DOGE came
in and they were going to check every part of government.
Guess what's the one part of government they wouldn't let
them check because there's a lot of waste in defense,
(14:03):
but we don't want to know about it because you
don't want to be somebody that's seen is not strong
on military. So the three and those are, by the way,
the three largest sums of money. So those three sums
of money nobody's going to touch. So now you're left
with medicaid, which is the easiest one for politicians to
touch because it affects the poor, and medicaid allows the
(14:28):
poor and the folks who for whatever reason are not
able to work and get private health care to get
health care. Now, I won't bore you with the details,
but for a long time, the only people that could
really get medicaid were people who didn't have jobs at all.
And then Obamacare expanding it to say you could make
(14:49):
a like you could be a working poor and still
get medicaid. We added twenty million people to the medical
We took away excuse me, twenty million uninsured Americans since Obamacare.
So leading right now, there's like twenty two million Americans
without health care. So what does this bill do. Well,
(15:11):
some people have said this bill Billy makes it to
where illegals can't get medicaid. Well, guess what. Illegals never
got medicaid. When you hear a politician say, now, illegal
immigrants do not get medicaid, here's a little secret. They
never got medicaid. Politicians who tell you they did, you
(15:31):
can now know they lied to you.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
They're lying to me.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
They're lying. Illegal immigrants never got medicaid. It now imposes
work requirements on people that get medicaid. Okay, now that
sounds on paper good, right. We want people to work,
We want people to work, But what does that mean?
How do you prove that people have a job to
(15:57):
get Medicaid. Well, the answer is they have to fill
out paperwork. Right, You're gonna have to somehow prove to
the government you work. Well, what if I told you
that thirty percent of the money that's been saved by
these work requirements will be used to fund the people
to find out whether or not these folks are working,
(16:19):
because somebody has to look it up, right, somebody's got
to call your employer and see if you're really working.
So thirty percent of that savings is gonna be on
is gonna be lost on administrative costs? That ain't that good.
But I want to take a more fundamental step back
for people to understand why the Medicaid provision is bad.
(16:44):
Billy in America, if you get sick, like right now,
what are you gonna do? Go to the er? You're
gonna go to the er. Are you gonna go to
the emergency room? My friend Mario's sitting in here. You're
gonna go to the emergency room. What happens when you
go to the emergency room when you walk in insurance? Okay,
you have your insurance card, but you know if you
(17:06):
do not have insurance, the hospital still has to treat you.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
You know that, I did not know that. That's good
to hear that.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
In America they cannot turn anyone down at the emergency room.
And by the way, this is good. We don't want
people to die just because they don't have a car.
So people who don't have insurance, people visiting the country
from foreign countries, right, immigrants, If you go to the
(17:38):
emergency room, they have to treat you. So Medicaid so
when you go to the emergency room, it is paid
for the hospital, does it. So the question then, well,
what does medicaid do. Medicaid allows billy. Let's say you're
on Medicaid. That allows you to go see the doctor
before you go to the emergency room. Isn't that better?
Speaker 3 (18:03):
It is?
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Yeah, it's preventative care. So people are on Medicaid don't
just have to wait until they're about to die. They
can actually go get health care before. But if you
take Medicaid away from people, what happens? They can still
go to the emergency room, but now they can't go
see a doctor otherwise. Is that positive?
Speaker 3 (18:28):
No?
Speaker 1 (18:29):
No, in my opinion. So while we talk about people
deserving Medicaid or not, really we're saying, are we going
to make people wait till they're an emergency to go
to the hospital or can they go before? Now, let
me go back to the emergency room. You go to
the emergency room, you don't have insurance. What does the
(18:49):
hospital do? They still have to treat you. Let's say
they treat you. Let's say it costs the hospital ten
thousand dollars. All right, you leave. Now what happens? I
get a huge bill, and they'll send you a bill.
But now what happens if you don't pay?
Speaker 3 (19:11):
A collection service eventually calls me.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
And what if you don't pay that? I don't know
the answer is nothing. But the hospital is still out
ten thousand dollars. Now, what medicaid does is Medicaid says, hey, hospital,
you spent ten thousand dollars. We ain't giving y' all
ten thousand dollars, but we'll give you three thousand dollars.
(19:35):
And thus you get that three thousand dollars back. And
if you're a hospital, you've treated this person and you've
gotten some of your money back. Let's say you take
Medicaid away from Billy, the hospital will get zero dollars back.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
You're not gonna want to treat me.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
They still have to they have to treat you, but
now they will get no money for treating you. So
then what happens. That's how hospitals close. They are forced
to treat a population that doesn't have health insurance and
they don't get the money back. So they have two choices.
(20:18):
One people like Mario who have health insurance. They will
now charge them twice as much to make up for
the fact that the person with no money and no
medicaid gets them nothing. So now when Mario comes, instead
of being charge ten thousand, they might charge him twenty thousand. Wow,
(20:40):
and the person that did not have Medicaid is still
in there for free. So when you take medicaid away
from people, the politicians act like you're punishing the people,
and I guess to some extent you are because you
don't get to see the doctor. But you know who
(21:00):
else you're punishing the world. The hospitals have to close.
So when we say rural hospitals are going to close,
why are they going to close. Let's take my hometown
in Middlesborough, Kentucky. I have been told, and I don't
know if this is true, but I've been told that
something like sixty percent of the people who go to
(21:23):
the hospital in Middlesbrough have either Medicaid or Medicare. Let's
just say forty percent or on medicaid. If you make
it to where those people don't get medicaid, the hospital
has to close. They don't have enough pain patience. So
(21:44):
they either have to raise the rates on the people
with money and people in Middlesborough don't have enough money,
or they have to close. So when you say why
will these hospitals close, why will these doctors choose not to?
If you're a doctor, if if all of a sudden
(22:04):
thirty percent of your population can't come see you anymore,
you're not gonna have enough patience. You're gonna leave. You're
gonna go somewhere where there are rich people so they
can pay you. So by doing even if you don't
believe the individual people deserve healthcare quote unquote deserve medicaid,
(22:30):
all you are doing is you're punishing the people who
do pay by seeing higher insurance rates, or you're punishing
the hospitals and the doctors by not reinimbursing them when
they come. It's a horrible policy.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
So if my insurance rate is gonna go up to
pay for this.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Your insurance rate is going to go up because of this.
That's the thing. Nobody says, your insurance rate is gonna
go up. So the whole point, the theory behind Obamacare,
whether you were Ford or not, was the theory was this, billy,
we're all paying for everybody's health care anyway, right when
(23:12):
you go to the emergency room, we're all paying for it.
Me you elon musk Joe that works at McDonald's. Everybody
is paying for these hospitals. So why not make it
to where more of these people can get preventive care
so that they don't show up and go to the
(23:32):
emergency room where everything's so expensive and they're maybe about
to die.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Do you think that there's a segment of the population
that wouldn't go to preventative care even if it was offered.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Maybe not. But you can't lead a horse to water,
but you can't make them drink, right, You're right there
are people who only go to But I think you
would agree if you have access to preventative care, you're
more likely to go than if you don't.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
I think a lot of times democrats focus on does
this person who doesn't work deserve or not deserve medicaid?
I would argue, human beings on this earth are created
by God and we are all equal, and of the
things that we should all have, it's the ability to
live a healthy life. I would argue, even if you
(24:23):
don't work, you should have an ability to live. But
let's say you disagree with me on that. It's still
the worst system in the world to make it to
where the only time people can get care is that
the emergency room when it's the most expensive. It makes
no sense. It's why no other country in the world
(24:45):
but US does it this way. So now they've put
in work requirements. Let me ask you a question. How
many people do you think that work jobs where they're
making very little money the time or knowledge to fill
that fill out internet work requirements to get their medicaid.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Again, I think there's a segment of the population that
does work but would not be doing that paper Well.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Maybe they would just miss the paperwork. Like I used
to sometimes just not pay my power bill and then
all of a sudden they come and turn it off
and I'd go. But here's the problem under this new bill.
If you miss the paperwork, you can't get it again
for a year. So just missing the paperwork for the cracks,
(25:35):
you can fall through the cracks. And guess what have
you ever been to a government service that's efficient? At
these places where you have to prove that you work,
you think that's going to be efficient. No, you think
there's gonna be long lines to prove that you're working. Yes,
how much is it going to take to staff all
of these offices around the country to prove that the
(25:59):
people are working.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Probably good amount of money that you saved from actually
making the cuts exactly.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Which is why even if you don't have the position
I do, which is everyone deserves healthcare as one of
the people on this world here by God, even if
you don't believe that cutting medicaid is dumb, and where
it will affect people the most is rural Kentucky and
(26:27):
places like rural Kentucky. In New York City, the hospitals
in New York City, when somebody shows up without medicaid,
you know what they'll do in New York City, They'll
just raise the rates on the wealthy people and everybody
will move on. But what are they gonna do where
there's no wealthy people. What are you gonna do when
there's no upper middle class people are very few? The
(26:50):
hospitals are gonna shut down. What are these nursing homes
gonna do if the people they're gonna shut down? The
doctors are gonna move. Why would you practice in Harlan
If fifty percent of the work you do you don't
get paid back for, You're gonna go somewhere else. So
(27:15):
the effect of this is going to crush these rural places.
And let me give you the last point on this
and then we'll take a break. If you want to
know how cowardice this is. I just learned today that
most of the things they did in cutting Medicaid, they're
(27:38):
waiting until after the twenty twenty six elections to do it, to.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
Go in December thirty December thirty first, twenty twenty six,
they're waiting until they all can run for reelection before
it comes into play.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
They're hoping that in a year and a half everybody
will forget and more specifically, they're waiting until Donald Trump
is no longer president so that the next guy has
to deal with it. And that to me, if you
really believe in this, why are you waiting a year
(28:11):
and a half to do it right.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Implement it now.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
The rest of the budget goes into effect, I believe
September first, but this provision doesn't start until after the election.
That should tell you how negative it is and how
they know that what they're doing is going to have
bad impacts. Interrupted by Matt Jones. Is sponsored by Clayton
(28:37):
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(29:00):
Clayton and Crew. All Right, so I gave you that
was a long kind of segment here on, interrupted by
Matt Jones about the thing I hate the most about
the bill, which is the Medicaid. But there's some other things.
First of all, they extended the tax cuts for the
wealthiest Americans. In my opinion, the wealthiest Americans should pay
(29:22):
more tax I'm not of the wealthy Americans that some
people are, but I do find for myself, Billy, I
think I should pay more tax. The money that they
the money that they take from me, if they took
a little more, would not affect me like it affects
the working poor. The working poor in this country get
(29:43):
screwed more than any other people in the lower middle
class people people who go up get up every day,
they go work somewhere, they come home. They're the people
that get screwed the most. They pay the highest percentage
of their money in taxes. So the very poorest people
in America don't really pay taxes much. But the people
(30:03):
who make somewhere between twenty five to thirty thousand and
fifty thousand, those people pay the greatest percentage of their
income and taxes of anybody. Does that make sense?
Speaker 3 (30:18):
No, No, no, it doesn't.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
And now you're taking their health care from them, some
of them.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
How do you stimulate the economy when you're taking all
the money away?
Speaker 1 (30:28):
Well, because there's this belief that well if you get
if the rich people get to keep more of their money,
they'll invest and create jobs and all that it's a
trickle down theory. Here's the problem. It's been tested multiple
times in history, and it's never worked. It's literally never worked.
It's a great theory because it can never work, and
(30:50):
people can still say it works. It's never worked. The
best economic times we've had in history have been when
we have invested in things that helped give middle class
people more money. Why because they spend their money. Yeah,
what are the best times in our economic history? Well,
(31:13):
one was the New Deal when the government invested all
of this money in helping get out of the depression
and we had economic stimulus. Then post World War Two,
the GI Bill, we sent people to college. We got
all these people educated, the middle class was able to
(31:34):
get created. And then the third time was during the
nineties during the tech boom when Clinton's policy changed a
lot of the things, gave tax cuts to the middle class.
What has never worked is giving rich people more money. Ever,
and now we're doing it again, and it won't work again.
(31:56):
It won't work.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
But that's how you get something past, right, the people
with special interests.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Because they spend the most money on it. And now that,
in my opinion, building Now this isn't tested, This is
just Matt Jones's opinion. Now, giving wealthy people a lot
more money makes less sense than it ever has. Why
Because in the world of globalization, they don't have to
spend it in America. They can go create companies in
(32:23):
other countries. Right, So the wealthiest people in America are
often putting their factories in Vietnam or in India, or
they're going and buying a yacht in France. So the
idea that, well, if you give Americans, wealthy Americans more money,
(32:44):
they'll spend it in America. I don't even know if
that happens anymore, you know, I've.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
Heard Trump talk about this, you know, and tariffs help,
you know, making people come back to the United States
to build things.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
Does that help in that regard?
Speaker 1 (32:58):
In theory it could, but you'd have to be willing
to tear iff at an extremely high rate, and you
would have to basically say, you know, you'd have to
essentially bribe companies. And I think it's I think that's
(33:18):
poor judgment because you know who will suffer in the
short term for tariffs, Americans, because we're the ones paying
for them, right, we pay them. I mean when they
say Vietnam or Japan or whatever they pay, they don't
pay the tariffs. Americans pay the tariffs. I also think
in today's like AI world, the days of like factories
(33:39):
sprouting up in America making T shirts, that's just not
gonna happen. This is not gonna happen. But I tell
you what I know won't work. Giving rich people more
money to go spend it in other countries. So that's
another reason I don't like this. The debt. Usually it's
only Republicans that talk about the debt, but as somebody
(34:00):
who owned businesses, the debt's a big deal. Now, the
debt's boring. I'm not going to go into all the
debt except to say this, this bill raises the debt
by more than any bill in the history of America,
by twenty five percent, more than any bill in the
(34:21):
history of America by twenty five percent. It is a
four trillion dollar a year addition to the debt, just
for example. You know, the only other two bills that
have been more the post COVID bill, the Economic Stimulus Act,
(34:43):
and Trump's last budget. Okay, Trump, the debt has two
of the three largest debt editions ever, which is why
when the Republican Party gets up and says, there for
stopping the debt and balancing the budget, they are liars.
They just are lying. Nobody in Washington cares about the debt.
(35:06):
But I'll tell you who should is us. Right now,
we spend three percent of our gross domestic product on debt.
By twenty forty, that number is gonna be six percent.
It's gonna double in fifteen years. Your kids, I don't
have any kids, Billy, but your kids coming one day
(35:26):
or somebody listening here, your grandkids, they're gonna be one
paying for all this. You're gonna start having to wear.
Six percent of every dollar produced in America will be
sent to our debt, which most of which is held
by China. That's not good to the debt and most
people are hot, most people are but you know what
(35:48):
you're gonna We're paying it, and we're gonna pay more.
And one of these days China owns like, I don't
know what the number is, but a huge percentage of
our debt. The fact that we continue to increase it,
this is one thing. Elon Muskin, I agree on the
fact that we continue to increase it will be the
(36:08):
downfall of the country. If we're not careful and will
Massi and ram Paul talk about it all the time.
They're exactly right. Most Democrats don't care about the debt.
I do because somebody's gonna have to pay for it.
And there are people who believe our debt payments will
double in the next fifteen years. You mentioned the ICE spending.
(36:31):
Under this bill, ICE, which is the Immigration enforcement will
now become larger than the FBI and the CI. They
are tripling the amount of money that goes to ICE, tripling.
There will now be more ICE agents in America than
(36:52):
FBI law enforcement. Is that good?
Speaker 3 (36:55):
Hard to wrap my brain around.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
It's ridiculous. And by the way, you give Trump some credit,
they have closed the border pretty much. The border is
much more secure, which makes the reason of why let's
triple the force even weirder. Right, right, We've done a
pretty good job with what we got. Why are we
going to triple it?
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Well, now they're going into home depots and kind of
like the other episodes.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
And we've talked about that, you start going into home depots,
that's going to have a bigger part. But triple who
in America wants immigration enforcement to have more people? Than
law enforcement at the moment, at the most generous, like you,
if you think they're the most illegal people here that
(37:42):
you could, you might say, it's twenty thirty million people.
That's like ten percent or eight percent of the regular population.
You're telling me we need more agents for those eight
percent than the other ninety two. Oh well we have
at now thanks to this budget, student debt for all
(38:05):
of you listening, if your kid is about to go
to college and you make less than one hundred and
fifty thousand dollars, this is going to affect you. Under
Biden in twenty twenty one, and it was continuing an
Obama policy that to be fair to Trump, he continued
(38:27):
to they made it to where if you made between
thirty and one hundred and fifty thousand dollars you could
get a lower student debt rate for college than if
you made over one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. That's good,
isn't it.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
I like that premise.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Yes, they've just taken it away now, student debt relief
or the ability to get loans. People think of it
as forgiving the loans. It's not forgiving it. It's just
giving you a lower interest rate right, that's gone. Everybody
will get the interest rate of the market, which means
(39:05):
rich people will get a lower interest rate than middle
class people because they're more likely to pay it back.
Is that good?
Speaker 3 (39:13):
I don't like that? No, I want it should be
the opposite. It should be the opposite. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
So I saw this study that said if you make
eighty thousand dollars a year, if your family makes eighty,
so it could be one person or two people, your
child's yearly loan payment will now be two and a
half times higher than it was before when they graduate
(39:40):
because they won't be able to get as good a rate.
Who thinks that's good? Who thinks that's good? I'll tell
you who thinks it's good. Who thinks it's good? Or
banks because they can charge a higher rate to people
that probably won't pay it but will end up spending
more of their money on loans. That's in the bill.
(40:04):
The people who still can get the low rate are
very poor people or very rich people. But those people
making between like fifty and one fifty, your rates are
about for your kids are about to double, almost triple.
Makes absolutely no.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Sense, especially with student loans that are already a little predatory,
you know what I mean, Like, you know, yeah, there's
no relief from them. I mean, I don't think that
we should just wipe them clean, like some people say.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Here's another thing when you raise when you raise loans Mario.
Let's say Mario has a loan for fifty thousand dollars.
When he graduates, he owes fifty thousand dollars. Let's say
he spends four thousand dollars a year on his loan.
Guess what. He's not spending that four thousand dollars on
(40:54):
things that will stimulate the economy, true food, good uds.
He's just giving it to a bank. That was the
premise behind Biden's student loan relief. I know some people
are against it, and I get that. I don't know that.
I was totally for it. But the premise behind it was,
(41:14):
if these people don't have to spend their money on
the student loans, they'll spend it on something that will
help the economy. That's not a crazy premise, is it.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
No, Especially when you're already giving people money to stimulate
that economy.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
It's not a crazy premise. Now. I didn't like it
because I thought it punished working class people. Who didn't
go to college. But that's a different argument. But now
the loans go up, I'll do two more and I'll
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Two more things. One clean energy. A lot of people
when you start talking about clean energy billy, they're like, oh,
these hippies, you know, these liberal environmentalist But there's something.
(42:36):
One of the good things about clean energy, especially solar
and wind, is guess what, We're not gonna run out
of billy sunlight and the sunlight in the wind. It's
not going anywhere, going anywhere. Now, other things like oil, coal,
we're gonna run out of those. There's only so many
(42:57):
much of them. And when it comes to oil, guess
where most of it is not here, not here, It's
in other places. So we become dependent on countries that
maybe do really bad things because we have to have
their oil. But guess what, everybody has sunlight and when.
(43:24):
So the theory behind clean energy is not just save
the environment. The theory is that when you make it good,
when it becomes a thing, you don't have to rely
on the rest of the world for your energy. You
can get it from what God has given us naturally.
Thomas Massey man, I am praising him so much. Did
(43:46):
you know he runs his entire house on solar energy.
He is not even on the grid, and he's not environmentalist.
He just says it's smart, it's cheap, it doesn't make
me rely on other people. So all of the credits
(44:07):
that we were giving in America to encourage people to
develop clean energy have now been taken away in this bill.
No more credits for clean energy. I think that's unbelievably
stupid for the reasons I just said. But let me
tell you a reason why it's stupid that a lot
of people don't realize. You know who is now leading
(44:30):
the world in clean energy by an exponential margin is China.
China is producing its own energy at unbelievable levels. China
is going to get to the point in the next
twenty five years where they're not even going to use oil,
(44:54):
and they're not even going to use I don't know
how much coal they use now, but they're not going
to use much of it. It's going to be fine.
And we are so far behind them, and we were
trying to catch up and now we put the kebash
on it.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
Yeah, but does that displace a lot of people that
are in the energy sectors like coal and like oil.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
Well, here's yes, And here's what we should have done.
Here's my biggest complaint with Obama. When he kind of
ended the coal industry and it wasn't just him, it
was market forces, but he spurret it along a little quickly.
They didn't do anything to replace it. If it were me,
I would have done what they did with the tobacco industry,
(45:38):
which is when they ended it, they helped train and
teach the farmers to make something else, right, what we
should have done in the mountains is as coal was
going away, we should have made it the king place
for solar energy in the entire America. We have mountains
high up in the air. That's what we should have done.
(45:58):
We've done it a little, but we haven't done it though. So, yeah,
is it gonna be hard, Yes, But then you help
those people because ultimately we're gonna run out of coal.
We just are. And you know, and here's the other thing.
It is so expensive to make coal plants. If they
don't exist now, they're not gonna exist. The coal plants
(46:19):
that are left, new ones are gonna be very hard.
I'm not saying there won't be any, but there won't
be many. They cost too much. You know why solar
energy is cheap. You just put up the infrastructure and
then the sun comes. You don't have to pay to
dig all the stuff out of there, you know, all
the things that are part of it. So it's just dumb.
For the future, it's dumb. And I'm in a coal area.
(46:42):
We need to do nine million times more things to
help coal former coal miners and coal areas than we do.
But saying, hey, China, you get to have all of
the future energy source that the rest of the world
is gonna use. You get to have it and we don't.
Is stupid.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
It just seems short sighted, very short sighted. Or it's
fine for the next five ten years.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
But and then finally I'll finish with this. You know, Doge, billy.
I think when Doge started, you and I talk some
about it, and you know, everybody likes the idea of
we should get rid of waste fraud and abuse. I
think that whoever came up with that slogan, that was
a very smart slogan, waste fraud and abuse. And it's
(47:28):
clear that they took a lot of things out that
were not waste fraud and abuse. But you know they
probably did make some efficiency better. Now, a billy, when
I just hear about four trillion dollars of new debt,
forgive me if I don't believe that they care about waste,
fraud and abuse.
Speaker 3 (47:48):
The debt man.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
But be let me give you an example of some things.
What this bill did is they took Elon's cuts and
they made them permanent. Okay, well, let's talk about some
of the things that are about to get cut. The
Appalachian Regional Commission. The Appalachian Regional Commission exists to help
(48:10):
encourage businesses to come to Appalachia and to provide projects
that range from education to infrastructure. They've done a million
great things in Kentucky and in Appalachian. Their budget is
being cut from two hundred and fifty million dollars to
twelve million dollars. Wow, that is a cut that will happen.
(48:33):
Government cuts at Social Security and Veterans administrations, not to
the actual money, but to the support system. Ask somebody,
I'm sure there are people listening who are on Social Security.
Ask them how hard it is to get somebody on
the phone. Staff is going to be cut by forty
to sixty percent over the next three years. You think
(48:53):
it's hard to get some may on the phone, Now
see what's going to wat. We don't think these things
are bad, then go look at the people who voted
for the bill and what they made sure to sneak
in at the last minute. Lisa Murkowski was the last
vote to get it passed. She's from Alaska. You know
(49:16):
all this stuff I just said to you about Medicaid
and student debt and commissions and Social Security. Here's a
little say she got a provision put in the bill,
so it doesn't apply to Alaska.
Speaker 3 (49:31):
What the heck?
Speaker 1 (49:33):
She got a provision in the bill, so it doesn't
apply to Alaska, and she was the fiftieth vote. Now,
if this were something that was good, well, why does
she need to exempt Alaska. On the one hand, I
guess you could say, way to go for you for Alaska.
But b if it's not good enough for Alaska, why
(49:56):
is it good enough for America? How about some more?
Remember what I just told you about veterans and social Security?
How about coal mine offices, miners' offices? The budget for
minor safety offices has been cut ninety percent in all
(50:18):
over America except in one state, West Virginia, where the
two senators said they would only vote if West Virginia
got exempted.
Speaker 3 (50:29):
Oh, another one, another state got exemptions.
Speaker 1 (50:32):
From the coal mining part. So Kentucky with coal mines,
we lost it. Pennsylvania lost it. A lot of coal
mines there. Why, I don't mean got coal mines out there.
But it won't apply in West Virginia because the West
Virginia senator said, well, it's not good enough for West Virginia.
(50:53):
The fact that these people would vote for a bill
and then exempt their own state from it. Hey, you'd
sit there and go, hey, Mitch McConnell, why didn't you
have to get do that for us? Since voted for it,
ran Paul vo against him. But it also goes to
show how ridiculous this is. So you know, I encourage
(51:21):
and then I'll stop preaching. I encourage people, whatever the
issue is. You've listened to this, you've come this far.
It's very easy in this world to go I love Trump,
I hate Trump, I love Democrats, I hate democrats, and
to just decide what you feel based on whether or
(51:43):
not your side is for it or not. I would
really encourage you not to do that because that is
what leads to a situation like this. And I'll finish
with Lisa Murkowski again, Senator from Alaska. When she became
the fiftieth vote for it, she was interviewed and she said,
(52:03):
what do you think about this vote? Right after she
had voted for it, and she said, I don't like
the bill. I don't think it's a good bill. I
voted for it, but I hope it will get changed.
After she had already voted for it, she said she
wanted it to be changed after she had voted to
(52:27):
make it to where it wouldn't be changed.
Speaker 2 (52:29):
It seems like a lot of people with their own
interests at heart instead of what America's interest was.
Speaker 1 (52:34):
Senator Josh Holly in Missouri, he wrote an editorial Go
look it up in the New York Times where he said,
the cuts we are going to do to Medicaid are
going to devastate rural Americans, and we have to stop them.
It's not fair to poor Americans. He wrote it, and
then he voted for it, and afterwards he was asked why,
(52:58):
and he said, I just felt like I needed to.
It becomes a team mentality where they feel like you
have to win and they have to lose, and the
people that suffer are always people like those of you
that are listening right now. Thank you all, speaking of
(53:21):
listening very much. We will next week. I'm off on vacation.
When we come back, I'm going to bring a couple
people on to do a little preview of the football season,
and I'm sure there'll be a lot that has happened. Billy,
after all of that, would you if you were now
polled and said do you approve of the bill or
(53:42):
not would you still go don't know, would you say
yes or no?
Speaker 2 (53:46):
I would say no at this point, and going back
to the you know, putting provisions in before people could
even read the bill, counter productive provisions like cutting clean
energy but yet slashing departments that focus on the health
of than safety of coal mines like that. It seems
like that while they're trying to find money, they're cutting
(54:06):
a lot of things that can that really hurt the poor.
Speaker 1 (54:09):
Like you said, yeah, well this one will be bad.
This might be the worst budget we've had in a
long time. And what pains me is it's going to
hurt the people who, in my opinion, need it the most.
Thank you all very much for listening on that uplifting note.
We'll see you next week, uninterrupted by Matt Joe
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