John Gerardi Guest Hosts - The ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ Is a Massive Political Win for Trump

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The one big, beautiful bill has passed the House and
the Senate. It is going to President Trump for his signature,
which I believe is happening tomorrow. It's either tomorrow or
later today and tomorrow at five pm. Okay, So he's
going to sign it on the fourth of July. And
it is a massive political win for the President. It's

(00:22):
going to have massive political ramifications for individual members of
the House and Senate. Could have big time ramifications even
here locally for David Valadeo and others. It's going to
have big impacts on the medicaid program nationally. It's going
to have big impacts on immigration and money for immigration enforcement,

(00:45):
and several really big specific problems with immigration that could
hopefully be addressed. We are going to break it all
down here, not on the John Girardi Show. This is
the Trevor Carrey Show. John Girardi here for you today,
filling in on this lovely fourth of July holiday weekend.
Thank you all so much for tuning in. The phone

(01:06):
number if you want to join is five five nine
two three zero forty two forty two. That's five five
nine two three zero forty two forty two. All right,
So the House of Representatives passes the one big beautiful bill,
and I talked about it a little bit yesterday that
this is not the same OBBB that the that the

(01:26):
House voted on before. So basically the process this went
through was the House voted on it, then the Senate
voted on a slightly different version of it, and both
the House and the Senate have to vote for the
exact same bill language. So it went back to the
House and they just passed the Senate version, so there
was no further back and forth, no further pushing on

(01:48):
the Senate. I think President Trump wanted this done. He
wanted it done quickly. This is very much a thing
with President Trump. A bird in the hand is very
much It's very much worth two in the bush for him. Basically,
he bas he doesn't seem to get himself too caught
up in the minutia of you know, oh, but I

(02:12):
want you know, ninety nine percent of it's fine, but
I want this to be fixed, and I want that
to be fixed.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
He doesn't.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
He doesn't care about that. I think he'd much rather
have a thing done, a thing on his desk and
signed and done and completed. It's very much been his motto.
He doesn't get lost in the minutia. He kind of
tries to take this big picture approach. Now that doesn't
mean that the small stuff is unimportant, because this bill

(02:40):
is so big that the small stuff impacts hundreds of
millions billions and billions and billions of dollars worth of spending.
And that's important to know.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
Now.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
One of the big things I've been critical of with
the OBBB is sort of the lost opportunity represents for
social conservative priorities, and basically that the thing with the
OBBB is this. The reality is it's really hard to
pass normal legislation through the Congress. If you have a

(03:16):
majority in the House, that's fine, you can pass something,
But to get anything passed through the Senate is a
herculean effort. The two parties are very polarized against each other.
Members of one party or the other they might vote
against a measure purely to spite the party and the majority.

(03:39):
Like the Republicans introduce a bill idea. There might be
some Democrats who think it's a good idea, but they
don't want to give Trump or the Republicans the credit
for the idea, so they'll just vote against it, so
rather than get something done, they would rather vote against
it and deny the w to the party in power.
And there are Republicans will do this same thing, I'm sure.

(04:04):
So with that dynamic in place, to pass normal legislation
through the Senate, you need it's not just that you
need a majority for most kinds of legislation, you actually
need sixty votes to advance it in the Senate because
of the Senate's filibuster rule. So the idea behind the
Senate is that it's not the rough and tumble world

(04:28):
of the House of Representatives, where it sort of represents
democratic government. It's all proportional based on the country's population.
Everyone is on a two year term of office, so
theoretically the whole House of Representatives could go away and
get replaced by new people every two years, and so

(04:48):
they limit debate. It's sort of wild and free wheeling,
and it represents sort of the shifting moods and opinions
of the general public. The Senate is not supposed to
be that way. The Senate in its conception at the
time in the founding it was called the Senate. It
was clearly drawing off of the Roman Senate. Which meant
the council of old men. That's what senate means. Comes

(05:09):
from the Latin word senex, which means an old man.
So the senatus, the Senate was the gathering of all
the old guys, the old, wise, experienced guys. So there's
fewer of them. It isn't related to proportional representation. California
has as many senators as Wyoming does. In the original

(05:29):
conception of the constitution, senators weren't even directly democratically elected.
They were picked by the state legislatures of the various states. Anyway,
in the Senate, theoretically, debate can go on forever. There
are no time limits on debate. The only way you

(05:50):
stop debate is if sixty senators say, all right, that's enough,
let's just vote on this thing. But what everyone's realized is, okay, well,
we'll just not vote as part of the sixty to
stop debate, and then we can just block legislation. That way,
as long as we have forty one votes, we can
block anything. And both sides have favored this procedural rule

(06:15):
because both sides realize, well, this is a good way
to slow down the other side when we're in the minority,
and we will be in the minority someday. So most
laws don't get passed if they're at all controversial. Because
of this rule, most things don't pass. And you hear
this all the time, people complaining about how come the
presidency has become way too powerful. The presidency shouldn't be

(06:37):
so powerful. We shouldn't have to care so much about
who is president. Too much power has been concentrated in
the presidency. Congress should take back its proper role. Congress
should assert itself. Well, they can't. They can't because of
the filibuster rule. Congress is too narrowly divided. It's very
difficult for Congress to get sixty votes in favor of anything,

(06:59):
so stuff doesn't happen in Congress. So as a result,
the only way anything gets done is through reconciliation bills.
Reconciliation bills, it's basically a kind of bill. It's attached
to federal spending. It's parameters were sort of set a
long time ago, and basically the nature of it is

(07:22):
you only need a simple majority to pass it. It's
not subject to the normal filibuster rule. So what both
parties have been trying to do. Biden tried to do
this when he was in his first term and he
had the House in the Senate on his side for
his first two years. Trump is trying to do that
right now while he's got a Republican trifecta. Basically, the

(07:44):
goal is squash as much of the Trump agenda into
this one legislative vehicle as you possibly can. So it's
got stuff that relates to social conservative policies. It's got
stuff that relates to taxes, it's got stuff that relates
to border security, it's got stuff that relates to fiscal policy.
It's got all kinds of things spending military, this, that

(08:09):
the other. It's chock full of all kinds of stuff.
And what got the short shrift the social conservative priorities did,
of course, So the House version of the OBBBBB, the
House version of the obbb included a ten year defunding

(08:33):
of abortion providers, particularly Planned parenthoods. So basically what this
meant was the federal medicaid program is Planned Parenthood's biggest
source of federal funding. Right they get something like seven
hundred million dollars in federal funding. Most of it's from medicaid,
So basically medicaid is health insurance for lower income people.

(08:53):
The way Planned PARENTOED gets money is they get someone
comes into Planned Parenthood, they give them some kind of
service that person has. In California they have medical in
some other states they have some other version of medicaid.
The federal government pays Planned Parenthood for providing that service
in the form of an insurance reimbursement. So Planned PARENTOED
gets something like six seven hundred million dollars a year

(09:16):
from that. The House version of the OBBB was a
ten year defunding of Planned Parenthood for ten years. Were
not Planned Parenthood is kicked out of being eligible to
be a Medicaid accepting provider for ten years. No federal
money is going to go to plan Parentoid for ten years,

(09:36):
and that would have been devastating for Planned Parenthood. I've
actually been doing this sort of survey looking at all
the different Planned Parenthood affiliates and how much money they're
making or losing. A lot of Planned Parenthood clinics are
losing money nowadays. Planned Parenthood in Red States is burning
bleeding out money. They are a bunch of Red states

(09:58):
of limited legal abortion. Red states are trying to kick
Planned Parenthood out of their state medicaid programs. There's all
kinds of stuff that's happening where Planned Parenthood is losing money,
Like in Florida, their two Planned PARENTI affiliates are losing
like the two Planned parent affiliates are losing six million
dollars a year. They have budgets of about twenty something

(10:19):
million dollars, so they are bleeding money. If Planned Parenthood
lost out on all their federal funding for ten years,
it would be a near knockout blow to the organization nationally.
They can't sustain their operations without federal Medicaid reimbursement. A
ton of their clinics would close. Planned PARENTID was estimating

(10:41):
that they would have to shut down a third of
their clinics. They have six hundred clinics throughout the United States.
Now that didn't happen. Planned parenthod got defunded for one year.
For one year, they're going to lose about six hundred
and seven They're going to lose about seve hundred million
dollars for one year. And here's the thing. I think

(11:02):
they can sustain that. I think they can survive that.
A one year hit like that. A bunch of blue
states are going to try to make up the difference
in their states. California passed a little piggy bank of
money through a ballot initiative that we passed in twenty
twenty four. That's providing a little piggy bank of money
for Planned Parenthood. So I feel like it'll hurt, but

(11:22):
I think they could survive it. Heck, planned Parenthood one
year had Jeff Bezos's ex wife, Mackenzie Scott. She gave
them three hundred million dollars in one shot. So you
know it's that's the thing when Planned Parenthood, as bad
things happen to them, that's actually when they get the

(11:44):
most in donations, which leads one to question why they
need to keep getting federal money if they have these donors.
But I don't think those donors can sustain that level
of giving. They need that money, but alas No. What
happened is that two pro life senators, Rand Paul and
Tom Tillis decided that they couldn't vote for the OBBB

(12:06):
for various kinds of fiscal non social conservative reasons. Rand
Paul thought that it was too free spending. Tom Tillis
thought that the cuts to Medicaid were too deep. So
as a result, the OBBB that just passed today is
the Lisa Murkowski approved version of the OBBB. And she

(12:28):
is the single most important person in the whole process.
Why well, she's the lowest common denominator. Lisa Murkowski is
the most liberal Republican in the Senate. It's either her
or Susan Collins from Maine. Susan Collins from Maine decided
she wasn't voting for it, so Murkowski basically, you know,
the Republicans had forty nine votes and they were needing

(12:48):
to wait on. Hey, Lisa, you're gonna vote for this
because we lost Tom Tillis and we lost Ran Paul
and we lost Susan Collins. Your vote number fifty. We
need fifty ve votes. You're gonna vote for this. And
Lisa mccowski says, all right, here's what I want, and
she gives her laundry list of things she wanted, and

(13:08):
that included cutting down the planned parenthood defunding from ten
years to one. So there's a part of me that's
kind of bitter at that, that's, you know, fairly bitter
at this whole thing that the version of OBI we
have this once in a lifetime chance with a Republican

(13:29):
trifecta and a pretty sizable Republican majority in the Senate.
Fifty three votes is not bad nowadays. And we so,
I don't know if it was Trump himself or the
Trump team or whoever, they so alienated Tom Tillis and
ran Paul As to not get them on board, and
it required us to really cut down on social conservative

(13:53):
policy because this is the thing, This is the only,
maybe the only. There might be another opportunity that we'll
discuss next. This was our one bite at the apple, though.

Speaker 2 (14:05):
This is the trebor Chary Show on the Valley's Power Talk.

Speaker 1 (14:11):
Things in the OBBB that are quite good that relate
to certain major problems with the American immigration system, and
one of the root thorny problems that was driving a
lot of the immigration into the United States under the
BID during the Biden years was the whole asylum concept.

(14:35):
The whole concept of asylum where it's basically all right,
a normal immigrant is saying, all right, well, I live
in Germany, and you know, I don't like living in Germany.
Food is bland, people are humorless, So I want to
move to the United States. So I make an application

(14:59):
to come here, maybe on a work visa or something.
I go through the normal standard immigration processes. I don't
show up, though, until I ask permission first. Right, no
one's coming into America unless they get permission first. Well,
some people have to immigrate to the United States under
more dire circumstances. You're in Cuba and Fidel Castro is

(15:23):
gonna murder you and your entire family. So instead of
that outcome, you lash together with seaweed and old fifty
seven Chevy tires, a little raft for yourself, hop on,
and you float across the Atlantic Ocean, and you wash

(15:43):
ashore on the pristine, beautiful beaches of Miami, Florida. Well,
you have just immigrated to the United States, I guess
kind of, but you certainly didn't ask anyone's permission first.
You are an asylum seeker. So for people in that
kind of a situation, the United States set up the

(16:06):
asylum process basically, all right, we understand some people are
trying to flee to the United States and seek asylum
because they have some sort of dangerous circumstance wherever they
are that they can't really deal with, and they got
to get out of there. So we will set up
some kind of process for this person to have legal

(16:28):
residency in the United States. Now, the problem is people
keep showing up at the Mexico border claiming asylum, and
they seem to do so in a huge uptick only
when a Democrat is president and border security is more lax.

(16:51):
Why Well, because a lot of these people making asylum
claims aren't really seeking asylum. There's no grave in their
hometown in Mexico. There's no grave danger in their hometown
in El Salvador or wherever they're from. And also, by
the way, it's quite possible a lot of these people
are trying to claim asylum who are from Central America.

(17:16):
They walk through the several countries, including the entirety of Mexico,
to then try to lay make an asylum claim in
the US. Look, if it's just about your personal safety
rather than economic opportunities, then just stop in the nearest
safe country. Why are you coming all the way to
America and trying to claim asylum. You had like several

(17:37):
safe places you could have stopped at on the way, Like,
that's not what this process is set up for. This
process is set up for people who are in immediate
need and they're trying to get out. Now, maybe it's
someone who's in far away, a totally different part of
the world, and the only way they could get help

(17:57):
was from the United States. You know, they are all
kinds of differ in situations that someone might be in.
But you can kind of see, like if you walk
all the way through the state of Mexico, through the
country of Mexico, there are some places there that aren't
immediately dangerous to you. So we are flooded with people

(18:18):
making asylum claims because a lot of people figured out, well,
this is a good way to cut the line. I
can get legal status much more quickly with an asylum
claim than I can with a you know, with a
normal application for legal residency. Well, here's the thing. When
someone's making an asylum claim, you have to have someone

(18:40):
judge whether the asylum claim is legit or not. Okay,
you can't just tell everyone to go, oh, you're full
of you're full of baloney. There might be some people
with real legitimate asylum claims. So how do you do that. Well,
you need an immigration judge to adjudicate it. Well, we
don't have very many immigration judges. Federal law says that
those people have to be detail during the time frame

(19:01):
within which their asylum claim is being processed and reviewed. Well,
we don't have enough jail cells or holding cells. So
during the Trump administration Trump one point zero, the solution
was remain in Mexico. Okay, stay over there in Mexico
until we can adjudicate your case. And that was enough

(19:23):
of a deterrent for people that they just stopped trying
to make those asylum claims. Well, Biden had the solution of,
all right, well, you're supposed to be detained, so we're
just gonna give you parole, which we don't have any
legal unclear that they had any legal authority to do
that whatsoever, and just let you loose in the United States,
come back for your asylum claim hearing in six years

(19:43):
or you know, two, three, whatever, many years from now,
which people would then skip out on and not go
to because they were already in America, and that was
what they wanted all along.

Speaker 2 (19:54):
The assist that Tremor carry show on the Valley's Power.

Speaker 1 (19:57):
Dog, I want to talk about the big time risk
politically from the One Big Beautiful Bill to several Republicans
in blue or Purple District, which is the cuts to Medicaid,
and these are this is something that I care about
a lot myself, just because I've written about and thought

(20:18):
a lot about Medicaid and the problems with the program,
these sort of almost intractable problems. By the way, this
is John Girardi in for Trevor Carey today on The
Trevor Carey Show. Director at Right to Life of Central
California RTLCC dot org. And I was also the founder
of and do development for the Obria Medical Clinics of

(20:38):
Central California Obria three six five dot org. Obria three
six five dot org if you want to give to
it now. It was my experience starting Obria that that
made me really learn a lot about and care a
lot about the issue of Medicaid. So let's let's dig
into it, because this is going to be a really
relevant political issue, particularly for David Valadeo. So David Valadeo

(21:02):
is member of the House of Representatives who represents kind
of to Larry and King parts of Tilarry and King's counties,
and Congressman Valadeo, a huge percentage of his district is
covered gets their health insurance from California's version of the
federal Medicaid program Medical Medical is broken. It's a disaster.

(21:28):
The medical program has been expanded so much as far
as who is eligible to get health insurance from it,
and the pot of money we have to actually pay
for it is so inadequate relative to how many people
are covered that it results in this sort of unsustainable
economic situation. Basically, the way Medicaid works is taxpayers pay

(21:52):
their state and federal tax dollars to whatever their the
federal Medicaid program and their state's iteration of Medicaid. A
patient is covered by Medicaid, they go see a doctor
who accepts Medicaid patients. The doctor provides a service for
the patient. The doctor bills Medicaid. Medicaid gives the doctor

(22:14):
a reimbursement for his or her services, so the reimbursement
the doctor gets is funded by a combo of federal
and state dollars. The problem is in California we have
so many people on medical including Gavin Newsom's financially disastrous

(22:35):
decision to expand medical eligibility to illegal aliens, that the
reimbursement that a doctor can get for performing a service
is just unsustainably low. It's not enough money. In many cases,
you're losing money with every Medicaid medical patient you take.

(22:58):
And this is a huge reason why prenatal health care
provision in the Sanawaquin Valley is so screwed up that
it prompted me to start the Obria clinic. You basically
have a ton of lower income medical women, and you
don't have enough docs willing to take medical because they
lose money. It's getting to a point where many many

(23:20):
doctors in the old days would and in a variety
of different kinds of practices, but including obgyn care. Let's say, okay, well,
I'm gonna take some medical patients. I'm not gonna make
a lot of money, or I might break even or
I'll lose money on them. But you know, I'm also
taking a bunch of people with private insurance, and the
private insurance is going to reimburse me two or three
times better than medical does, and you know, they'll pay

(23:42):
for whatever costs I incur taking care of these medical patients.
But the amount of money these doctors lose is getting
so great, and there they can't really limit within their
practice how many medical patients they're going to take it's
not like you can We're only going to take five
medical patients and all the rest have to be private insurance.

(24:05):
You can't really do that, And so they don't want
to risk their whole practice being overwhelmed by medical and
then they lose money. So the whole structure of the system,
it's incentivizing docs to do either only medical these weird
only medical practices where you know, they also lose a
ton of money doing gynecology services. So they're able with

(24:26):
a specific California program like to set up a practice
where it's only medical only for ob and you pump
out babies basically one guy delivering fifty babies in a month,
so you have high volume with additional subsidization from the
government that you're able to get if you're kind of
setting up your practice only for this. But a lot

(24:48):
of doctors don't want to handcuff themselves to that kind
of a practice, so you have fewer and fewer doctors
able to care for more and more people. That's not
going to work. And if you've got a hospital or
a clinic or something where the huge, overwhelming majority of
the patient population is medical and you're losing money on

(25:12):
each patient or barely breaking even on each patient. Guess what,
your hospital is going to go out of business, which
is exactly what happened to Madera Community Hospital. Why did
Maderia Community Hospital go out of business? Miderica? There were
a lot of different reasons why, but one of the
main reasons was like something like sixty something percent of
their patients was were medical. Now, Valley Children's can sustain

(25:33):
that because of huge donor backing the Valley Children's has
and huge investment income the Valley Children's gets. That's why
they paid Todd CenTra Pack all that money. Remember all
those news stories about oh, it's terrible, valid Children's Hospital,
the most successful hospital in the whole San Joaquin Valley.
Valley Children's Hospital is paying its CEO too much. It's terrible. Well,

(25:58):
he's doing a really, really good job at the hospital,
making money. It's the only hospital that's made it's the
only it's the best run hospital in the valley. Okay,
so yeah, they're paying him a lot. Here he is
taking care of accepting everybody, not caring if they're medical

(26:18):
or not. The hospital is still doing well. Yeah, I'd
pay him three million dollars or whatever. Whatever the heck
it is, they pay him all right. So this is
the fundamental problem with medical is the reimbursement that you
get as a doctor for providing a service to a
Medicaid or medical patient is too dang low. And it's
in large part because the Medicaid program has wildly expanded,

(26:42):
both at the federal level and the state level, to
cover too many people, more people than the program was
ever designed to cover. The original idea behind the Medicaid
program was that it was supposed to cover people who
are otherwise not really able to find work for themselves
and therefore health insurance coverage pregnant women, the disabled, children,

(27:11):
certain classes of elderly folks that maybe it's not quite
the same crowd that's covered by Medicare or something, but
those were the so called legacy patient populations that Medicaid
was originally designed to protect or to cover, and it's
turned into because of how Medicaid got expanded under Obamacare,
Medicaid turned into just health insurance for lower income people.

(27:36):
So one of the main things the House what the
OBBB does is it says, hey, listen, if you're an
able bodied adult, we're gonna have some work requirements before
you can get Medicaid, right, not kids, not disabled people,
but for able bodied adults, with some exceptions in certain

(28:00):
kinds of categories of like moms and things like that. Basically,
you gotta work eighty hours in a month, work eighty
hours a month in order to qualify for Medicaid, which
is not a high bars. It's part time work twenty
hours a week. Now, there was some other stuff that

(28:23):
David Valadeo was particularly fighting to keep funded within the
Medicaid program, specifically in order to protect rural hospitals from
going out of business like Madera Community did. He was
able to double the amount from twenty five billion to
fifty billion for the Rural Health Transformation Program to help

(28:43):
support rural and other at risk hospitals in his district. Now,
it is still going to cut Medicaid, and this is
where politically things get dangerous for David Valadeo especially. The
only thing people are going to hear is David Valadeo

(29:03):
voted to cut medical that's it. And people will say
that's the biggest cut to Medicaid in history. Well, yeah,
because the program has only ever grown, no one's ever
cut it. Of course, it's the biggest. A one dollar
cut to Medicaid would be the biggest cut in Medicaid's history.
So Valadeo's going to get hit with you cut Medicaid.

(29:28):
Sixty four percent of your district is on medical. You
cut medical. And Rudy Sallas is already licking his chops
to run again against David Valadeo in twenty twenty six
for that House seat. And David Valadeo has lost this
House seat before he lost it in twenty eighteen. And
why did he lose in twenty eighteen because in twenty
seventeen he voted for another Republican reconciliation bill that involved

(29:51):
cutting Medicaid, involved cutting medical. So that is I think, politically,
where the big risk is, and it is a thing
I'll admit I am a little afraid about some of
the changes to how much the federal government is going

(30:11):
to match for how much federal money is going to
match how much state money. I'm worried for the sake
of my own clinic about is that going to adversely
harm our clinic? I think, though I find the work
requirement for able bodied people to be pretty darn reasonable.

Speaker 2 (30:31):
This is the Trevor Carry Show. On the Valley's Power Talks.

Speaker 1 (30:35):
Beautiful bill passes, and it thereby kind of cements the
Trump legacy for the first term. Sort of want to
take a step back here. A lot of the thoughts
and predictions about the OBBB and when it would actually
get done. A lot of people thought it wasn't even
going to get done until end of the year, that

(30:59):
we'd be going through this process for many more months.
And the fact that Trump was actually able to get
this thing introduced, negotiated, agreed upon past in a matter
of only you know, not even six months, is a

(31:20):
pretty significant accomplishment. And I'm wondering about sort of the
economic and other effects of it. So it seems like
Trump is sort of over his little spout of his
various tariff efforts. I mean, maybe he's not totally over it,
but it was not met warmly by the markets. The

(31:43):
stock market has done much better lately since the whole
tariff controversy has sort of died down. Trump is riding
now on the waves of two straight big ws for him,
a fairly successful result to this limited Iran conflict. He

(32:03):
was able to sort of thread this needle of kind
of making everyone happy. People who both wanted some intervention
in Iran and those who didn't want US involved in
a war, a long term war by destroying Iran's nuclear capability,
but also not dragging us into a big, long war
that seems to have been quite successful. And now he's

(32:26):
passed his signature. I mean, this is perhaps the single
biggest policy achievement of either of his two presidencies. Really,
he was able to get the tax cuts in his
first term, but this is, I mean, this might be bigger.
It basically solidifies his own tax cuts from his first

(32:51):
term and does a bunch more and builds the one
big beautiful that builds the wall, does a ton of
what he wants to do with him mimigration enforcement. I mean,
from a political standpoint, this is kind of Trump's kind
of crowning moment. I'm not sure if it gets much

(33:13):
better than this, And it's clear that he is the
decisive figure in the Republican Party and kind of the
decisive man in American politics, the most significant American of
the decade. But it's also this, I mean, a lot
of people were saying, oh, Mike Johnson did such an
amazing job shepherding the Republicans No, he didn't.

Speaker 2 (33:36):
The assistant Trevor Jerry show on the Valley's Power Talk