Discussion on President Trump’s One, Big, Beautiful Bill

Okay, we're here at the White House to talk about a critical piece of legislation, the as the president's called it, the one big beautiful bill. Stephen, you were with the president and us on the campaign trail as the president traveled the country talking to voters and making commitments and promises on what he would deliver. We're now here with our first key piece of legislation.

How did we get here? How has he turned those campaign promises into actual text? Yes.

So the most important thing in politics in America is honoring the promises that you make to the American people. That sacred trust between the voter and the man they elect. In this case, the president of the United States.

I, like you, travel with the president all across the country, packed arenas, packed airport fields, packed stadiums. And in every one of those campaign rallies, he made a series of very specific promises that helped propel him to a landslide victory. No tax on tips.

No tax on social security. No tax on overtime. No tax you can deduct if you get an Americanmade car interest from your taxes.

Building the Golden Dome to provide a missile defense shield for the United States of America. Passing comprehensive border security and immigration enforcement legislation to both seal up the southern border on a permanent basis and get the people here who don't belong back home. also fighting radical transgender insanity.

Also unleashing American energy, deregulating our economy so we can have job growth, making the Trump tax cuts permanent. I could go on and on and on. Each and every one of those promises is codified in this legislation.

It is literally as though you took a campaign rally speech and turned it into a bill. The reason it is the big beautiful bill is because it is a campaign speech turned into a piece of legislation, which is why I'm so proud of the House Republicans for passing this bill and honoring our shared promise to the American people. So now it's headed over to the Senate and I mean you click through.

I mean, we have three pages here. Eliminates Medicaid for illegal aliens. Trump saving accounts for kids.

Slashes IRS funding. uh Green New Deal defunded, energy production unleashed, tariffs on Chinese built ships, you go on and on. Who benefits from this?

Well, first and foremost, the working and middle class people of this country benefit. For one, according to our estimates, you're going to see a $13,000 average increase in take-home pay for the typical family. $13,000 through both the combination of economic growth that this bill will unleash as well as the historic tax cuts that will be unleashed.

Again, you're talking about not only making the Trump tax cuts permanent, but the largest package of working class middle class tax relief that has ever been proposed. You combine that with unleashing American energy, getting rid of wasteful regulations, and also very importantly getting the illegal aliens out of the country who are driving down wages for working people. This is the most workingass bill that has ever been proposed.

I've been in what you know people call the conservative movement for my entire life. Since I was a child, since I was in high school, I never dreamed that we could have a bill as conservative, as transformative, as pro-American as this legislation is. This is the most populist pro-American bill.

This is the MAGA agenda in legislative form. I could not be prouder of the people, including the two men to my left, who worked with our closest allies in Congress, to make this bill into a reality. Well, that's great.

And so, Russ Vote, director of OMB, um I saw you on Will Kaine this week where your sister emailed in to make sure you pronounced your name, your last name right. So, Russ Vote. Um, no.

You know, one of the things obviously we talked a lot about last year and into this year was inflation and record high inflation under uh under Biden and there's been some efforts early on to to to address that. How does this piece of legislation address um the cost of living for the American people across the board? I just think to reiterate one of the points that Stephen made.

You have a bill that is so big on promises kept. Any one of the provisions in here would have been the kind of thing that would dominate the entire agenda for an entire year. And we have so many of them in the same bill.

It is fundamentally not a budget resolution. This is a an agenda setting agenda and promises keeping bill. from the the inflation side.

Uh let's look back to what Biden did, right? So Biden dramatically increased spending, scaled it, used COVID, we had already funded what was necessary to deal with the COVID pandemic and he dramatically expanded. And at that moment, you saw inflation really start to become an issue.

Uh they dramatically increased regulations. They sent energy prices escalating. And so when President Trump is running on the campaign trail, his inflationary uh uh efforts are aimed at those three issues, right?

Uh deregulate the economy, get people's prices down, uh get rid of high energy costs, American energy across the board. Uh this bill furthers that. And then of course in the the the spending driver and dealing with the Biden spending regime and pulling that back.

And this has historic levels of mandatory spending reforms uh in the const constituted as a work requirement and other reforms, but things that really drive our spending down. Uh and I think it's going to it's one of the reasons, not the only reasons, but it's one of the reasons we're back to uh having the lowest inflation in four years. Uh and we're seeing it drive down.

We'll be below the the Fed levels soon. And so this is on a trajectory that is exactly what he ran on and dealing with the Biden excesses. Stephen, you had a post on truth or on um X I suppose.

Uh largest tax cut and reform in history. Interest on car loans fully taxdeductible if the car is made in America. Fasttracks new energy projects and provides protections against future regulations.

Terminates the Green New Deal. Cuts 1. 6 trillion in net mandatory spending.

The most pro-American tax bill ever. as you were saying, jump off of what what Russ was talking about is how this addresses inflation and the cost of living for the average American person. Yes.

Well, so you me just listed some of the examples there, but every economic provision in this bill in part of this populist agenda that President Trump has led for a decade now is geared towards making life more affordable and more prosperous for working people. the ability to go to a car dealership, get a car loan, and deduct a 100% of that interest cost from your taxes. The kinds of deductions that normally have only been available to rich people, now are available to the middle class, to the working class in this country.

The ability to get energy prices down even lower than President Trump has already reduced them by creating a permanent structure for deregulating American energy and keeping it flowing long into the future. that's going to make life more affordable for everyone. Not just the the cost of driving, but the cost of heating, the cost of air conditioning, the cost of electricity, the cost of everything is going to go down as a result of this legislation.

The uh the the Trump bonus for families with new children, again, think about who's going to benefit disproportionately from that. It's not going to be rich people. It's going to be middle class people, workingclass people who have children are going to get a Trump savings account for that new child automatically when they're born.

and of course extending and making permanent the Trump tax cuts from the first administration that also disproportionately benefited the the middle and working class. Not to mention, of course, as we've already discussed, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on social security. All geared towards the people who came out in droves to elect President Trump.

There's so much to celebrate in this bill. And again, I I don't think it's even possible to convey sort of the point that Russ made. If any of these things was done on its own, this would be considered a historic victory for the movement, for the presidency, for the country.

In other words, if we had just did a bill that say just did no tax on tips, that would be people talk about that in 50 years, right? If Ronald Reagan had passed a bill in 1981 saying no tax on tips, there'd be 15 museums out there talking about the time that Ronald Reagan did no tax on tips. There'd be there'd be a constant reel on the History Channel about when Ronald Reagan did no tax on tips.

That's just one part of this bill. You know, take of course subject that I've talked a lot about with you and with many others on immigration and border security. This bill fully funds the entire wall across the entire southern border, land and river.

So again, you think about promises made, promises kept. Is there a bigger promise than having full complete upfront funding that Democrats can never take away? So in other words, it's there.

It's upfront. And by the way, it's paid for. Here's another point that isn't discussed very much at all.

The the immigration provisions in this bill are paid for by charging foreign nationals more money when they want to come to America. So, by raising the fees on foreign nationals who are seeking visas and other immigration benefits, we are paying for the wall for the ICE officers, for the border agents, for the pay raise that President Trump promised the ICE officers and the border agents. So we are literally paying for the defense of the homeland by increasing fees on those in other countries who want to come here.

So it's a win-win. So when you hear Stephen talk about it, obviously easy sell. So how could anyone vote no?

Let's get into the weeds a little bit. Um CBO, what's the CBO? How does it work?

What is the scoring mechanism? And why are people using it as a way to attack the bill? The Congressional Budget Office scores bills.

They have what we believe is an artificial unrealistic. What does it mean to score a bill? Uh you take a look at what the bill's provisions do and you take it and you apply it and compare it to current law and current policy and you say will this cost more?

Will this save more? Uh what should the impact be of the various provisions? Uh generally with CBO uh we have two main issues.

We have the first issue is that when they compare it to what is it is skewed and is artificial. So they make an assumption. They say all current spending which we're on on affordable glide pass, right?

They say that is extended into eternity. It's called a baseline. When they look at tax law, they don't do that.

They assume that if certain things have sunsets, even though those sunsets exist in spending, they that those sunsets exist in in taxes or revenue rates, that those are going to actually occur. And so when we just merely extend, and we're doing a lot more than just extend, but if at the at the general level, if we extend tax relief from 2017, they give us a $3. 7 trillion cost of which that's not new policy.

that is that cost was has been is already a part of the baseline. And so it's important when you're scoring something, when you're deciding how much something should cost, it should be as accurate as possible. When you adjust that, this bill actually reduces at least by $1.

4 trillion deficits and debt over 10 years, including all of the things that we do in this bill. it reduces and that is before the economic growth that we believe in this administration we will produce because that's the second big issue we have historically with CBO is that they do not believe that your policies will have more than a static approach to anything. We call this dynamic and it's typically in the tax side.

So, not only do they not account for the fact if you allow for a 60% tax increase on people because you haven't extended their tax rates, that might actually have a a poor negative uh economic impact, right? They don't they don't assume that. They don't assume the recessions uh the economic uh woes that would come from that.

But they also So, that's that's horrifying. But they also don't then assume that if you have policies like no tax on tips and no tax on overtimes that are encouraging people to stay and work more and have more productivity that that's going to lead to higher levels of economic growth than you would ordinarily assume. And so that really is the big argument right now that we're having with CBO.

And unfortunately it's not just CBO. It is all of the watchdog groups in this town who by the way are policy agnostic. So unlike this this president, his administration that are trying to do a lot of different things because we have made promises to the American people, the president has made promises to the American people.

They are looking at this through one small prism and they are saying by our artificial baseline this impacts the deficit. Not only are they wrong, but they are being irresponsible because we are not policy agnostic. The president ran and won a landslide making certain promises to the American people that need to be kept.

And this is a bill, not a budget resolution, mind you. This is not this is not a bill that's, you know, hey, what is our our full budget picture? This is a procedural bill that is allowed to get through the Senate and avoid the Senate filibuster in which you want to get as much of your agenda into it as possible and as a result certainly needs to be scored, but it's important that it be accurate.

Let me I want to break down some of this deficit stuff, some of the CBO issues because I think it's really important. Uh, believe it or not, I actually was on the uh I was a staff from the budget committee for two years. So for two years I had to learn everything there was to know about the Congressional Budget Office and scoring rules and budget rules.

So it's going to get a little bit wonky but these are really important points. So I want to pick up a little bit on what Russ said. So every year in at the end of the fiscal year September 30th all government funding expires.

It goes down to zero. Right? It goes down to zero.

So the um so if you were to do a score over spending over the next 10 years based on what is known as you know current law right there would be one year left of spending and then nine years of nothing. So you would have a year of spending out of 10. So if you were if you were scoring based on current law you would show basically almost no spending over the next decade because spending all goes to zero at the end of the fiscal year.

The Congressional Budget Office when they're projecting future spending assumes that more or less what you spent last year will be spent next year. Okay. Now take taxes.

Tax cuts most of the time because of reconiliation rules throughout most of the last you know number of decades have been on five or 10 year time horizons where they have to be extended and renewed and almost without exception they always are extended or renewed. It's just part of the law. So the middle class person is say paying 15%.

Um and that's say for 10 years and if Congress doesn't renew it it would go up to 25%. Without fail almost every time eventually Congress usually Republicans come in and they extend that tax rate. So under a under what is known as a um a uh a current law baseline CBO is not doing the same assumption it's doing with spending.

CBO is assuming that every single tax rate in America is going to surge up to um to what it was before the last Trump tax cuts. And so what what they're saying is merely because this bill among all the other provisions keeps the Trump tax cuts in place and continues them. They're saying the act of not raising taxes costs several trillion dollars, which is absurd.

It does not cost the government anything to maintain status quo tax rates. Like by definition, you cannot cost the government something by not raising taxes. Only a communist would make the argument that not raising taxes is stealing something from the government.

So the only honest way to do a baseline is to say what is Congress going to tax in a realistic scenario and what is Congress going to spend in a realistic scenario and any realistic scenario Congress is going to keep the tax rates from jumping up. So what this bill does on the tax side by locking in the current rates and then by cutting spending almost $2 trillion is it reduces the deficit over any realistic set of assumptions by almost $2 trillion. I know it was a very long explanation for getting there.

But the bottom line for everyone watching at home is this. When you see anyone online talking about the CBO deficit score, 100% of that is the CBO criticizing the tax cut. That is it.

So every reference to the deficit and CBO is 100% about your tax cut. It is not about spending. Spending in this bill is cut almost $2 trillion including through the largest welfare reform in history.

very long, very technical, took up a lot of time, but had to do it. No, I I think it's important and I don't think that people want to intend on t attacking the tax cut, but the CBO and the scoring mechanism is obviously convoluted and complicated and I think kind of get hope the budget director doesn't get all right explaining. I don't know.

U so not to continue the technicality but um James you've been owning this bill you've been working the hill both on the house congratulations getting helping getting it through the house um I know that that was um an important important lift an important part uh people on X and on social media are talking about single subject matter why don't you pass break this apart into a thousand different little bills and pass them that And you know, I think that to the point that Stephen made earlier, the reason you cannot do this is because we are doing a special process called budget reconciliation. The the Senate requires 60 votes to pass legislation. And the benefit of budget reconciliation, where we're reconciling the law with the congressional budget, is that you have a 50 + one vote threshold in the Senate.

The reason you put everything together and as much as you can and everything, all of as Stephen said, all of Trump's campaign promises, this campaign speech, and the covenant the president made with the American people turned into one big beautiful bill is because you have one bite at the apple and you have to execute absolutely as much as you can at that bite. And so for folks online saying, "Well, we should do short bills. This bill's long.

It's complicated. I'm finding different things that that maybe I don't like as much. The requirement of getting the president's agenda done is to put everything together into a single big beautiful piece of legislation and that's that that's what we've done here.

So So in that the the president has said he said on the campaign trail I don't know how many times he he said it in in interviews. Um he said it in office no cuts to Medicaid. And yet Democrats are doing what Democrats do.

the media is doing what the media does and says the president is trying to push Granny off a cliff and cut Medicaid. Can you unpack that and really explain what they're doing and why they're doing it? And so first of all, we're talking about Medicaid which is which is does not affect to the to in the main granny Medicare is the the the the healthcare program for seniors.

What we are doing with Medicaid and with other welfare programs is very simple. We are eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse using a Clinton era technique which in the past before uh the parties became so polarized had broad bipartisan support. And that is through work requirements.

And the work requirements are if you volunteer, go to school or work 20 hours a week, no one who does those things will lose any benefits. What we are focusing these programs on is the actual needy population that can't work, that's disabled, that has children at home who who need these benefits in order to to to you know continue and carry out their daily lives. That's what this bill focuses on.

It focuses on uh a historic historically bipartisan effective method for eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse in these programs. And we did it in the late 1990s. saved hundreds of billions of dollars and brought more people back into the workforce where they got better health care than uh is available through the government.

And we we think these reforms and the reform approach that we have done with with this bill is is precisely in that vein and will be successful in the same way that the 1990s reforms were. I mean, you talk about the 1990s, Senator Dick Durban, who happens to still be around, liberals, conservatives came together and said, "Let us put people back to work. " If we are going to solve the welfare mess for good, take people off welfare permanently, we need to put them to work.

Now, we're not even suggesting that. We're suggesting community service, going to school. These are all options.

And again, it's just 20 hours a week. It's not even sort of a full-time full-time requirement. So, let's go on then to no tax on social security.

Another campaign promise that the president made, another piece of leg legislation that's packed into this this reconciliation bill. How important is that? Look, I I think, you know, when you look at the tax bill and the tax section, what do people talk about?

What are people excited about? What do people are really interested in? It's those three campaign promises that the president made including or the four tips, social security, overtime, and uh uh car loans.

And with the big three, tips, social security, and and overtime, and I say big because that's the magnitude of them. What we're talking about here is a labor stimulus. We're bringing people off the sidelines into the workforce uh and and and making sure that people who do work more get paid more.

It's about enhancing the dignity and rewards of work. And we think that's going to bring people off the sidelines, bring people into the labor force, and and really create that economic surge that the president saw in 2019 and we'll see again as a result of this legislation. So So Russ, let's talk about cuts because one of the great efforts that the president has championed is Doge and the rooting out of waste, fraud, abuse, and it's been tremendously successful.

Now, the there's critics out there that say there's not enough cuts and the Doge cuts aren't aren't in um this reconciliation package. Why aren't they? To to James's point, this is a procedural reconciliation device to get through the United States Senate's filibuster.

And so, there are rules that are part of that. And that one of those rules is that discretionary spending. The most people would think about is what funds the bureaucracy.

When you talk about u the annual process about does the the government get funded or not that is all about discretionary appropriations to Steven's point yesterday. Why? Because if it doesn't pass it sunsets to zero that is something that u that can't be carried on a on a reconciliation bill period by law.

Uh, and so all of the Doge savings to deal with the USA ID or Department of Education to get woke and weaponized spending to get kind of the the CRT ideology, the rank wastefulness out of these agencies. All of that is stuff that has to be done with a different procedure of which we have many, many plans, initiatives, and tools to do so. We just sent up our first recision bill uh aimed at Corporation for Public Broadcasting, NPR, and USID cuts of 9.

4 billion dollars uh that we're working with Congress to pass. So we have uh hundreds of billions of dollars on the Doge side that we are working both with Congress and our own executive tools just to not spend the money on one side of the house while we do what there hasn't been even a conversation about doing in since 1997 of dealing with the mandatory spending which is on autopilot in law that can be done through reconciliation. And so there is this misperception out there that this is a budget bill that this is a budget resolution.

So, why wouldn't you account for uh all of your savings in there? Um, and there's a a legal reason for why we we have not been able to do that. I want to just pick up on what Russ said.

So, there's a process known as reconciliation. Again, all gets very technical and in that you're allowed to do savings on what is called mandatory spending. Mandatory spending is spending that is automatic and that doesn't expire.

So these would be things like Medicaid, things like food stamps. That's why we have the largest welfare reform in history in this bill. Another kind of spending is known as discretionary.

That's what funds the bureaucracy as Russ mentioned. Department of Education, Department of Labor, Department of Commerce, the federal workforce, federal grants. U that has to be cut through a process known as recisions.

It's a separate process. We're sending up recisions bills to codify all of these cuts. You can also make these cuts through the annual appropriations process that requires 60 votes.

Recisions requires 50 votes. This bill is not a spending bill. So, in other words, if you ask me how much if we wanted to do it, we couldn't, right?

We couldn't. If we wanted to, we couldn't. And but the flip side of that is not only can we not cut discretionary money in this bill, but this bill is not also responsible for new spending either.

There's no money in this bill to fund the Department of Education. There's no money in this bill to fund the Department of Labor. There's no money in this bill to fund the Department of Commerce.

There's no money in this bill to fund the entire architecture of the federal government. There's no money in this bill to fund the entire architecture of federal grains. So, this is again a thought experiment.

If you pass this bill and then said, "All right, we're done for the year. That's it. No more bills.

" Government funding would go down um like half overnight. the the in other words the the this bill is not responsible for funding government. This bill has two major fiscal provisions in it.

Reforms welfare and it cuts taxes. Two longheld Republican objectives. And and I I I I think it's important to to note too, I mean there's probably no bigger defendants or proponents than Doge than this team here.

And with as relating to this this reconciliation bill, if we wanted to, we couldn't, but we do want to and we will. It's just not through this vehicle. And we have we've sent that vehicle up to Capitol Hill, at least one of those vehicles, and we'll continue.

And the great thing is there's tremendous work that's been done by by Doge and there's tremendous savings that have been identified and it's going to take a meticulous and tireless effort. It's going to take the support uh the continued support of the American people. But this reconciliation bill is different than that.

And I think it's important to to understand that. James, where does this bill stand now? I know you had a bunch of uh the the Senate leaders in uh the White House yesterday talking through it.

Where are we? So cleared the House a couple of weeks ago, 215 214 uh with one present vote. Uh so very close vote in the House.

Uh in the Senate, um you know, we're we're having great conversations. The president's been incredibly involved. He's the best advocate.

He's the, you know, best salesman, best negotiator in the world. Best got the best closer that there is, right? And so, you know, I feel incredibly confident uh when I'm, you know, happen to be present for some of these conversations and and see the president and see the the impact that he has on these conversations.

We're sort of balancing different Senate equities. The reality is, and going back to what I said, 215 214, that's one vote. So, uh, you've got a very narrow pathway in the House.

We've got some senators with some strong opinions about which direction the bill should go, but the basic structure and features of the House bill have to remain. But we think we're very optimistic having great conversations with with committees across the United States Senate to ultimately keep this product. It's a product that we're excited about now.

We think what's going to come out of the Senate is a product we're even more excited about that's going to deliver on even more of the president's campaign promises. And you know, ultimately, you know, we think we're going to get this done and we're going to get this done uh in July and and and basically have a huge down payment on the extraordinary campaign promises that the president made in the 2024 election cycle. I think we should talk about what happens if this bill were not to pass.

So, number one, overnight, everyone's tax rates would go up 50, 60, 70%. Number two is the uh the funding for border and immigration security would never happen because you would have to then get it through a 60 vote process and Democrats are never going to give it to you. In fact, worse than that, Democrats will use the appropriations to starve ICE and starve border patrol out of funds to try to shut down the border and immigration enforcement.

You would also have a breach of what's known as the debt ceiling which would lead to u radical spiral up in interest rates which would then cause an an explosion in the deficit and debt. Other words the rise in annual and the rise in interest rates payments would go up exponentially which would cause deficits to go up exponentially which would cause interest rates to keep going higher and you would end up with a with a debt bomb like we've never seen before. So everything in this bill is a massive win for the conservative movement, for the president, for the MAGA movement, for the country.

The absence of passing this bill uh would be all those things that I just said and and many more. So to sum sum this up, I think to the Republicans in the House and obviously the Senate who campaigned on making America great again, this is your vote to do it. to the Democrats that are from districts and states that helped elect Donald Trump.

I'm thinking Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. This is a bill to honor the promise um or the demand from the voters that helped elect Donald Trump. This is your opportunity to deliver on something that truly is um and can be uniting and um and beneficial to to every American.

Uh so with that, I'd like to conclude. Thank you everyone for being here to try to work through the technical nature of a reconciliation bill, but more importantly of how it really delivers on behalf of the American people. Thank you.

Thank you.