7-1-25 - 7am - Big Beautiful Bill & Medicaid

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, Michael, I think we're blowing up this pork project
a little too much with Polis, especially with how much
money he's wasted on Colorado. I mean, truly, this pork
project doesn't even register in my mind. It's little. It's
tiny as far as pork projects go, this is minuscule.
This truly is Polus's little tiny peepee.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Well, I agree with your last statement. It is his
tiny little pet project is tiny little peepe. Absolutely it is.
But I vociviously disagree with you when it comes to oh,
this is just a little this is a little amount.
That's the problem. Every FN Congressman, every Effen Senator, every

(00:46):
f and state representativen state senator, every Effen governor, Well,
this is only twenty nine million dollars. Well, first of all,
it's not going to end up being twenty nine million dollars.
It's going to be fifty million dollars. And so you
would you rather have twenty nine or fifty million dollars
whatever it is? I don't care how how de minimus
you think it is. You. I'm not mad at you,

(01:09):
but I really am mad about this whole concept that well,
it's just twenty nine million dollars. Okay, take the twenty
nine million dollars and spend it on fixing some damn potholes.
Take the twenty nine million dollars and do something with
it that's going to benefit all of us and not
and not benefit a very few people who go to

(01:29):
downtown Denver. It's that attitude it's only twenty nine million
dollars that drives me crazy. Yes, I agree, in the
grand scheme of what how much we had a how
many billions of dollars were we short this year in
the budget. Yeah, it's a pittance compared to that, but

(01:51):
every pittance adds up to a buko amount of money.
And the attitude of well, I'm just I don't care
about it because it's only twenty nine millillion dollars. If
everybody picked out their little project, that's only twenty nine
million dollars in well, I don't care about that. We
could probably you know, have we could all get tax
refunds or to you maybe eliminate the income tax altogether.

(02:13):
But oh no, this just on the twenty nine million dollars. God,
that drives me crazy. And the the other thing about
the twenty nine million dollars is it's not going to
be twenty nine million dollars. I'll bet you a dollar
to a doll that's going to be fifty million dollars.
Fifty million dollars. And you can't tell me that there
aren't enough potholes that Sea Dot couldn't fix on whether

(02:36):
it's on two twenty five or two seventy or twenty five,
or it's on four to seventy, or it's out on
U seventy you uh, Interstate seventy six. Any we had
the we had the either text message or the talk
back from somebody maybe it's an email that had you know, talked.
They accounted the potholes going from point A to the

(02:59):
Kansas law and they counted I don't know, I'm just
pulling a number out of my butt. Now, they counted
ten in a one hundred mile stretch. They get to
the Colorado state line, they come down seventy six, they're
down on eighty five or somewhere, and they're counting. They
lose count Well, that's twenty nine million dollars. You go

(03:20):
to fix those sort of things, and if you let
and the other forget the dollar amount for a moment
when you start letting politicians get by with the little stuff.
It's the broken windows theory of government, but instead of vandalism,
it's stealing your tax dollars. Now, twenty nine million dollars
divided out to whatever the number of actual taxpayers are

(03:43):
in Colorado. Give me that money. I don't care if
it's two dollars ninety cents. That's two dollars ninety cents.
I can spend how I choose to spend, as opposed
to choose letting letting police choose to spend it on
a vanity project. Oh God, you've really pissed me off.

(04:07):
It's just twenty nine million. Yeah, it's a little peepee.
It's a little peep, all right, it's a little peep
in it. Everybody's got a little peepee. And if you
take everybody's a little peepe's, pretty soon you got a
big giant peepee. But when you ignore the little peeps,
it is truly the window. It's the broken windows theory
applied to the fiscal calamity, that not only is the

(04:30):
country facing, but the state is facing. Oh but you
didn't expect that, did you. Oh? That kind of that
just really is just the wrong attitude to have if
you want to dig through you know, here's here's my
challenge to you. I bet you can go through the

(04:51):
Colorado state budget and you can find a thousand, twenty
nine million dollar projects. I'm surely at least one of
which you would object to. Well, there's twenty nine million dollars.
You had that with my twenty nine million dollars or
my fifty million dollars, which is what I think the
real cost will be. Now we're getting close to one
hundred million dollars. We're up to seventy nine million dollars.

(05:15):
Pretty soon you got one hundred million dollars. And if
I ask the other eleven members of this audience to
come up with their twenty nine million dollars, pretty soon
you're getting in some real money. So don't blow it
off because it's twenty nine million dollars and because it's
it's his little vanity peepee project. That's all he knows
how to do. Anyway, I want to talk for a

(05:36):
minute about this again, speaking of money, the stupid, big
beautiful bill. I emphasized yesterday that one of the hysterical
claims that the bill that Democrats are claiming is that
we're going to kick families off Medicaid. And I point
out that that's false and malicious, that not one American

(05:58):
is going to lose, not one city is going to
lose coverage. And then it actually strengthens Medicare because it's
going to require any able bodied person is going to
require there's going to be a work requirement. And as
I said yesterday, it was going to end coverage for

(06:18):
illegal aliens in addition to rooting out all the other waste,
fraud and abuse. And I pointed out that over the
past ten years, more than five hundred billion dollars you
know what that is. Let me put it a different way,
half a trillion dollars in improper payment payments had been
pulled out of Medicaid. Oh but it's Michael, it's only

(06:41):
five hundred billion dollars. To take your attitude, there's only
five hundred billion dollars. Well, since I said yesterday that
they were going to end coverage for illegal aliens, well
that may or may not be true by the time
we actually get to a vote today, because the Senate
Parliamentarian has ruled that under the Bird Rule, which requires

(07:09):
that bills in a any topic in a reconciliation bill
has to be tied to whatever the underlying uh financial
claim of the of the bill is supporting. Well, she
ruled that taking illeal aliens off medicaid. Medicaid is not

(07:31):
germane to the reconciliation bill and therefore they can't do it. Now.
I'm going to talk for just in a in a minute,
I'm going to talk about how I think that is
so blatantly unconstitutional and that the parliamentarian does not have
the authority to force that. But before I do that,

(07:52):
I want to I want to make sure you understand
that the Senate Parliamentarian can be overruled by members of
the United States Senate. But they've chosen not to. And
you know why. Now this may change because it's all
fluid right now. They're still on the floor. They've been
on the floor all night, so I don't know what

(08:14):
they've done so far this morning. But this is true
as of last night as I'm broadcasting on Tuesday, July first.
This was true last night on Monday, June thirtieth, and
was true overnight. It may have changed, It may have
even changed since I'm talking right now. But here's the game.

(08:36):
They're playing, which also pisses me off. They don't care.
In fact, their many Republican senators are probably glad that
the Senate parliamentarian has ruled that you cannot remove illegal
aliens from medicaid under this particular bill, and so they've

(08:58):
thrown their hands and said, oh, okay, well the parliamentarian
said we can't do it, so we're not going to
do it. Let me propose an alternative. If the parliamentarian
has said you can't do it, we still control the Senate,
So why not just introduce fast track, a simple, single

(09:20):
bill that just removes illegal aliens from any qualification for Medicaid. Boom,
take an up and down vote on it, and let's
just force the Democrats to vote on that, and let's
expose Republicans that are not willing to vote for that,
because I think that's the game that's really going on here.

(09:43):
So let's slide into the parliamentarian. It's kind of interesting
that the parliamentarian in our constitutional order that this Now
I'm going to call her a nameless advisor, but we
know what her name is, Elizabeth McDonough. But she's a
nameless advisor. She's not confirmed by the people she's not

(10:04):
even elected by the representatives that she can somehow effectively
wield a veto power over a landmark legislation like the BBB. Well,
the Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth McDonough is just such that kind
of figure. By the way, she's also an avowed Democrat
and an ally of Barack Obama. So now she's taken

(10:28):
upon herself to obstruct the very legislation that brought Donald
Trump back into office with a mandate, and that's this
particular piece of legislation. Now, this is more than just
her playing a game. It is actually a technocratic usurpation
of the democratic authority. And Vice President JD. Vance, as

(10:52):
President of the Senate, has both the constitutional duty and
the moral authority to act upon this. Let's let's let's
look at some facts, not speculation. The parliamentarian's rulings are advisory,
they're not law. They are her interpretation of the Senate's

(11:12):
rules and the Senate's procedure. The idea that somehow she
is the final arbiter of what may or may not
appear in a reconciliation bill is a legal fiction. And
how and how does that fiction survive? It survives because
the politicians in the Senate, Republican and Democrat alike, are timid.

(11:35):
They're afraid, they're using her for cover, and there's just
institutional nursery. Well we you know, we'll just let her
decide so that we don't have to decide. Now, there
is precedent, and it's not an ancient precedent. It's not
some you know, centuries old president, but there is recent

(11:55):
precedent for the vice president to exercise the authority that
the Constitution vests in him. For example, in nineteen seventy five,
then Vice President Nelson Rockefeller overruled a parliamentarian in a
matter involving the filibuster. In nineteen sixty nine, Hubert Humphrey
attempted to do the same thing. You see, the office

(12:18):
of the vice president, when acting as President of the
Senate is not a rubber stamp. So let's think about
this particular bill passed by the House in May by
the narrow sub margins, is not just merely another piece
oflat It's not just a simple legislative vehicle for routine

(12:38):
policy tinkering. This is the centerpiece of Trump's second term agenda,
and its key provisions are deeply rooted in the fiscal
and moral expectations of those who voted for him. It
eliminates funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That is
a bureaucratic stronghold created by Dodd Frank which made itself

(13:05):
insulated from congressional accountability. I think the Consumer Financial Production
Bureau is blatantly unconstitutional. Well, the way to get rid
of it take away its money. It restricts Medicaid, It
restricts CHIP funds from being used for what is euphemistically

(13:25):
called gender affirming care for miners. It bars the disbursement
of public health funds to those who are illegally in
this country. Each of those provisions is both morally clear
and has significant budget consequences, yet the parliamentarian has ruled

(13:48):
them impermissible under the Bird Rule. Well, what's the Bird rule? Well,
it's named after the former Grand Wizard of the KKK,
former senator now deceased to Robert Byrd. This rule was
enacted in nineteen eighty five. It prohibits the inclusion of

(14:08):
the word is extraneous. It prohibits the inclusion of extraneous
material in reconcile reconciliation bills. Well, what's extraneous. Well, supposedly,
it's been interpreted as anything that does not primarily affect
federal revenues or outlays. So let's just stop right there

(14:31):
with that simple definition. Then how is it that preventing
or prohibiting illegal aliens from latching on the government teat
of medicaid? How does that not materially affect federal revenues

(14:51):
or outlays. I think it's a huge significant affect on
federal outlays. Well, the job of the parliament mutarian is
to interpret that language. But interpretation of language is not
ruling on language, And even if it were ruling on language,
the text of the rule allows far more discretion than

(15:14):
the parliamentarian. In this case, this woman appears willing to
concede and take, for example, the defunding of Medicaid reimbursements
for gender transition surgeries among miners. Just like taking illegal
aliens off Medicaid, defunding Medicaid reimbursements for gender affirming care

(15:36):
has an undeniable budgetary impact, And that's the entire point
of this. It saves you and I, you and me
money by cutting off controversial and medically dubious classes of
medical procedures. I'm sure we should call them medical procedures. Likewise,

(15:57):
if you restrict Medicaid and chip access to only lawful
US residents, well, that clearly alters the scope of entitlement expenditures.
To call that extraneous I think is more than questionable.
In fact, I don't even think it's questionable. I think
it's an act of political discretion looked in a bunch
of procedural mumbo jumbo that John Thune and the others

(16:21):
are simply will unwilling to confront. They're proving themselves as
this bill gets closer and closer to passage. How unwilling
they are, well, let me put it a different way,
how willing they are to play political games to give
just enough, but when it comes to a really tough

(16:44):
issue like illegal which isn't tough to me, but apparently
it's tough to them to saying that US taxpayers, who
work their asses off, who pay their taxes every year,
don't want to pay for illegal aliens, people who broke
into this country, who are here without legal authorization for

(17:07):
them to go onto one of our entitlement programs that
is designed specifically for US citizens. Now to the matter
of JD. Evans. As Vice President, he's the president of
the Senate. He can whenever he chooses. He could do

(17:27):
it all the time if he wanted to. He can
preside over all the proceedings of the United States Senate.
It is not a ceremonial role. The Constitution does not
furnish the parliamentarium with final say. It grants that authority
to the Presiding Officer, who may, at his discretion, either

(17:47):
accept or reject the advice to the Parliamentaria, and the
Senate may overrule the Vice President. Yes, but first he
has to act. He must rule, and Vance has not
done so. Yeah, calderr, bluff, mister Vice President. Take the
motor kate up there, take the chair.

Speaker 3 (18:07):
Old, I can I agree with you?

Speaker 1 (18:09):
Twenty nine million here, twenty nine million there?

Speaker 2 (18:12):
By, how you're done? You're at a billion and you're
not a billion.

Speaker 1 (18:16):
Just always fraud and abuse, you know, cut all this
stuff out.

Speaker 3 (18:20):
We don't need any of that stuff. Like you said,
fix some.

Speaker 1 (18:23):
Bottles ridiculous here.

Speaker 2 (18:34):
Not you. But I really question having watched the debate
over the BBB's those things of the big beautiful bill,
what a stupid name. The more I watch and listen
to polls, and I know the polls are designed to

(18:56):
guide and set public opinion, not reflect public opinion onion.
As I listened to the cabal again, which I know
is trying to establish a narrative, but as I listen
to the senators themselves debate this, this country cannot and

(19:17):
has not reached an agreement about how to deal with
our budget deficit and the national debt. I think it
needs and I want to get back to the parliamentarium
in a second, but I just want to make one comment.
If Trump and Scott Bessent are correct that these changes

(19:41):
and these cuts will and when I say cuts, I
don't necessarily mean just financial cuts, but regulatory cuts, if
that will unleash the American economy and that will cause
the economy to grow. I heard coming in that and

(20:02):
I don't remember whether there was this, whether it was
the CBO or some other or or it was some outside, independent,
non government organization, but some organization was predicting that the
current calculations for the savings under this bill are based

(20:24):
on one point three percent GDP growth in each of
the ten years going forward, well on face value for
the first year that may or may not be true.
I don't know, but I can't imagine that for the
next decade that our growth is going to be a
stagnant one point three percent, because if it is, we

(20:48):
just turned into Japan, we just turned into Europe. Tax
cuts always result in increased revenue. The lafferca is real.
You reduce the tax burden, you get more taxes, you
create more tax payers, you get more tax revenue. The

(21:10):
problem is we always spent way above and beyond that.
So I don't buy the one point three percent GDP
growth over the next decade. I want to believe that
these cuts will increase revenue. It will increase For example,

(21:30):
just allowing people to fully expense their capital expenditures as
a deduction in the current year, that alone is going
to create in a whether it's a giant corporation or
it's a sole proprietor, that's going to create an incentive
for people to invest in capital improvements. To invest in

(21:54):
a capital improvement, whether that's buying a building which somebody
has to build, or buying a piece of machinery which
someone has to build. All of that churns the economy,
and all of that creates growth, and so I believe
that this bill will generate something much more significant than

(22:14):
one point three percent GDP growth. But what worries me
is the attitude that we can't do cuts and growth,
because the minute we do something like, oh, we're going
to take illegal aliens off medicaid, the gnashing of teeth

(22:37):
and the ringing of our hands and the collective outrage
just seems to be a cacophony of oh my god,
how heartless can you be? Well, I guess I can
be pretty heartless. I'm not saying that I used this
example yesterday. Taking illegal alien off medicaid does not mean

(23:02):
that when they are involved in a car wreck. When
when the drunk driving illegal alien you know, is driving
down the interstate and driving down the twenty five and
they cause a car accident and they kill somebody and
they severely injure themselves, they're going to be taken to
the nearest hospital and that hospital is going to be
required under federal law to treat them. Now, whether they

(23:26):
can ever get reimbursed for that treatment or not is
another question, but they will receive medical treatment. But that
does not mean that we should extend a a entitlement
program that is paid for by US taxpayers, that we

(23:46):
should extend that to people who come into this country
illegally and live here illegally. I don't care. I don't
give a rats ask whether they're working or not. I
really don't give a rats ask whether they're contributing by
paying payroll taxes or not. They shouldn't receive Social Security,
Medicare or Medicaid. They're not US citizens. And if that

(24:11):
works as an incentive for them to pack up and
go home, so be it. If that acts as a
disincentive to come here in the first place, so be it.
I you know what I call that, I call that
a win win. Or if that where makes an incentive
for them to actually become citizens and work, I would
agree with that that that that's a win win win

(24:34):
either way. But if you would, if you listen to
the parliamentarian and you listen to some of these sensors,
you would think that we're actually taking them out and
create it and actually massacring these people on the streets
of cities and towns all across the country. And that's
simply not what we're doing. But back to the parliamentarian,

(24:55):
because I want you to understand, because you're going to
hear a lot about I'm sure Republicans and Democrats alike,
and in this case particularly Republicans, because Democrats are just
divorcing themselves entirely from the bill, which is fine, that's
their choice. You're going to hear incessantly, well, you know,

(25:16):
we wanted to do this, but the parliamentarian wouldn't allow
us to do it. Do not fall for that. The
parliamentarian is not nominated by the president, nor confirmed by
the Senate, and is not accountable to you and me
as voters. The role of the parliamentarian is one of convenience.

(25:40):
It is not a role of constitutionality. In a system
like ours, which is based on self government, it is
absolutely pornographic to think that an unelected staffer might block
policies that are championed by a duly elected president, in

(26:01):
this case, who overwhelmingly won the electoral college and won
the popular vote, legislation that was passed by an elected
house and supported by a majority in the Senate. And
then the claim that I hear from the talking heads
on the stupid TV that the vice president must defer

(26:21):
and not get involved is not a fidelity to the rules.
It is cowardice in the face of bureaucratic inertia, and
I think political cowardice. They're hiding behind the skirt, if
you will, of the parliamentarium. Now, the Senate Majority Leader,

(26:42):
John Thune has suggested that he will not support such
a move. Well, gets a lot. Thun's position is not decisive.
The constitution grants the gavel to the vice president, not
to the majority leader. In fact, that's why we call
the majority leader the majority leader. We're actually, you know,

(27:06):
if Trump's doing anything at all that's good, I would
say it is this. It is causing us to really
focus on the minutia of how the Congress works and
interacts with the president and the vice president. We have
a majority leader, John Thune, and we have a minority leader,

(27:32):
Chucky Schumer. We also have a president of the Senate
that's the vice president of the United States. Under the
United States Constitution, now we have a presiding officer. The
presiding officer could be anybody, because the presiding officer is whomever,

(27:54):
because the vice president's not there, so whomever the Senate
majority leader sides. Hey, would you handle the gavel today?
Would you handle all the procedural stuff that becomes the
air quotes here presiding officer. That person is not the
President of the Senate. That remains constitutionally in the hands

(28:17):
or in the office of the Vice President of the
United States of America, and the Constitution grants the gavel
to the vice President, not the majority leader anytime if Jdvans.
In fact, in the early history of our republic, the
vice president oftentimes was always in the chair in the Senate,

(28:41):
presiding over everything the Senate did. So if the Vice
President wanted to, if he and Trump had breakfast this
morning and Trump said, you know what, you're the president
of the Senate once you just go up there and
just they can't deny in the chair. When the Vice

(29:03):
President of the United States walks into the United States
Senate and says, I'm taking over the chair, that whoever's
sitting in the chair has to vacate and move aside
and let the Vice President sit down. And then the
Vice president if the parliamentarian rules that Medicaid and the
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau provisions are not germane to reconciliation,

(29:26):
he can just rule that they are, because that's his
constitutional duty. Now the Senate could vote to overrule him.
I'd say, let him try, let him go for that.
Let's see. You want to see the wrath of Donald Trump.

(29:47):
You want to see Donald Trump go to truth social
I mean, he's gonna hit caps block on his phone
or on his laptop, and he's going to be pounding
away in all caps and he's going to be going
after every freaking United States senator who votes to overrule
jd Vance. Yeah, and I just got overruled by my parliamentarian.

Speaker 3 (30:11):
It's so interesting how some people say it's cruel that
we would make welfare recipients have to work for their
medical coverage, that they're absolutely okay making me work to
pay for their coverage.

Speaker 2 (30:26):
Interesting. I want to use that talk back and the
whole idea of you know, I mentioned earlier, this idea
that they believe that money belongs to them. They the government.

(30:48):
All your money belongs to them, and they will choose
how much of that you can keep by imposing fees
and taxes and everything to fulfill. Oftentimes, what I don't
believe are governmental functions. I don't believe, for example, that

(31:14):
it is a government function. Now I know that I
know that what I'm about to mention that train left
the station like you know, a century ago. But I
don't believe it's the government's function to provide healthcare to
its citizens. I think that said a personal obligation, and

(31:37):
it's an obligation of charitable organizations, churches, nonprofits and others
that if people cannot afford their healthcare that you know,
when we had community ties, we had neighbors and churches,
and we had you know, civic organizations, and all those
were tied together. And even hospitals, local hospitals if they

(31:59):
had an indigens they were caring for that they couldn't
take care of, they had insurance to help cover that,
or they had reserves to help cover that, or they
would do fundraising. They would let the community know that
were there was someone in the hospital that needed care
and they were providing it, and they would eat it
and it'd eat into their profits. And then you know,

(32:22):
we would try to, you know, do everything we could
we could to help that hospital survive. But then little
by little it became the idea that no, we're going
to provide all of these services. And so the social
safety net went from a very discreete very well defined
social safety net to virtually everything That's why the whole

(32:45):
idea about government run grocery stores is so scary to me,
because if my health care is a right, as they
like to say, well, my healthcare is dependent upon what
I eat. So why shouldn't the government control what I
eat to make sure that my health stays as good
as it can. I mean, poor old dragon before he
lost all of his weight. If we had government run

(33:06):
healthcare to that extending government run grocery stores, he would
have lost his waight a long time ago because he
would have been calorie deficient in terms of what he
was consuming every day. Well, anyway, on the floor of
the Senate, they're now invoking the Bible, and I want

(33:27):
you to hear from a senator who just happens to
be a minister, because I want to deconstruct it for
a minute.