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|---|---|---|
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News Congressional reporter Max Cohen talks about the latest developments as Congress considers the President's Big Beautiful bill. | |
| And Christian Science Monitor Washington Bureau Chief Linda Feldman on the White House News of the Day and a preview of the week ahead. | ||
| Also, documentary writer, producer, and correspondent Martin Smith on the new PBS frontline film, Syria After Assad. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal is next. | ||
| Join the conversation. | ||
| Mr. President, we owe it to the American people, and I owe it to the people of North Carolina to withhold my affirmative vote until it's demonstrated to me that we've done our homework. | ||
| We're going to make sure that we fulfill the promise and then I can feel good about a bill that I'm willing to vote for. | ||
| But until that time, I will be withholding my vote. | ||
| After a weekend in Washington, the Senate is preparing for a final vote on President Trump's budget bill, his so-called big, beautiful bill. | ||
| But do Republicans have the votes? | ||
| We want to hear from you this morning ahead of the Senate proceedings. | ||
| You can dial in this morning, Republicans at 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can also give us your thoughts on the so-called Big Beautiful bill in a text message at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Or post your comments on facebook.com slash C-SPAN or on X with the handle at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Good morning, everyone. | ||
| On this Monday morning, the Senate is set to gavel in at 9 a.m. Eastern Time, and you'll be able to watch our uninterrupted coverage over on C-SPAN 2, our free video mobile app, C-SPANNOW, or online at c-span.org. | ||
| Ahead of that Senate session, though, this morning, we want to hear from all of you and get your thoughts on the president's budget bill. | ||
| Do they have the votes after a rare weekend session here for the U.S. Senate? | ||
| Republican Senator Tom Tillis, who you heard at the top, Republican of North Carolina, on the floor Sunday saying he is opposing this legislation. | ||
| He voted no on moving forward on this legislation on Saturday, along with Senator Ram Paul, who has also said he is going to oppose the bill along with all of the Democrats. | ||
| They are united in opposition, the Democrats. | ||
| The senators to watch today are Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Republican Senator from Alaska, all these Republicans, Senator Bill Cassidy and Senator Susan Collins. | ||
| Republicans with a 53-47 majority can only afford to lose three Republicans. | ||
| Do they have the votes to pass the so-called big beautiful bill? | ||
| What do you want these senators to do? | ||
| Do you want them to vote no or yes? | ||
| There are the lines on your screen. | ||
| Start dialing in. | ||
| We'll take that conversation here for the first hour, today's Washington Journal, and then we'll be joined by a reporter from Capitol Hill, who covering Capitol Hill, to give us the latest. | ||
| Let's begin with the front page of the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| GLP fights it out over Trump mega bill. | ||
| Splits in the Senate on Medicaid deficit strain effort to pass this legislation quickly. | ||
| The Senate geared up Sunday for an all-night session of debate and amendment votes on the GOP's big beautiful bill after Republicans narrowly advanced the measure in a 51-49 vote that set up more push-and-pull before final passage. | ||
| The 940-page legislation is driving a wedge between the GOP's two wings just as the party is racing to pass the measure this week. | ||
| Proponents maintain that the opportunity to pass President Trump's core agenda items and pressure from Trump on holdouts would propel the package over the finish line in the Senate, where the GOP has a 53-47 majority. | ||
| Front page of the Washington Times this morning. | ||
| Trump's big beautiful bill teeters in the Senate. | ||
| Republicans split before a crucial vote. | ||
| Senate Republicans are on schedule to pass President Trump's Big Beautiful bill on Monday, but whether enough votes exist to do so is a nail biter. | ||
| At least half a dozen Republicans have not committed to supporting the massive tax and spending package, and two are solidly in the no camp. | ||
| As we said, those are GOP Senators Tom Tillis and Ram Paul, solidly in the no camp. | ||
| We want to know from you, what do you want these senators to do this morning when they come in at 9 a.m.? | ||
| Now, it could be a long day in the U.S. Senate. | ||
| They're going to convene at 9 a.m. Eastern Time and they're going to begin unlimited amendment debate, a so-called voter rama that could stretch into the evening today and possibly meaning a vote on final passage does not happen until Tuesday. | ||
| We will have gabble a gabble coverage on C-SPAN 2. | ||
| Wall Street Journal this morning GOP declares tax cut extensions are free. | ||
| Republicans are waving a $3.8 trillion magic wand over their tax and spending mega bill, declaring that their extensions of expiring tax cuts have no effect on the federal budget. | ||
| The unprecedented maneuver is a crucial part of the GOP plan to squeeze permanent tax cuts through Congress on a simple majority vote in the coming days. | ||
| Republicans are expected to endorse the accounting move in a procedural vote early today. | ||
| To dodge the Senate filibuster rule, which typically requires 60 votes to advance legislation, Republicans are using the fast-track reconciliation process, which forbids bills from increasing deficits beyond the 10-year budget window and needs only a simple majority. | ||
| Rather than use standard congressional accounting, Republicans are saying that extensions of tax cuts set to lapse December 31st don't count toward budget deficits the same way that new tax cuts do, because they are just continuing current policy. | ||
| According to the CBO, that assumption turns the Senate's bill from a $3.3 trillion deficit increase that can't pass through reconciliation into a $508 billion deficit decrease that can. | ||
| That debate on the Senate floor yesterday with Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, chair of the budget committee steering this legislation through the Senate, here's what he had to say. | ||
| If you do what I have decided to do, make the tax cuts permanent and you implement these reforms to Medicaid in other areas, you will, over the next 10 years, reduce the deficit by $507 billion. | ||
|
unidentified
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That's CBO, not me. | |
| Now, how do you do that? | ||
| You grow the economy and you begin to control spending in a common sense way. | ||
| Most people can relate to that because they do it all the time. | ||
| People at home sometimes have to work extra to meet the needs of their family and they have to tighten their belt. | ||
|
unidentified
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So what have we achieved here in the one big beautiful bill? | |
| We're going to make your border as secure as it possibly can be and never go back to open borders. | ||
| We're going to put in place border security measures to keep it secure. | ||
| We're going to make the tax cuts permanent so your taxes do not go up in December of this year, and we're going to add additional pro-growth policies to help our economy. | ||
| Senator Lindsey Graham on the floor arguing that he had the right as the budget chair to do this budget gimmickery to say that the legislation would reduce the deficit rather than adding to it. | ||
| Now Senator Chuck Schumer came to the floor with his own chart yesterday. | ||
| Here's what he had to say. | ||
| Earlier today, my colleague from South Carolina came to the floor with a pretty interesting looking floor chart where he claimed that his bill somehow reduced the debt by $500 billion. | ||
| What a joke. | ||
| The budget chair respectfully needs to check his math because somehow Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the budget committee, said that his bill reduces the debt by $500 billion. | ||
| The budget chair, respectfully, check your math, Chairman Graham, because not one hour ago, the JCT confirmed this bill does not reduce the debt, it explodes it. | ||
| It explodes it. | ||
| That's what it does. | ||
| Here's what his chart should have looked like. | ||
| $45 trillion deficit explosion. | ||
| According to the JCT, the Republican bill explodes the debt by $4.5 trillion, as this chart, drawn slightly better than Lindsey's, shows. | ||
| For those keeping score at home, my colleague got his math wrong by a whopping $4 trillion. | ||
| All this, all this, just so billionaires are rewarded while millions lose their health care break. | ||
| $4.5 trillion deficit explosion. | ||
| Senator Chuck Schumer, a Democratic leader on the House floor yesterday responding to Republican Senator Lindsey Graham dueling charts. | ||
| So who do you believe on this so-called big beautiful bill? | ||
| Will it reduce the deficit, as Lindsey Graham is saying, because these tax cuts are still in place? | ||
| They are currently the policy and they are extending them, making them permanent. | ||
| Or do you agree with the Congressional Budget Office and Democrats there who said this is going to make the deficit explode? | ||
| Over on the House side, the legislation has to go back to the House after the Senate gets its approval if they can this week before it goes to the President's desk. | ||
| So the House Freedom Caucus, the conservative group over there, putting out this tweet yesterday. | ||
| The House bill added $72 billion to the deficit with interest costs included. | ||
| The Senate version adds $1.3 trillion to the deficit. | ||
| And they say that's 1,700% more, even without interest costs. | ||
| It is a $651 billion over our agreed budget framework. | ||
| So the Conservative House Freedom Caucus raising the red flag on these deficit numbers. | ||
| Who do you agree with? | ||
| Doug in Ohio, Independent, good morning to you. | ||
| You're up first. | ||
| What do you think about this legislation? | ||
|
unidentified
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I think it's a big, ugly bill. | |
| I'm going to be honest. | ||
| You know, what Trump's been doing, last time he was in office, he raised a debt $8 trillion. | ||
| And the man's going to be worse this time. | ||
| I mean, between his Gestapo tactics and his stormtroopers on the streets and running this bill right up America's, you know, wild, he's destroying our country. | ||
| We've got to get this avagard out of there before he's dangerous, you know. | ||
| And this big, ugly bill should never pass. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| All right, Doug, are you, have you ever voted for a Republican? | ||
| You're calling on the independent line. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, I have. | |
| Okay, yes, I have. | ||
| In 2016, I thought, all right, Fort Donald, but after he came out with that Jews will not replace the speech, and then he said there was good people on both sides. | ||
| I'll never vote for one again that supports such racist, anti-Semitic attitudes in life. | ||
| That's just the way life is right now. | ||
| My family was always understood. | ||
| Doug, we'll go to Juliet, who's in Chicago, Democratic caller. | ||
| Juliet, your party's opposed to this budget bill by Republicans. | ||
| What do you think of it? | ||
|
unidentified
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I think that it is so horrible, this bill, because the debt will explode. | |
| We've seen it before with Trump. | ||
| We've seen it. | ||
| We've felt it. | ||
| But the biggest problem I have is that hundreds of thousands of people in this country are going to lose their health care. | ||
| That is something that everybody gets to start to think about to the simple fact. | ||
| The sicker our people become, what are we going to become? | ||
| I'm on Medicare, and I still feel for the people who are younger than me and are working and can't afford health care. | ||
| So they go, and this is what is going on. | ||
| They always wanted to destroy Obamacare, right? | ||
| But Medicaid, God help us all. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right, Juliet in Chicago, there, Democratic caller, talking about the safety nets. | ||
| You heard from Democrats in the House and now in the Senate debating this legislation. | ||
| They have centered their arguments on these safety net programs. | ||
| Front page of the Washington Post GOP plan would deliver big cut to the U.S. safety net. | ||
| It says that the tax bill centers on making permanent large tax cuts for individual taxpayers, extending the cuts that Republicans first enacted under President Donald Trump's first term. | ||
| The bill includes an increase to the standard deduction claimed by most taxpayers, rate reductions for most U.S. households, and a partial version of Trump's plan to end taxes on tipped wages, among other provisions. | ||
| But it offsets these expensive tax cuts in part through what several experts said may prove to be the most dramatic reductions in safety net spending in modern U.S. history. | ||
| While last-minute changes to the bill text made precise estimates impossible, the legislation appears on track to cut Medicaid by about 18% and food stamps by 20%. | ||
| Alan in Washington State, Republican. | ||
| Alan, good morning to you. | ||
| What do you say about this bill? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, I think you ought to start telling the truth about it. | |
| When they passed the tax cuts last time, revenue went up. | ||
| Don't talk about the taxes. | ||
| Talk about the revenue. | ||
| The revenue went up. | ||
| It's always gone up. | ||
| And these guys that talk about taxes only helping the rich, name me one rich person that draws tips or works for overtime. | ||
| If they can do that, then they're pretty smart, but I don't think they can. | ||
| And as far as Jeffreys goes, it's a good thing they didn't tell him where the bombs were going. | ||
| He'd have probably called CNN and then called Iran. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Alan there, Washington State. | ||
| Steve's an independent in Ridgeway, Pennsylvania. | ||
|
unidentified
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Steve, what do you think of the big, beautiful bill? | |
| I think the big, big, beautiful bill should pass. | ||
| You know, we're going to get the professional caller in, usually from the Democrat side, that will say the same old tired talking points, that it's going to hurt people of color. | ||
| It's going to hurt women and children. | ||
| Kids are going to starve. | ||
| In the meantime, that's what they say time after time after time again. | ||
| And it gets old. | ||
| It is nonsense. | ||
| You know, Republicans and independents are not for destroying the environment as much as they want everybody to believe and why they continue to talk the same memes over and over again. | ||
| So I want it to pass because like Donald Trump told the black voters back in 2016, what have you got to lose? | ||
| Give me a shot. | ||
| I say we go for it. | ||
| So Steve, you say give the president this legislative victory is your message to these Senate Republicans as they get ready at 9 a.m. Eastern time to gabble in. | ||
|
unidentified
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Absolutely. | |
| That's what I believe. | ||
| All right. | ||
| What do you make of the senators? | ||
| What do you make of the senators who have not committed? | ||
|
unidentified
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I think they should get on board. | |
| Sometimes you have to do you have to put your grandstanding aside. | ||
| You know, one of the things that I find really ironic is that you look at Moran Paul and Tillis and how they're hailed as heroes now by the Democrats because they're going against Trump. | ||
| And John Fetterman going against what they want is he's now the bane of the Democratic Party. | ||
| So what, you know, let me bounce this off of you because this is the Wall Street Journal opinion pages this morning. | ||
| Trump puts the Senate in play. | ||
| And this is what they write. | ||
| The GOP has a 53-47 majority now, but Susan Collins always has a tough race in Maine if she decides to run again. | ||
| Democrats are targeting Joni Ernst in Iowa. | ||
| In the Suicide Isn't Painless department, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is challenging GOP incumbent John Cornyn. | ||
| Mr. Paxton may be the only Republican who could lose in Texas given his record of harassing business with lawsuits, impeachment, and other embarrassments. | ||
| The GOP pickup opportunities are few. | ||
| So with Mr. Tillis' departure, the Senate is in play for 2026. | ||
| Oh, and on Saturday, GOP rep Don Bacon said he won't run for re-election in his swing Omaha seat. | ||
| That's likely a game for Democrats in the House. | ||
| Says Tillis and Bacon didn't help themselves by echoing Democratic attacks against the GOP's very modest Medicaid changes. | ||
| But when Mr. Trump and GOP leaders haven't helped them or the party by failing to make the moral and fiscal case for those reforms, GOP legislative reforms will have no chance if Democrats take the House in 2026. | ||
| And if they also take the Senate, forget about confirming another Supreme Court nominee, the Trump presidency will be dead in the water. | ||
| Steve, do you think the President and Senate Republican leadership, House Republican leadership, did enough to sell these reforms and help out people like Senator Tillis, Senator Susan Collins, Senator Lisa Murkowski? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think that sometimes, I don't like the often quote movie lines, but there's a movie, Remember the Titans, and when the all-American linebacker comes on her defensive end and tells the coach that sometimes you got to let a guy go. | |
| Sometimes we just need to clean house, and we don't need Susan Murkowski, who inherited her senatorial seat from her father and the likes of that to continue to throw mud on what is usually a good plan. | ||
| Partisanship, this bipartisanship horse, pucky, that people like to talk about, is nothing but a cover-up for bad law. | ||
| Calling something bipartisan and thinking that somehow it's automatically and magically a good bill or a good law because a couple of Republicans and a couple of Democrats worked on it is nonsense. | ||
| Bad law is bad law. | ||
| We need good law. | ||
| We need people to sometimes we need to pull together. | ||
| And right now, the Republicans got to pull together or it's going to be impeachment part three, and it is going to be nonsense and it's going to drag the world down. | ||
| We need strong leadership in America, and we have it right now. | ||
| Steve, what do you say to the conservatives who are worried about the deficit? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Don't worry about it. | |
| There's been no deficit problems in the, you know, I mean, the deficit, it's always going to be there. | ||
| I'm 66 years old and there's been deficits my entire life. | ||
| And there's going to be deficits for until I die. | ||
| Do they really matter? | ||
| Do they really matter? | ||
| You know, I'm not an economic expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I question very often: do these deficits really matter? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Steve there in Pennsylvania, Independent, he says, give the president a legislative win. | ||
| Front page of the New York Times: Senate tax bill could lift the debt by $3.3 trillion. | ||
| This is what Andrew Duran writes. | ||
| The cost of the Senate bill, which Republicans roiled out overnight on Friday and were still shaping on Sunday, far exceeds the $2.4 trillion cost of the version passed in the House, where lawmakers had insisted that the overall price of the bill not substantially change. | ||
| The Senate Republicans still move forward with a number of costly changes to the bill, including making prize tax breaks for business and permanent for businesses a permanent feature of the tax code. | ||
| With roughly $29 trillion in debt currently held by the public, the budget office had already expected the government to borrow another $21 trillion over the next decade, meaning the Republican bill would make an already dire fiscal forecast worse. | ||
| And the initial estimate of a cost of $3.3 trillion for the Senate bill is an undercount because it does not include additional borrowing costs that could push the bill's overall addition to the debt closer to $4 trillion. | ||
| Let's listen to Senator Ram Paul on the floor of the Senate. | ||
| He is opposed to this legislation for this very reason. | ||
| Here's what he had to say. | ||
| In deciding whether to vote for the big, not-so-beautiful bill, I've asked a very specific question. | ||
| Will the deficit be more or less next year? | ||
| The answer, without question, is this bill will grow the deficit. | ||
| The federal government has fancy formulas and hundreds of wonky accountants who inform us of their projections over 10 years. | ||
| But you often can't trust these projections. | ||
| In an excellent piece written by the Foundation for Economics and Education entitled The CBO's Projections Are Worse Than Useless, Eric Schuler writes, Long-term analysis and language is commonplace in U.S. national politics, but it achieves no useful outcome. | ||
| It confuses far more than it clarifies. | ||
| It does not provide accurate estimates of long-term results. | ||
| It does not improve the average voter's understanding of policy effects. | ||
| And it gives politicians a means to claim they are being fiscally responsible without actually exercising any prudence whatsoever. | ||
| Sometimes the predictions are off because a new Congress is elected and changes the law. | ||
| Eric Schuler writes that for any projection of a 10-year budget to be accurate, the Congressional Budget Office has to assume that the law won't change for 10 years, even as most of the politicians that make the laws risk being replaced every two years. | ||
| And all of them advocate for changes of one stripe or another. | ||
| Schuler states that few in Washington will admit Congress has a knack for starting any proposed cuts in the later years while letting spending run wild in the immediate future. | ||
| Sometimes these predictions are off by a trillion dollars or so because the economy grew more slowly or more quickly than anticipated. | ||
| Bruce Thompson, a former Senate aide and assistant secretary of treasury, writes, The Congressional Budget Office miscalculated the deficit last year by a trillion dollars. | ||
| So in deciding whether to vote for any big, monstrous bill, it helps to ask the right question. | ||
| To me, the most pertinent question is: how will the bill affect the deficit in the next year? | ||
| Currently, our deficit is estimated to be a little under $2 trillion this year. | ||
| What will happen to the debt in 2026 if this bill passes? | ||
| Well, using the math most favorable to the supporters of the bill, referred to as the policy baseline, the deficit in 2026 will still be $270 billion more than this year. | ||
| So even using the math, even using the formulas that the supporters of the bill like, the deficit will grow by $270 billion next year. | ||
| That's just not good if you profess to be fiscally conservative. | ||
| Senator Ram Paul on the floor arguing against the president's so-called big beautiful bill. | ||
| He is a no vote, along with Senator Tom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina. | ||
| The two of them voted with the Democrats in opposition to moving forward on this bill on Saturday, and the two yesterday saying that they are voting no on final passage as well. | ||
| Senator Tillis also, after he voted no on moving forward and the president threatened a primary challenge to him, he then announced on Sunday that he would not seek re-election. | ||
| The Senate will convene at 9 a.m. Eastern Time this morning and we will of course have gabble-gabble coverage over on C-SPAN 2 on our free video mobile app C-SPANNOW or online on demand at c-span.org. | ||
| Senate Republicans and the president can only afford to lose three of their own because they have a majority of 53 to 47. | ||
| It could mean that JD Vance is called in to break a tie vote. | ||
| You can watch all of the debate and the voter rama, which begins at 9 a.m. Eastern Time over on C-SPAN 2. | ||
| The so-called Votorama unlimited number of amendments in debate could mean that a final passage on this legislation happens late into the evening, possibly even stretching into Tuesday, depending on the stamina of the senators who have been here all weekend long. | ||
| Jean in Wisconsin, Democratic caller, what is your message to these senators today? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Vote no. | |
| This and how come, Gene? | ||
| Well, I'll tell you. | ||
| Everybody's been talking about the deficit. | ||
| They've been talking about Medicaid, which will also run over into Medicare. | ||
| I believe as time goes by, it's going to get Social Security, you know, all the medical, the educational piece of this. | ||
| But buried deep in this, it's going to attack our voting rights. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And if this becomes law, President Trump can delay or cancel our elections. | |
| So of course, the Republican senators, the House of Representatives, what do they have to worry about? | ||
| Nothing. | ||
| They're guaranteed to come back in. | ||
| Well, we won't have a vote, so they'll just stay in. | ||
| All right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They're taking our vote away. | |
| Jean in Onalaska, Wisconsin, their Democratic caller, she says, buried in this 940-page bill is voter legislation. | ||
| Jean's concerns there from Wisconsin. | ||
| After the Senate votes on final passage of this bill, and if they can get it approved, it then goes back to the House for another round of voting over there before it can get to the president's desk. | ||
| Republicans and the president have set a deadline of this Thursday to get it to the president so he can sign it into law before the 4th of July holiday. | ||
| The senators to watch today, as we said, Senator Lisa, these are Republicans, Senator Lisa Murkowski, Senator Bill Cassidy, and Senator Susan Collins. | ||
| From the Washington Times reporting, only two other Republicans up for reelection in 2026, Senators Collins of Maine and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, are undecided in how they will vote on final passage. | ||
| Mr. Cassidy has already drawn primary challengers who say he has not sufficiently supported the Trump agenda. | ||
| The political dynamics in Maine would make it difficult for a further right Republican to unseat Ms. Collins. | ||
| Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Mike Lee of Utah and Rick Scott of Florida are also uncommitted to supporting the bill and are not up for reelection in 2026. | ||
| Ms. Collins and Ms. Murkowski and Mr. Cassidy, to a lesser degree, said the Senate bill goes too far in cutting Medicaid and other benefit programs. | ||
| The other three want the opposite, further cuts in federal spending. | ||
| The Republican Party split on how to move forward this legislation. | ||
| You can bet that these senators will be offering amendments when the Senate convenes at 9 a.m. Eastern Time to make this legislation more palatable to them and possibly secure their vote. | ||
| Tune in to Gavilca Gavil coverage on C-SPAN 2 starting at 9 a.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| David in Tip City, Ohio and Independent, David, good morning. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| What do you think of the bill, David? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I watched that reading all day long, believe it or not. | |
| And what disturbs me is many, many times I heard them make references to past legislation where they said, scratch this and replace it with this other thing and have no way of knowing what they was doing with all that stuff and how it's going to affect anything in the future. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, David, that's my problem. | |
| I can't understand what they was changing there with all that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| David, how late did you stay up? | ||
| Saturday? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, as late as I had to. | |
| I was up practically all night almost. | ||
| All right. | ||
| David, a weekend warrior, along with us here at C-SPAN and the senators, C-SPAN 2 coverage was live throughout the weekend as the senators debated move forward on the so-called Big Beautiful bill. | ||
| It began on Saturday. | ||
| When Republicans and the president secured passage to move forward with the legislation, that ticked off, triggered debate, which began on Saturday. | ||
| Democrats then said, no, no, you need to read the entire bill, which took hours for the Senate staff to do. | ||
| And then on Sunday, yesterday, they finished reading the bill. | ||
| And around 1 a.m. this morning, the Senate recessed to come back at 9 a.m. Eastern Time and begin the so-called Voterama on amendments. | ||
| Gabble to gabble coverage on C-SPAN 2. | ||
| You can continue to watch as the U.S. Senators are in the final stretch before possible final passage on this so-called Big Beautiful bill. | ||
| David, Tip City, Ohio, Independent, what do you say? | ||
| What do you think these lawmakers should do? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think they should vote it down. | |
| That's what I think. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| We'll go on to Mark, who's in Berlin, Maryland, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Mark. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Does it really matter about the deficit, as one caller said earlier? | ||
| And yes, it does. | ||
| And the reason is because at some point, whether in 5, 10, 25 years, the budget, the deficits and the national debt will become a burden, which will curtail economic activities. | ||
| And that will put our nest eggs, whether it's a pension or Social Security or stocks and bonds or cash at risk. | ||
| And more importantly, it'll put our freedom at risk. | ||
| So, Mark, the national debt will, are you a no then? | ||
| Well, I mean, the Democrats are a no because it cuts spending and cuts benefits to people. | ||
| And the Republicans are no because they actually want to cut more. | ||
| So what dilemma am I in? | ||
| I say no because I want further cuts to the budget. | ||
| Because every government agency, whether it's local because they have to pay the police and the fire more, or state because they have to pay for the schools, or the federal government, because they overspend. | ||
| They're all reaching into our pockets. | ||
| And our pockets are dry because we're paying $400 or $500 a month for health insurance, because rents and mortgages have gone up, because all of this is because of government failure. | ||
| And this is just the starting of what's going to happen when we continue to increase our debt. | ||
| So Mark, you agree with Ram Paul, who's voting no. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And what about this House Freedom Caucus? | ||
| If they are able to secure passage today or tomorrow in the Senate, and this bill goes back to the House, what do you want the House Freedom Caucus members to do? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, last time, only two caucus members voted against the bill. | |
| So it actually passed. | ||
| The chairman of the Freedom Caucus, who is my representative, Congressman Harris, he voted present. | ||
| So I don't know where his situation is. | ||
| Is he for more cuts and more fiscal responsibility? | ||
| Or is he just going to vote present or go along with the flow? | ||
| So the problem is very, very deep here because we have overspent and wasted for a long time. | ||
| And I thought Donald Trump, when he put Elon Musk in charge, was going to try to focus on this and get our House in order financially. | ||
| But now Elon Musk has left. | ||
| Doge is hanging by a thread. | ||
| And no one has the stomach to do the hard work, whether they're Democrats or Republicans. | ||
| They don't have the stomach to do the hard work which we need. | ||
| All right, Mark. | ||
| And Elon Musk has come out publicly against this Senate version as well. | ||
| He was opposed to the House bill, as you all know. | ||
| House Freedom Caucus members sending out this post on X yesterday saying the House bill added $72 billion to the deficit with interest costs included. | ||
| The Senate version adds $1.3 trillion to the deficit. | ||
| That's 1,705% more. | ||
| Even without interest costs, it is $651 billion over our agreed budget framework. | ||
| So House Freedom Caucus members raising a red flag over this Senate bill, which has to come back to that chamber. | ||
| The House could be reconvening as well this week on either today or tomorrow if the Senate is able to pass this bill. | ||
| As you heard from that caller, Senate Democrats and some Republicans, a handful of them, are opposed to this legislation or have concerns about it because of the changes to safety net programs. | ||
| This is from the Washington Post reporting that the legislation, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated the Senate tax bill would lead to roughly 12 million fewer people receiving Medicaid and more than 2 million fewer people receiving food stamps. | ||
| Deborah in California, Democratic caller. | ||
| Deborah, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| What do you think about this bill? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, it's ludicrous. | |
| I mean, anybody that's, you know, understanding the morals of this whole bill, I mean, why would you want to take from the poorest or the most needed people and give to the rich and the billionaires? | ||
| Most people that call in Greta, they are not very wealthy people. | ||
| Why are you not sitting there and telling the people, you know, you told them about the Voterama and all these different things. | ||
| Why didn't you tell them about the time that the Democrats came on the floor and they actually explained to the American people in step one, two, three, where people can understand instead of word solid? | ||
| You know, this is not what America needs. | ||
| They need the truth. | ||
| They need the facts. | ||
| And that budget that's non-partisan, they are the ones that came up with these figures. | ||
| It's going to add about $4 trillion to the deficit. | ||
| Now, that's the facts. | ||
| So we need to come on and talk facts to the American people that don't read or they don't watch the real facts of what's going on. | ||
| And, you know, it disturbs me because America needs to heal, but we can't heal in lies. | ||
| We already know the The last time the tax were, they weren't paid back. | ||
| You know, it's just like grifting over to another administrative, the same old thing. | ||
| And why are you want America want to take bootstamps away from children's mouths? | ||
| I mean, it's where is God in these people's lives. | ||
| All right, Deborah, Deborah in California, thank you for that. | ||
| And if you miss any of the debate over the weekend, you can find it online on demand at c-span.org. | ||
| You can hear the Democrats as she was talking about laying out their arguments in opposition to the president's so-called big beautiful bill. | ||
| Find it all online at c-span.org. | ||
| Marie in Michigan, Independent. | ||
| Hi, Marie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just want you to know that I'm scared to death. | |
| And if this bill passes, I have cancer. | ||
| And if Medicare and Medicaid are affected, I feel like they're signing my death certificate because I cannot afford to get the medications that I need. | ||
| And also, I live in a rural community, and they're threatening to cut the hospitals and whatnot in rural communities, which would mean I would have to travel over 100 miles for anything medical that I would need. | ||
| And I personally am absolutely scared that if this bill passes, that this is signing my death certificate because I can't get what I need. | ||
| And we already live bare bones. | ||
| And then they talk about maybe I'd have to tighten my belt, but the rich people don't. | ||
| I can guarantee you on the 4th of July, they're going to eat steak and have a wonderful time. | ||
| And what are we going to eat? | ||
| I mean, you know, we're going to be lucky to grill hamburgers here. | ||
| So I just feel betrayed by my representative, who's a Republican, who voted yes. | ||
| I feel betrayed by him. | ||
| And the reason he votes yes is because if he really, really would vote no, then Trump would call him out and call him names and everything else. | ||
| So I feel like the representatives and some senators don't dare vote against it because of consequences of what Trump will do to them or call them. | ||
| And that's just how I feel about it. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Marie's thoughts there. | ||
| And Independent in Michigan. | ||
| We'll go to Akron, Ohio. | ||
| Mary's watching there, a Republican. | ||
| Hi, Mary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm calling because I am for the bill. | ||
| I believe that the reason why people are really behind this bill is because when Joe Biden was president, he let all these people in this country illegally. | ||
| Normal months was over 200,250,000. | ||
| During normal immigration, before Joe Biden, it would be about 30,000, maybe even less. | ||
| And Trump completely has closed the border. | ||
| Homeland Security on May 8th, 2024, in front of Congress said all these people coming in here illegally was costing this country $182 billion a year and that's a conservative figure. | ||
| They only pay $31 billion in taxes, which is only 17% of the money that they create. | ||
| And they want to put $30 billion towards the border wall. | ||
| I believe that is a figure. | ||
| That is only, what, a sixth of what it costs every year to keep these illegals in our country. | ||
| And I am not against illegal aliens coming in our country. | ||
| It was the way that they did it. | ||
| Letting all, and Joe Biden, before he was president, 90% of the people that crossed the southern border were Mexican. | ||
| And after he became president, that went down to 45% was only Mexican. | ||
| The other 55% were all these nationalities coming from all these other countries. | ||
| You know, and they were talking about people staying home for the 4th of July. | ||
| Well, I get tired of hearing on the news about how these illegal aliens feel unsafe in this country because I live here in Akron and I feel unsafe even walking into my giant eagle. | ||
| Okay, I hope they all do stay home, all these people that hate this country, so I can go out and celebrate the 4th of July without worrying about somebody driving over me on the sidewalk. | ||
| All right. | ||
| I'm Mary there in Akron, Ohio, supports this legislation, supporting the president because of what he is doing on immigration and border security. | ||
| Let's go to Sonia, Staten Island, Democratic Callers. | ||
| Sonia, your turn to tell Washington here, the U.S. Senate, what should they do today when they reconvene at 9 a.m. Eastern Time? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So this clip that you played with Lindsay Graham, what he was saying that people that are working overtime and have to tighten the belt. | |
| I mean, that is so beyond the realm of humanity when people are working hard already. | ||
| They're working long for low wages. | ||
| And you want to say that we're not going to tax your tips. | ||
| Everyone that works does not get tips. | ||
| And those tips that they're claiming they're not going to tax, they also have a limitation on that in that bill. | ||
| That bill was so ridiculous. | ||
| I was listening to it for hours on C-SPAN. | ||
| And it's like they just threw a lot of things in there that really shouldn't be in there. | ||
| But they were so like every other two or three sentences that said, take out a period, put in a comma, take out a semicolon, or do this. | ||
| It's things that don't even need to be in there, but they just wanted to make these so long, the bill, I guess, to discourage people from reading it. | ||
| I'm glad C-SPANS played it. | ||
| I'm glad that, you know, someone was saying, oh, be transparent. | ||
| Tell us what's in the bill. | ||
| C-SPAN just read it. | ||
| So it was great. | ||
| Well, let me clarify, Sonia, because it wasn't C-SPAN that was reading it. | ||
| We, of course, brought you gavel to gavel coverage from the Senate cameras in the chamber all weekend long. | ||
| It was the Senate staff who was reading this legislation. | ||
| This is from the Senate Press Gallery. | ||
| The reading of the 940-page bill of the substitute amendment to H.R. 1 began at 11.08 p.m. Saturday evening and ended at 3.03 p.m. Sunday afternoon after 15 hours and 55 minutes. | ||
| There is now up to 20 hours of debate. | ||
| However, we don't expect that all to be used. | ||
| Then a vote arama. | ||
| The 20 hours was divided evenly between the Democrats and Republicans. | ||
| Republicans gave back some of their 10 hours. | ||
| That ended around 1:15 a.m. Eastern Time this morning. | ||
| The Senate recessed. | ||
| They're coming back at 9 a.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| So continue watching gabble gabble coverage here on C-SPAN 2 this morning starting at 9 a.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| They'll begin that voterama, unlimited number of amendments. | ||
| We'll see how long these senators can last after being in Washington all weekend long. | ||
| That will determine when a final vote takes place, which could be today or tomorrow. | ||
| Let's go to Susan in Florida and Independent. | ||
| Susan, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm not in favor of this bill because what I don't understand is they're talking about everything in this bill other than extending this tax break for the very wealthy in this country. | ||
| And if people go back and look and see what millionaires paid in this country, they paid 75% in the 50s. | ||
| During the war, it went up to 94% World War II. | ||
| And then all of a sudden, everybody's concerned about all these rich people and all of these companies. | ||
| You know, the news shows on the standard channels of ABC, NBC, CBS, they're not talking about the taxes because they're all corporations. | ||
| Everything is different now. | ||
| I don't like the fact that these senators and representatives, who are very, very wealthy people, because they have had insider information on TAC on corporations for years. | ||
| It's not fair to the American people that they are not talking about it. | ||
| They are weak. | ||
| They should be talking about this. | ||
| And they should be willing to change this tax bill from 2017. | ||
| And they should increase it. | ||
| They should increase it a lot, and then they wouldn't have to make cuts to Medicare. | ||
| Okay, Susan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I want one other thing about the people that have come into this country and have worked hard, undocumented people for years, some 10, 20 years. | |
| A lot of these people do not have any benefits coming back to them, but they are, their wages have been taken, their wages have included Social Security. | ||
| These people are funding the Social Security slush fund. | ||
| All right, Susan, I'll leave it there. | ||
| I just want to point out to folks from the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonpartisan group. | ||
| This is what they found. | ||
| The Senate bill would have the following effects on taxpayers. | ||
| Under the Senate bill, 69% of the net tax cuts would go to the richest fifth of Americans in 2026. | ||
| Only 11% go to the middle fifth of Americans, and less than 1% would go to the poorest fifth. | ||
| The richest 5% alone would receive 45% of the net tax cuts next year. | ||
| The richest 1% of Americans would receive an average net tax cut of $61,000, many, many times more than the average tax cut received by other income groups. | ||
| The richest 1% of Americans would receive a total of $107 billion in net tax cuts in 2026. | ||
| The middle 20% of taxpayers on the income scale, a group that has 20 times the number of taxpayers as the richest 1%, would receive less than half that much, $53 billion in recent in net tax cuts that year. | ||
| The $107 billion in net tax cuts going to the richest 1% next year would exceed the amount going to the entire bottom 60% of taxpayers, about $760 billion. | ||
| Dan in Concord, New Hampshire, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Dan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| Yeah, I'm absolutely in support of this bill. | ||
| And you just look at the last four years, what we've gone through, what we as Republicans have had to tolerate. | ||
| The worst border in the history of our country, the worst inflation in the history of our country. | ||
| And now Democrats, again, are using the fear and smear tactics that they always use. | ||
| I challenge these people. | ||
| Name me two fiscally conservative Democrats. | ||
| Any. | ||
| Can you name two? | ||
| If this adds to the nation's deficit, as Rand Paul warns, are Republicans being fiscally conservative. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I mean, and again, the Democrats fight us on everything. | |
| They fight us on Does. | ||
| They fight us on whatever President Trump is trying to do to control the deficit. | ||
| You know, the tariff revenue is going to be factored in over time. | ||
| It hasn't been factored in yet into the deficit. | ||
| How much money in the tariffs is going to go in and add towards the deficit? | ||
| This president, he would like to do a lot more, but he can't do it because the Democrats use the fear and the smear tactics. | ||
| He's going to get rid of this. | ||
| You know, when abortion went back to the states, we heard the same arguments. | ||
| All the borders. | ||
| Dan, answer the question, though. | ||
| Is it fiscally conservative for Republicans to approve this legislation if it adds to the deficit, as much as the Congressional Budget Office says, and Senator Ram Paul and House Freedom Caucus members? | ||
|
unidentified
|
For now. | |
| Yes, for now. | ||
| Because you've got to take this in smaller steps. | ||
| You can't do this all at once. | ||
| And there are a lot of illegal aliens that are on Medicaid. | ||
| And that's a fact because they've allowed all these illegal immigrants into this country. | ||
| And there are a lot of people on Medicaid that shouldn't be on Medicaid. | ||
| Let's face it, they could work more hours. | ||
| They shouldn't be on Medicaid. | ||
| They should be on Obamacare. | ||
| Obamacare was supposed to solve all of our problems, but of course it didn't. | ||
| And now we're going on Medicaid. | ||
| Those changes, though, to Medicaid only partially pay for this legislation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I understand. | |
| I understand. | ||
| It's not perfect. | ||
| Name me a perfect bill. | ||
| Name me a perfect bill that Joe Biden had. | ||
| He wanted to spend more money. | ||
| I mean, we had 20% inflation. | ||
| He wanted to spend more money. | ||
| I mean, he had a $2 trillion deficit every year he was in office. | ||
| So it's not perfect, but you can't do this all at once. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Dan's thoughts there in New Hampshire, Republican. | ||
| Janice is a Democrat in Beechwood, Ohio. | ||
| Janice, what do you say? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I say that the Republicans, independents, and Democrats should listen carefully to the information in the bill and decide from there. | |
| Because if you read the whole thing, that will tell you that this is a bad bill and to vote no against it. | ||
| It's for all working people, no matter what you are, independent, Democrat, or Republican, this is a bad bill tax-wise. | ||
| All right, Janice. | ||
| Go ahead, finish your thought. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Medicaid. | |
| No. | ||
| I would have them vote no on it. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Mitch in New Jersey, an independent. | ||
| Mitch, what do you say? | ||
| Yes or no? | ||
| Should the House or the Senators vote? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I say yes because of the tax cuts. | |
| They're gone to the people who sent the money to Washington. | ||
| I think there's too much money going to Washington, too much waste. | ||
| Also, because of seniors, also because of seniors, also because of the border spending, which is good. | ||
| And I'd like to ask you something. | ||
| You put all these negatives on television. | ||
| What's bad about the bill? | ||
| If you're so balanced, how come you don't put what's positive about the bill? | ||
| You know, like seniors or people getting money. | ||
| And also, is it because maybe C-SPAN in this bill gets all the money cut off with this bill? | ||
| Cut off from where? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Cut off completely. | |
| This bill says no more federal money goes to C-SPAN. | ||
| No, Mitch, we don't get our money. | ||
| Mitch, we don't get our money from the government. | ||
| We're not funded by the government. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You sure do. | |
| You get federal money from the bill. | ||
| No, we sure don't, Mitch. | ||
| We sure do not. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How come you don't put any positives on this or people who are? | |
| Let me explain. | ||
| Let me explain. | ||
| We showed you what Republicans have in argument for this legislation. | ||
| We've showed you some of what they've had to say. | ||
| So let me just explain for you and others. | ||
| We don't get our money from the government. | ||
| C-SPAN is funded. | ||
| It was created by cable providers. | ||
| We're funded largely by the cable providers. | ||
| We are hoping, and we have some support from senators, the Senate actually, approved a resolution that calls on the streaming companies to provide C-SPAN to their viewers, YouTube TV, Hulu, et cetera. | ||
| So we are not given money by the federal government. | ||
| Let's go to Julio in Brooksville, Florida, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How are you doing? | |
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm calling because, you know, the immigrants that came over, we got a lot of them that come down here in Florida and pick strawberries, which is fine. | |
| They come over, they pick the strawberries, they go back home. | ||
| Now you got all these people coming over, collecting their own welfare, collecting the Medicaid, collecting everything they can collect. | ||
| Schools are going broke. | ||
| Hospitals are going broke. | ||
| Something's got to be done. | ||
| I was a Democrat for since I graduated high school. | ||
| I'm 70 years old now. | ||
| And I just turned into a Republican because I'm sick of the way they are acting. | ||
| All right. | ||
| They act like a bunch of jokes. | ||
| And why don't you just, you know what would satisfy them? | ||
| Get Nancy Pelosi up there to pass this bill with anybody reading it. | ||
| And it would pass immediately. | ||
| And that's the way it is because that's what happened last Senate. | ||
| Put us in the shape we're in. | ||
| Now listen to Nancy Pelosi and all Chuck Schumer and them and we'll get straightened out here pretty soon, won't we? | ||
| Have a good day. | ||
| All right, Sally in California, Democratic callers. | ||
| Sally, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for being here today. | ||
| I just, you know, some people just don't even understand like them saying C-SPAN is being defunded. | ||
| They're confused. | ||
| They're being lied to. | ||
| They don't understand the truth. | ||
| I don't know how politicians are allowed to stand up and lie to the American people the way that Republicans have. | ||
| The things that are in this bill, such as getting monetary bonuses to people in Homeland Security, it's just really crazy how all the things that are in this bill. | ||
| And I wish people would have stayed up and listened for it. | ||
| I hope they all vote no. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Sally in California, Sheila in Ohio, Independent. | ||
| Sheila, what do you say? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for taking my call. | |
| Yeah, I would like to say I am not in support of this bill whatsoever. | ||
| The reason being is I'm 65 years old and I have watched for many years the climate hoax, the immigration scare. | ||
| It's, you know, I can't understand why anybody would think it's good to separate a child from their parent and put them in a cage. | ||
| And yet it happened. | ||
| You know, and now we see this bit being played out on the streets, people being snatched, citizens even. | ||
| Okay, I just can't trust anything that they say. | ||
| All right, Sheila, we will leave it there. | ||
| We're going to take a short break later on on the Washington Journal, a conversation with documentary writer, producer, and correspondent Martin Smith about his new PBS frontline film, Syria After Assad. | ||
| Before that conversation, though, we're going to continue talking about the so-called Big Beautiful bill. | ||
| Punch Bowl News Max Cohen joins us for an update on the latest in Congress. | ||
| we'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Joining us this morning is Max Cohen as Congressional Reporter of the Punch Bowl News here to talk about the Senate preparing for final vote on the so-called Big Beautiful bill. | ||
| Will that vote take place today, Max Cohen? | ||
| We're not quite sure as the answer. | ||
| Voter Rama is going to start sometime this morning, perhaps next hour or so. | ||
| And it really depends how many amendments Democrats offer. | ||
| It could last well into the evening and it could still slip into the early hours of Tuesday morning as well. | ||
| What do we know about amendments? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| So Democrats want to make this process as politically difficult as possible for Republicans. | ||
| So Chuck Schumer has previewed what he's going to do. | ||
| They're going to focus on Medkid cuts. | ||
| They're going to focus on tax cuts for the wealthy. | ||
| They're going to focus on these green energy tax credits being rolled back. | ||
| Basically, everything they can do to highlight the parts of the bill which they see as negatives for Republicans heading into 2026. | ||
| Will any of these Democratic amendments pass? | ||
| I think it's pretty unlikely, to be fair. | ||
| Some Republicans might want to vote along with the Democrats on some of the amendments, perhaps Medicaid in particular. | ||
| We know Senator Tillis feels very strongly about that. | ||
| But I think Republican leadership is going to try to rally its senators to say, look. | ||
| Even if you do, if you vote for these amendments, it's not going to work out in the House. | ||
| It might doom final passage of this bill. | ||
| And really no one wants that except for perhaps two out of the 53 Republican senators. | ||
| How many Republicans are uncommitted at this point on voting yes or no? | ||
| Sure, I'd say there are a number, I'd say four to five in play here. | ||
| We have the likes of Rick Scott, Ron Johnson, Mike Lee. | ||
| These are perhaps the most conservative Senate Republicans, fiscal hawks. | ||
| They're saying this bill does not do enough to cut the deficit. | ||
| They're all probably in play here. | ||
| I think we know Tom Tillis is going to be a no. | ||
| I think we know Rand Paul is going to be a no. | ||
| And now we have the moderates, right? | ||
| We have Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, perhaps John Curtis. | ||
| These are members who have expressed concern over Medicaid cuts, expressed concern over the clean energy tax credits being rolled back. | ||
| So that's the kind of universe we're looking at right now. | ||
| But I want to be clear, I think that most Republicans and Democrats too, honestly, think this bill has a fairly good chance of passing because once you've got through the motion to proceed, that first procedural hurdle, things usually go well from there. | ||
| Would you put Bill Cassidy in that group of senators to watch? | ||
| Is he in the moderate group? | ||
| Yeah, Bill Cassidy is a very interesting proposition here. | ||
| I think he is a moderate for sure. | ||
| He, of course, voted to convict President Trump after the January 6th attack. | ||
| But at the same time, he's facing a very tough primary challenge from a number of further right-wing Republicans in Louisiana in a state where Republicans are going to win that anyway. | ||
| So he knows he has to be with President Trump here. | ||
| But throughout this entire process, he has raised concerns about the bill, you know, hurting his own state with Medicaid cuts, perhaps, and also saying, look, we still need to reduce a deficit. | ||
| And Bill Cassidy up in 2026 as well. | ||
| So will we see amendments being offered by the folks that you just mentioned? | ||
| And will any of them pass? | ||
| Yeah, I think, you know, Susan Collins wants to offer an amendment. | ||
| She said, to increase this rural hospital fund. | ||
| This, of course, is the workthrough which assuaged some of the concerns of Republicans about the Medicaid cuts, saying this is going to harm our rural hospitals. | ||
| She wants to increase that from $25 billion to $50 billion is the reporting. | ||
| Again, I think these are difficult to see them passing because at this point in time, you need Democrats to vote with you on some of these and you need Republicans to vote with you. | ||
| And the bill has already been workshopped so much. | ||
| And I think that just amendments passing this late on is not usually a good bet. | ||
| So two Republicans are no's. | ||
| We know that. | ||
| The majority is 5347. | ||
| They can only lose three. | ||
| If they lose more than that, what are we looking at here? | ||
| That would be a disaster for Jon Thune and Senate Republican leadership. | ||
| They'd have to totally rework this bill, go back to the drawing board. | ||
| They'd have to tell President Donald Trump that we cannot get this passed by the July 4th deadline. | ||
| They'd tell the House of Representatives, you know, stay on July 4th recess. | ||
| We're going to have to work this out within the Senate. | ||
| I still think that's quite an unlikely proposition, to be honest. | ||
| As I said, once we're this far in the process and the motion to proceed is passed, I think they do get there. | ||
| And let's not underestimate the role of Trump here, right? | ||
| He was very influential on Saturday night when we had those holdouts, which were Murkowski, Rick Scott, Mike Lee, Ron Johnson. | ||
| JD Vance was in the room negotiating with him. | ||
| Trump was making calls. | ||
| When the president starts leaning on Republican senators and he's posted on social media throughout the weekend, remember, you have to get re-elected. | ||
| That pressure is very strong. | ||
| We saw Tom Tillis stand up for a bit, and then he very quickly said, I'm not going to run free election. | ||
| Anyone else who wants a job in the United States Senate likely has to be on the right side of Donald Trump. | ||
| What does that mean, though, for moderates like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, you know, Susan Collins up for re-election? | ||
| She has to run. | ||
| It's not like she can get a primary challenge that's to the right of her. | ||
| That person would have a hard time winning. | ||
| Yeah, 100%. | ||
| Susan Collins is in a very interesting position because she has won time after time in Maine, which is frankly becoming not a deep blue state, but a solidly blue state. | ||
| This is a state that voted for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris by five to ten points. | ||
| But she has this knack of saying to her constituents, look, you know me. | ||
| I've represented you for multiple decades. | ||
| Sometimes I cross my party. | ||
| Sometimes I vote with my party, but I'm going to be a straight shooter. | ||
| I think she has a tough calculation here because she is a close ally of leadership. | ||
| She, of course, is a chair of the Powerful Appropriations Committee. | ||
| She doesn't want to hurt Jon Thune and her Senate leadership colleagues. | ||
| However, she's made clear time after time again, this bill goes too far to the right for her. | ||
| But I think we've seen Collins in this role many times in the past. | ||
| And I think she's probably going to end up voting with leadership. | ||
| It would be my guess if we look at our Supreme Court decisions in the past and how she generally backs the party line. | ||
| Could we see JD Vance in the chair to break a tie? | ||
| We very well could. | ||
| I mean, that's a real life possibility, right? | ||
| As we just mentioned, there are two no votes, Rand Paul and Tom Tillis, very likely. | ||
| It's not out of the realm of possibility that one more gets added in there. | ||
| Maybe that is Susan Collins. | ||
| Maybe that is Murkowski. | ||
| But if that happens, of course, as you mentioned, JD Vance would break the tie. | ||
| And that is the benefit of Republicans winning these seats in 2024. | ||
| Of course, they flip Pennsylvania. | ||
| They flip Montana. | ||
| They flipped Ohio. | ||
| They have this cushion where they can afford three no votes. | ||
| And it brings me back actually to the last reconciliation bill that Democrats passed. | ||
| Of course, all eyes were on one man, Joe Manchin, because that was an evenly divided Senate. | ||
| Now Republicans have a bigger margin here. | ||
| Max Cohen is our guest here this morning. | ||
| He's been a weekend warrior with the senators and C-SPAN 2 as well. | ||
| He'll take your questions and comments about the so-called big, beautiful bill. | ||
| Republicans dial in at 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| Max Cohen, before we get to calls, if this passes in the Senate, which you and other political observers are saying that is likely, what happens next? | ||
| The House of Representatives will come back likely Tuesday, and House leadership on the Republican side has already said we could be even seeing a Wednesday vote on passage to the House. | ||
| So they're going to try to move very quickly. | ||
| Of course, 4th of July is this Friday, the nation's birthday, and we know President Trump really wants this bill passed by then for a symbolic gesture. | ||
| Will the House Freedom Caucus go along with these new numbers by the Congressional Budget Office and the warnings by the likes of Senator Rand Paul about the nation's deficit? | ||
| It's a great question. | ||
| Let's remember where we were just a couple of weeks ago when this bill passed the House. | ||
| The House Freedom Caucus, which are the furthest right members of the conference, were furious. | ||
| They said this is a terrible bill. | ||
| It mortgages our children's future. | ||
| It does not do enough to cut the debt. | ||
| What happened? | ||
| Everyone basically voted for this bill and it passed the House. | ||
| So color me very skeptical about the Freedom Caucus right now. | ||
| I think we've seen a pattern of their members speaking very loudly in the days and weeks leading up to a bill saying, this is awful. | ||
| We are going to vote no. | ||
| And then leadership gets them to yes. | ||
| And I've said all along throughout this process, once this bill passes the Senate and gets back to the House, I found it hard to believe that some of these members are going to stand in the way of this bill when it's so close to the finish line. | ||
| So much of leadership is momentum. | ||
| And so much of President Trump's job is getting this over the finish line. | ||
| I find it unlikely that so close to the finish line this week, Republicans in the House might say, no, we're going to stop this bill. | ||
| We've heard from Republicans today saying give the president a legislative win here. | ||
| How does this legislation pull with the base? | ||
| The base is supportive. | ||
| The base is Lexis has tax cuts. | ||
| It secures the border. | ||
| It funds the military at a higher level. | ||
| And it does cut social safety net programs that Republicans have been saying for years are being abused. | ||
| But it's not really the base, honestly, that Republicans should be worrying about at this very moment because they're always going to vote Republican. | ||
| What I'd be worried about if I were GOP leadership is the polls that showed this polls really poorly among independents. | ||
| And I just look at Tom Tillis. | ||
| This is someone who was going to run free election in North Carolina, a state that voted for Donald Trump narrowly, but still a Republican state. | ||
| It was a top target of Democrats. | ||
| It will be. | ||
| And he says, I can't support this. | ||
| And if your most politically vulnerable members are saying that, that's an issue. | ||
| Well, let's show our viewers what Tom Tillis had to say. | ||
| As you said, he voted no to moving forward on it. | ||
| He then was threatened by the president for a primary challenge yesterday, announcing in a statement that he will now not run for re-election. | ||
| And then he came to the floor to say, without some changes, he does not plan to vote yes on those so-called big, beautiful bill. | ||
| Here he is. | ||
| When the White House amateurs advising the president are not telling him that the effect of this bill is to break a promise. | ||
| And you know the last time I saw a promise broken around health care with respect to my friends on the other side of the aisle? | ||
| It's when somebody said, if you like your health care, you can keep it. | ||
| If you like your doctor, you could keep it. | ||
| We found out that wasn't true. | ||
| That made me the second Republican Speaker of the House since the Civil War, ladies and gentlemen, because we betrayed the promise to the American people. | ||
| Two years later, three years later, it actually made me a U.S. Senator because in 2010, it had just been proposed. | ||
| And just anticipation of what was going to happen was enough to have a sea change election that swept Republicans into the majority for the second time in 100 years. | ||
| Now, Republicans are about to make a mistake on health care and betraying a promise. | ||
| It is inescapable that this bill in its current form will betray the very promise that Donald J. Trump made in the Oval Office or in the cabinet room when I was there with finance where he said we can go after waste, fraud, and abuse on any programs. | ||
| Now, those amateurs that are advising him, not Dr. Oz, I'm talking about White House health care experts, refused to tell him that those instructions that were to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse all of a sudden eliminates a government program that's called the provider tax. | ||
| We have morphed a legal construct that admittedly has been abused and should be eliminated into waste, fraud, and abuse. | ||
| Money laundering. | ||
| Read the code. | ||
| Look at how long it's been there. | ||
| I was Speaker of the House. | ||
| I refused to do it. | ||
| When I left North Carolina, I said we're not going to do a provider tax. | ||
| I left it at 2.5%. | ||
| Now it's 6. | ||
| Mistake on the part of the leadership. | ||
| And frankly, I know my friends are probably going to think I'm a little bit crazy here, but I actually passed a law that made it illegal to expand Medicaid. | ||
| Why did I do that? | ||
| Because I was convinced someday we would be here. | ||
| And I would have rather found a way to get more people on Medicaid at the standard F map than having this 90-10 match and watching it disappear and taking away desperately needed health care. | ||
| Max Cohen, Senator Tom Till is on the floor yesterday saying Republicans are making a mistake. | ||
| Elon Musk, in a tweet, polls show that this bill is political suicide for the Republican Party. | ||
| That Tom Tillis speech that we just watched could basically be Democratic ads for the next 18 months. | ||
| It is everything Democrats have been saying about this bill since its proposal. | ||
| And it's remarkable to hear a sitting United States Senator, a Republican at that, laying out basically the liberal argument here, which is this bill will take away health care from Americans and harm the Republican Party politically. | ||
| That's just really tough viewing for Republican leadership. | ||
| Let's go to our calls. | ||
| David in California, Democratic caller, you're up first for Max Cohen. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Morning. | ||
| I wanted to speak on this Medi-Cal. | ||
| You know, my wife is one of the directors for IEHP here in California. | ||
| And as soon as this bill goes into effect, they are poised to drop over 300,000 members from their accounts. | ||
| You know, so as far as if people are wondering if this is going to affect people, yeah, it's going to affect people immediately. | ||
| You know, and it's crazy because they had a meeting, the CEO is basically begging providers to lower their rates to try and balance, you know, the offset of this that's going to happen. | ||
| You know? | ||
| And then to top it off, I mean, if you guys really want to get into why this problem is such a big problem, well, you know, you got doctor's office double billing. | ||
| You got all these medical places like trying to suck the assets out of it from their side. | ||
| And whenever in all reality, it's not the people's fault. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| David there in California, Democratic caller on these Medicaid changes. | ||
| CBO predicting that it could mean as many as 12 million people drop from Medicaid, 2 million drop from food stamps. | ||
| Max Cohen, are Democrats making an effective argument here? | ||
| I think it is effective because it's a very real change in people's lives, right? | ||
| You know, sometimes political arguments can seem disconnected from Americans' everyday realities, but I can guarantee you, if you're a voter and you see a direct change in your government benefits as a result of a bill passed through Congress, that will motivate you to vote. | ||
| In this instance, it will likely motivate you to vote against the party which took away benefits. | ||
| So Democrats are betting on that argument that people will be angry and motivated to vote because they will see a real change in their lives. | ||
| Republicans that we spoke to this morning in our first hour saying there is a lot of good pieces of legislation, proposals in this bill. | ||
| They like it. | ||
| They think give the president a chance, pass it. | ||
| Some even quoting Nancy Pelosi. | ||
| You'll know it once we've passed it. | ||
| You'll know what's in it once we pass it. | ||
| So what are the provisions? | ||
| You talked a little bit about them, but drill down a little bit. | ||
| What are Republicans like? | ||
| What are they highlighting here? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| There's tens of billions of dollars to secure the southern border. | ||
| I think there's $45 billion specifically for a border wall. | ||
| There's tens of billions to supplement ICE to help its deporting program in the United States. | ||
| So the number one issue Republicans were talking about in 2024 was immigration and border security, you could argue. | ||
| And this bill provides tons of funding to make ICE a dramatic larger role in the United States government. | ||
| It also says we're going to secure our border in a way we never had before as a country. | ||
| So those are Republican wins that every Republican voter is largely behind. | ||
| You also have tax cuts. | ||
| This is something which pulls the best out of any part of this bill. | ||
| I've reported on the top super PACs for Republicans in the Senate and Republicans in the House. | ||
| This is what they're putting on the air. | ||
| Every American will be hit with the largest tax hike in American history unless this one big, beautiful bill passes. | ||
| So those are the two things I'd highlight just to start off with is immigration provisions and the tax cuts. | ||
| This is what Republicans want to be talking about. | ||
| But as we've just seen, the conversation is not about that right now. | ||
| It's about Medicaid. | ||
| It's about green energy. | ||
| And these are issues Democrats feel better about. | ||
| What about the benefit of wealthy Americans from this legislation? | ||
| Have Democrats focused on that? | ||
| And if not, why not? | ||
| They have focused on that. | ||
| Every time you hear Chuck Schumer speak in the past couple months, he's been saying this is a billionaire tax giveaway. | ||
| They're stealing from the poorest Americans, taking away their health care to give it to the richest. | ||
| That's a Democratic talking point. | ||
| That's a very strong economic populist message, what they're trying to hit home over and over again. | ||
| And the reason they're doing that, in my opinion, is because Republicans made dramatic voter increases with working class voters in 2024. | ||
| Donald Trump flipped the script in many ways and won voters Republicans haven't won in a long time. | ||
| So Democrats are trying to say, this is a party which working class voters shifted to in 2024. | ||
| Well, hold up. | ||
| Look what they're doing and how it's hurting you. | ||
| The Republican counterpoint, to be fair, would be, yes, this bill does benefit wealthy Americans. | ||
| It does benefit corporations, but that's how we get economic growth and a rising tide will lift all boats. | ||
| That's a GOP counterpoint. | ||
| And we heard from Republican viewers, too, saying that this benefits lower income Americans as well. | ||
| No taxes on tips and Social Security participants, beneficiaries as well. | ||
| Yeah, and no tax on overtime pay as well. | ||
| And these were a number of key proposals Donald Trump campaigned on heavily in the closing stages of that 2024 election, saying in Nevada, especially when tax on tips is huge, he said, hey, look, I'm going to take this away. | ||
| I'm going to take away these burdensome taxes and help return money to your pockets. | ||
| And no tax on tips, it's important to note, this was a proposal which came before the Senate. | ||
| It was a resolution which wasn't necessarily binding, but it was a Ted Cruz Jackie Rosen bipartisan play saying this resolution would support no tax on tips. | ||
| It passed unanimously. | ||
| No one objected at all to this provision. | ||
| So Democrats know the optics of no tax on tips is also good. | ||
| And you want to stand against that. | ||
| Rivervale, New Jersey. | ||
| Vic, a Republican. | ||
| Good morning to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| How are you? | ||
| Doing well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, the only problem I have, number one, you know, most of this money that's getting cut from Medicare is all the dead weight. | |
| The immigration money being thrown away every day. | ||
| Billions of dollars a year are getting wasted on people that don't deserve to get a nickel when they enter this country illegally. | ||
| So I'm in support of all the things that are going on with ICE and the removal, especially the gangbangers and all the crap that's going on. | ||
| Well, Vic, when it comes to Medicaid, not Medicare, that's where the cuts are to Medicaid. | ||
| Are you in support of it? | ||
| Immigrants are not allowed to get those federal benefits. | ||
| Are you in support of it if it impacts Americans who are disabled and cannot work? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, unfortunately, there's probably millions of people in this country, and we all know it, who are committing forward and collecting that Medicaid and getting all those benefits. | |
| So what are you going to kick? | ||
| 8 to 12 million of them to the curb if they're able to work and get their own benefits? | ||
| I've been on disability. | ||
| I'm a disabled veteran, and I collect benefits. | ||
| But they're not going to take it away from people that have cancers and deserve it. | ||
| We all know that. | ||
| This is just more of the demagoguery that they keep talking about. | ||
| They slam Trump. | ||
| All I can say is, look at the last four years. | ||
| This country went down the toilet in a spiral. | ||
| All right. | ||
| So Vic, let me jump in. | ||
| Max Cohen, that's what Republicans have been saying, that this is not going to impact people who need Medicaid. | ||
| Yes, the waste, fraud, and abuse line is another favorite GOP messaging standpoint. | ||
| Just like Democrats keep saying, you know, wealthy people are going to benefit. | ||
| Republicans is we're going to cut waste, fraud, and abuse. | ||
| You've heard them say that over and over again, in addition to saying we're going to stop any undocumented immigrants from receiving assistance as well. | ||
| Those are the two platforms in their Medicaid reform package that they always want to talk about. | ||
| It should be noted, though, that messaging is really hampered by what we just saw from Senator Tillis, right? | ||
| Because it's one thing for the media, it's one thing for Democrats, it's one thing for the CBO, et cetera, for all these different parts of the country to say, you know, X, Y, and Z, this Medicaid cuts happening, whatever. | ||
| But when it's a Republican senator standing up on the Senate floor and saying this will hurt people, and he just said, Tillis said I support cutting out waste, fraud, and abuse, but this goes further. | ||
| That's, I think, the most damaging part. | ||
| And that takes a real bite out of that messaging in a way which might be damaging. | ||
| Here's Brian Schatz of Hawaii in a post on X. Voting starts at 9 a.m. Monday, he wrote. | ||
| Medicaid cuts very, very bad. | ||
| Polling is getting worse the more people learn about it. | ||
| Republicans won't defend this bill like virtually no speeches, he said. | ||
| That's unheard of. | ||
| And five, outside pressure is working. | ||
| Six, he says, we can kill this thing. | ||
| What do you think of his prediction? | ||
| Maybe optimistic, but he is someone who might be the next Senate Democratic leader. | ||
| So when you're in leadership, you have to be talking about you'll always, there's always some hope you can kill this. | ||
| The outside pressure is working. | ||
| I think that's accurate to an extent because look what happened to Senator Tillis, right? | ||
| I will take one aim at number four. | ||
| Republicans won't defend this bill like virtually no speeches. | ||
| I wouldn't say it's necessarily unheard of because at this point in the process, Democrats want to use all their time allotted to them to rail against the bill. | ||
| Republicans just want to get this bill across the finish line. | ||
| It's not because they don't support it. | ||
| It's because they want to wrap this up quickly, right? | ||
| But I think that's an interesting point about the way the conversation is ongoing about this bill. | ||
| This, as you mentioned, should be the big win for President Trump that he's aggressively pushed for. | ||
| This is reconciliation. | ||
| This is where they unlock all of their domestic policy priorities in the first six or seven months of the administration. | ||
| But the narrative around this bill is becoming overwhelmingly negative in a way that's harming Republicans because it's not this victory lap. | ||
| It's a slog. | ||
| Republicans are out against it. | ||
| Republicans are retiring. | ||
| The polling is not good. | ||
| So I think Schatz is right in that sense, in which the outside pressure is making what should be one of the cornerstone achievements of the Trump administration in the second term a little more downbeat. | ||
| How often can you use reconciliation? | ||
| You can use it, you can use it many times as you can get it done, frankly, because many Republicans were saying, let's do two reconciliation bills, right? | ||
| That was one of the strategies at the start of this year, saying, let's get the tax stuff done later and let's get the border and military wins done initially. | ||
| But of course, as we've seen throughout this process, it's easier said than done to actually get everyone on board. | ||
| So it's not something that can be used all the time just because of politics. | ||
| We'll go to Mary Ann and Marilyn, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you both. | ||
| I've a question and a comment. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I'm going to be a hard capital bold-lettered no vote for me. | ||
| The question is for NAX: how common is it for big bills not to be read by our representatives? | ||
| Good question. | ||
| We see this a lot in terms of members getting these thousand-plus page bills. | ||
| I think this bill just comes in at around 900 pages. | ||
| They're not reading all these pages, most of them. | ||
| They have their staff do it. | ||
| They're getting summaries, some leadership. | ||
| Very few members actually sit down and go page by page. | ||
| And we actually saw throughout this process members, what comes to mind is Marjorie Taylor Green, after the bill was passed, said, I actually didn't know this one AI provision was in there. | ||
| And you know what? | ||
| She got a lot of flack for that, but she was being honest. | ||
| And a lot of members also, if they're being honest, don't know every single provision. | ||
| So unfortunately, the way legislating is done nowadays, it's very top-down. | ||
| The leadership knows what's in it. | ||
| The top staffers for leadership know what's in it. | ||
| But the rank and file members, they're frankly getting information just like you and me from the media, from what they're seeing being reported. | ||
| And then when it comes time to vote, the bill text is dropped. | ||
| And it's in the best interest of leadership to get a vote as soon as possible. | ||
| Because in these big bills, they stand to reason. | ||
| The more it's out there, the more individual interest groups can come out against it and rally opposition. | ||
| So many members actually are not reading the full thing. | ||
| They could have listened to the Senate staff reading the leadership. | ||
| That was late at night, though. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Saturday started at 11.08 p.m. Saturday evening, ended at 3.03 p.m. Sunday afternoon. | ||
| That means 15 hours and 55 minutes of the Senate staff reading this 940-page bill. | ||
| C-SPAN2 was there for it, gavel to gavel, and you can check that out if you go to our website, c-span.org. | ||
| We will, of course, give you gavel to gavel coverage again at starting at 9 a.m. Eastern time in a little more than 30 minutes when the Senate will reconvene for what is called Votorama. | ||
| The Democrats and some Republicans offering amendments to the so-called big beautiful bill, and they will begin voting before they get to final passage, which could come today or on Tuesday. | ||
| Gina in Santa Cruz, California, Democratic caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Gina. | |
| Hi. | ||
| I pretty much have been getting my news from monarch.com. | ||
| But as a targeted individual in the United States since the war on terror, I've been tortured in my bed at night with microwave weapons. | ||
| So I'm sure this bill will affect how I'm treated in my own country. | ||
| All right, Gina. | ||
| I'm going to go to Victor, who's in Brooklyn, Republican caller. | ||
| Victor. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| How are you doing today? | ||
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Your thoughts on this big, beautiful bill? | |
| I am not in support of it. | ||
| And I want to say because really I feel like a lot of people haven't read it based off of what I've been hearing this morning. | ||
| I've breezed through it, touched on a lot of things, but besides health care, there's also the EPA, the cuts to that, like it pretty much seems like they're just trying to get rid of it. | ||
| So like our environmental safety is at risk at the same time, as well as our health care, the cuts, the tax cuts and all of that. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| It's ridiculous. | ||
| I'm just not in support of the bill. | ||
| All right. | ||
| That's Victor in Brooklyn, a Republican caller. | ||
| Max Cohen, final thoughts here. | ||
| What are you looking for when the Senate gavels in at 9 a.m. Eastern Time today? | ||
| I think I want to note for the viewers that this is pretty rare for Votorama to happen during the morning hours, the daylight hours, right? | ||
| This is traditionally a tactic that happens late at night and then late into the early hours of the next morning. | ||
| Senate Majority Leader John Thune yesterday made the decision after the debate finished. | ||
| He could have gone on to a vote and it would have been like 2 a.m. or something, but he said, let's give Evan a rest. | ||
| Let's come back at 9 a.m. | ||
| So I think, frankly, it's going to be a good moment for transparency. | ||
| The C-SPAN viewers are going to see these amendments in a way which they might not normally see it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| In about 30 minutes here, C-SPAN 2, tune in. | ||
| The Senate will convene and begin voting on amendments to the so-called Big Beautiful Bill. | ||
| Max Cohen, thank you very much for the conversation and the update from Capitol Hill. | ||
| We appreciate it. | ||
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| Later on this morning, a conversation with documentary writer, producer, and correspondent Martin Smith about his new PBS frontline film, Syria After Assad. | ||
| That's coming up later in the Washington Journal. | ||
| We'll take a break when we come back, continue our conversation about the Senate getting ready to vote on President Trump's budget bill. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
| One October morning in 2018, journalist William Giroux says he was returning some books to his local Virginia Beach library when he noticed a new state historical marker planted in the ground near the front entrance. | ||
| It said the library was built on the site of a World War II prisoner war camp. | ||
| In Mr. Giroux's author's note in his latest book called The 15, he writes, I was surprised and a little embarrassed, unquote, not to know that the U.S. had 700 POW camps spread throughout the United States in 46 different states, housing 371,683 German soldiers and 49,784 Italians. | ||
| That's during World War II. | ||
| His book is subtitled Murder, Retribution, and the Forgotten Story of Nazi POWs in America. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Author William Giroux with his book, The 15, on this episode of Book Notes Plus, with our host Brian Lamb. | |
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| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back to the Washington Journal. | ||
| We continue here this morning on the program talking about the so-called Big Beautiful bill. | ||
| The Senate is in the final stretch here. | ||
| After a weekend session here in Washington, they are preparing for a final vote that could come later today or Tuesday. | ||
| After the Senate passes it, if they have the votes, it goes over to the House for another round of voting before it can get to the President's desk. | ||
| The President Republicans have set a 4th of July deadline. | ||
| This morning, we turn to all of you and continue getting your thoughts on the budget bill. | ||
| Should it be approved in the Senate? | ||
| Should it go to the President's desk? | ||
| Do you support or oppose it? | ||
| Marie, in Morgantown, North Carolina, Independent Marie, the Senate will gabble in here in less than 30 minutes. | ||
| What do you say to these senators? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I say no. | |
| I want to know what are they doing to the poor people in the United States. | ||
| We can't survive as it is. | ||
| I have two small children, and it's all I could do to make food for them to eat. | ||
| And they want to cut our food stamps. | ||
| What is wrong with the president? | ||
| Marie, you're on food stamps? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| And you're concerned that yours would get cut. | ||
| Why do you think possibly yours would get cut? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because I've already got a notice what's going to be cut. | |
| And I also have a friend that got a notice that's on Social Security, and she has cancer, and they shut her Social Security off. | ||
| They told her she could get a job. | ||
| Marie, what does your warning say that yours could get cut? | ||
| What does it say? | ||
| What is the reason? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because of my income, I get $1,025 a month for three of us to live on, plus pay my bills. | |
| What does a president think we're going to live on? | ||
| And where does that income come from, Marie? | ||
|
unidentified
|
On my Social Security. | |
| I'm 72 years old and I am raising two great-granddaughters, six and nine years old. | ||
| And is there any exception for somebody like yourself who is raising grandchildren? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I got my two great-grandchildren. | |
| I've had them for six years. | ||
| Great-granddaughters. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because the father, yes, because the father and mother don't even come around. | |
| So you then apply for food stamps for them? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| All right, Marie there. | ||
| And Marie, what did you make of your senator, Tom Tillis, saying, because of exactly what you're talking about, he's opposing this bill? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I support him 100%. | |
| And what was your reaction when you heard he's not going to run again because of this legislation? | ||
|
unidentified
|
To be honest with you, I just wonder if all of them are going to, if they cross Trump, if he's going to make it rough on all of them. | |
| All right. | ||
| Marie in Morgantown, North Carolina, and Independent. | ||
| Senator Tom Tillis, Republican, North Carolina, voted no on moving forward on the bill on Saturday. | ||
| He was joined by Senator Ram Paul, Republican of Kentucky, and the two of them saying over the weekend that they are still a no vote on this legislation. | ||
| We are also watching three other Republican senators to see what they will do when the Senate convenes here shortly and when they go to final passage. | ||
| Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, and Senator Susan Collins of Maine. | ||
| Those three Republican senators are ones to watch when the debate and the amendments begin and then when they get to final passage. | ||
| Will they buck their party and go against President Trump and vote no? | ||
| Or will they be united behind Republicans' push to get this legislative victory for President Trump? | ||
| Michelle in Louisiana Independent, good morning to you. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I was thinking if he took money like he did for the Easter party or the parade, you know, and he had the commercials and everything for that in the background. | ||
| What if he took donations for the wall like he did for that? | ||
| And have to take all the money for the Adam Medicaid and Medicare and Social Security. | ||
| All right, Michelle Robert, Newark, Ohio Republican. | ||
| Robert, share your thoughts with us this morning. | ||
| What do you want these senators to do? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think it's like Burger Boy versus UAW and Burger Boy wins. | |
| And eat, drink, and be merry and take little smurf pills. | ||
| And happy's playtime. | ||
| Eat, drink, and be merry and take those smurf pills. | ||
| That's what's crazy. | ||
| All right, Linda and Orange, Connecticut, Democratic caller. | ||
| Linda, we're talking about the president's budget bill, the tax and spending cuts proposal. | ||
| What's your message to the lawmakers? | ||
|
unidentified
|
First of all, I don't, we have a record high amount of Americans insured right now, and that's about to be eliminated, which we fought so hard to get. | |
| But another thing that no one is even talking about, no one, I mean like representatives or anyone, is that when we take away taxes on tips and overtime pay, we're defunding Social Security. | ||
| Now, instead of taking away taxes, why don't we just raise the minimum wage? | ||
| This isn't even being discussed when we all know the minimum wages are pitiful for workers and for wages and people who get tips. | ||
| So there's a lot of things we're not discussing. | ||
| And as for representing your party, I think these people ought to stop representing their party and stop representing their constituents. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Linda there, a Democrat in Orange, Connecticut. | ||
| The Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan analysis government agency here in Washington that advises Congress about legislation, said that this bill would increase the deficit, the Senate version, more than the House version did. | ||
| There is also the prediction by the CBO that 12 million people would lose Medicaid and 2 million people would lose food stamps. | ||
| There is also this from the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| This morning, GOP declares tax cut extensions are free. | ||
| Republicans are waving a $3.8 trillion magic wand over their tax and spending mega bill, declaring that their extensions of the expiring tax cuts have no effect on the federal budget. | ||
| The unprecedented maneuver is a crucial part of the GOP plan to squeeze permanent tax cuts through Congress on a simple majority vote in the coming days. | ||
| Republicans are expected to endorse the accounting move in a procedural vote early today. | ||
| Again, we're about 20 minutes away from the Senate, the upper chamber, gaveling in today's session. | ||
| And according to the Wall Street Journal, this procedural vote on their budget could take place this morning. | ||
| So tune in to our gavel-to-gavel coverage on C-SPAN 2 starting at 9 a.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| We can show you some of that debate here on C-SPAN. | ||
| And in the meantime, we want to hear from you and your message to these senators about how you want them to vote. | ||
| Now, on this budget gimmick, here is the Senate budget chair, Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, on the floor Sunday afternoon, armed with a handwritten sign touting a new Congressional Budget Office score, projecting the GOP mega bill would save about a half a trillion dollars, assuming his budget gimmick that the current tax cuts are extended indefinitely and they don't count towards the deficit. | ||
| If you do what I have decided to do, make the tax cuts permanent and you implement these reforms to Medicaid in other areas, you will, over the next 10 years, reduce the deficit by $507 billion. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's CBO, not me. | |
| Now, how do you do that? | ||
| You grow the economy and you begin to control spending in a common sense way. | ||
| Most people can relate to that because they do it all the time. | ||
| People at home sometimes have to work extra to meet the needs of their family and they have to tighten their belt. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, what have we achieved here in the one big beautiful bill? | |
| We're going to make your border as secure as it possibly can be and never go back to open borders. | ||
| We're going to put in place border security measures to keep it secure. | ||
| We're going to make the tax cuts permanent so your taxes do not go up in December of this year, and we're going to add additional pro-growth policies to help our economy. | ||
| That was Senator Lindsey Graham, the chair of the budget committee. | ||
| He's steering this legislation on the Senate floor, talking about how this bill, if you don't count the current tax cuts that are already in place against the deficit, it actually lowers the deficit. | ||
| Hours later, Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the leader of the party in the Senate, responded with his own chart on the floor. | ||
| Earlier today, my colleague from South Carolina came to the floor with a pretty interesting-looking floor chart where he claimed that his bill somehow reduced the debt by $500 billion. | ||
| What a joke. | ||
| The budget chair respectfully needs to check his math because somehow Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the budget committee, said that his bill reduces the debt by $500 billion. | ||
| The budget chair, respectfully, check your math, Chairman Graham, because not one hour ago, the JCT confirmed this bill does not reduce the debt, it explodes it. | ||
| It explodes it. | ||
| That's what it does. | ||
| Here's what his chart should have looked like: $45 trillion deficit explosion. | ||
| According to the JCT, the Republican bill explodes the debt by $4.5 trillion, as this chart, drawn slightly better than Lindsey's, shows. | ||
| For those keeping score at home, my colleague got his math wrong by a whopping $4 trillion. | ||
| All this, all this, just so billionaires are rewarded while millions lose their health care break. | ||
| $4.5 trillion deficit explosion. | ||
| Who do you agree with there, Senator Lindsey Graham or Senator Chuck Schumer on the impact of this big beautiful bill on the nation's deficit? | ||
| Justin in Madison, Wisconsin, Independent, let's hear from you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you so much for taking my call. | |
| I was a longtime registered Republican, and I did not abandon the Republican Party. | ||
| They abandoned me. | ||
| And so my thoughts on this bill are an absolute disaster. | ||
| And I think both parties got it wrong. | ||
| I don't agree with either one of them. | ||
| The fact that the Democrats are making the same claim that they've made for as long as I've been alive, my 35 years of life, they've always claimed that Republicans are going to do tax breaks for billionaires every time. | ||
| It's the same old talking point. | ||
| And meanwhile, the Republicans with their same talking points. | ||
| And I do live in Wisconsin, and I'm represented by Senator Tammy Baldwin. | ||
| And so she obviously will be against the bill. | ||
| But I hope that Ron Johnson keeps his spine. | ||
| He voted for the bill to advance to the floor. | ||
| He has spoken out against the bill openly. | ||
| He went on a technical college and show and said he's not going to vote for it. | ||
| So I hope that he and a few others have enough spine to avoid voting for this disastrous bill. | ||
| There's a lot of things I like about it, but there's a lot of things I do not like about it. | ||
| And in closing, real quick. | ||
| What do you not like about it, Justin? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, obviously, debt. | |
| It wouldn't increase the deficit. | ||
| The CBO has said so, and they're nonpartisan, so they don't have a stake in the game. | ||
| And I know the CBO is not always correct, but in this case, I tend to agree with that. | ||
| And then my last quick point will be just I get really irritated with the Democrats that are claiming and pretending to be the party that is fiscally responsible. | ||
| Neither party is responsible, and that's why we are where we at. | ||
| Thank you for your time. | ||
| Justin, real quick before you go, what do you like about the bill? | ||
| Oh, we won't know. | ||
| That was Justin there. | ||
| This is from Pew Research. | ||
| He did a poll recently about the so-called one big beautiful bill. | ||
| More Americans oppose than favor the GOP sweeping tax and budget legislation. | ||
| 54% say that it will have a mostly negative effect on the country. | ||
| 12% say not much of an effect. | ||
| And 30% say mostly a positive effect on the country. | ||
| 51% of those polled said it would increase the budget deficit. | ||
| 18% said it would reduce the budget deficit. | ||
| And 27% say not have much of an effect on the budget deficit. | ||
| That's just one poll. | ||
| There's also polls by Quinnipiek and Washington Post showing that this bill is not popular overall with the American people. | ||
| It is popular, as we heard from Max Cohen with the Republican base. | ||
| Richard in Lynchburg, Virginia, Republican. | ||
| Richard, do you like this bill? | ||
| Richbert, Richard in Lynchburg, Virginia, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you like this bill? | |
| All right. | ||
| Richard, one last try for you. | ||
| Okay, let me go to Glenn, who's in Detroit, Democratic caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Glenn? | |
| Good morning, Greta. | ||
| How are you? | ||
| And no, I don't like the big, beautiful blunder. | ||
| I think it's ridiculous. | ||
| It's going to really put a hardship on the seniors, young people, mental health, the whole gambit. | ||
| Because once you stop messing with Medicaid, Medicaid is a program that supports teaching institutions that helps residents, interns, and externs in hospitals. | ||
| And once you cut that, and then you don't have these doctors, these hospitals are going to close. | ||
| They're going to fold. | ||
| Trump is banking on martial law because it takes three things for martial law. | ||
| War, which we're on the brink of, two, rebellion from the people in this country. | ||
| That's going to happen, and that's going to happen. | ||
| And three, natural disaster. | ||
| Well, that's why these Trumpites, and I don't call them Republicans, because true Republicans will never vote on a bill that's going to raise the debt ceiling that high. | ||
| These Trumpites, they're not worried about the blue wave because once Trump calls that martial law, it's not going to be an election. | ||
| And that's what scares me most of all. | ||
| All right, Glenn in Detroit talking about the deficit. | ||
| You heard him at the end saying Republicans would vote to increase the deficit. | ||
| The House Freedom Caucus put out this on X yesterday in response to this Senate version saying the House bill added $72 billion to the deficit with interest costs included. | ||
| The Senate version adds $1.3 trillion to the deficit. | ||
| That's $1,705% more, even without interest costs. | ||
| It is a $651 billion over our agreed budget framework. | ||
| Now, House Freedom Caucus members, the conservative faction of the party in the House, were voicing these concerns when the House brought this legislation to the floor. | ||
| Ultimately, they all pretty much voted for it, only two voted present. | ||
| So Max Cohen, we learned from Punch Bowl News earlier, saying his prediction is that the House Freedom Caucus would fall in line. | ||
| If this legislation can get approved by the Senate later today, possibly Tuesday, the House will then call their members back to Washington and try to approve the legislation, getting the President's signature by the 4th of July holiday. | ||
| Kathy in Wisconsin Independent. | ||
| Kathy, let's hear from you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I have a question, a comment, and a challenge. | ||
| May I ask my question first? | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Just out of curiosity, now this is going to seem silly to most of your viewers, but when you list the phone numbers to call to speak, why is it not listed numerically? | |
| And what's the point? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The point is, it's not in alphabetical order, it's not in numerical order. | |
| Who chooses which number is the number you list first? | ||
| Okay, we switch it up. | ||
| We have Republicans first one month, and then we put Democrats first the next month. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you very much. | |
| I'll pay attention to that. | ||
| Now, may I go to my challenge next? | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would like C-STAN, who I rely on 100%. | |
| You are the first person that I tune into every morning, and you are the last people that I listen to in my evening. | ||
| I would challenge you to find someone that you trust completely to be nonpartisan to look into what I want to comment on. | ||
| I think the biggest problem that we have in this country right now is we are afraid that the complexion of this nation is changing. | ||
| My understanding is if you overstay your visa, you are here illegally. | ||
| We don't hear about them hauling them out of their apartments in the middle of the night by masked people with guns on their backs because that makes them illegal. | ||
| I am not in favor of anyone entering this country illegally. | ||
| I don't think they should be allowed to stay here illegally. | ||
| All right, so Kathy, then do you support this big, beautiful bill? | ||
| Because Republicans would say we're increasing the spending for border security, for the problem I have is the word border. | ||
|
unidentified
|
When you come here legally with the proper visa, you get on a plane from whatever country you're coming from. | |
| You're not coming across the southern border. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Understood, Kathy. | ||
| Understand your point. | ||
| Carrie in Milwaukee, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I have two things to say. | |
| The first is I absolutely agree with those primarily, well, primarily Republicans and some Democrats say it too or whatever, that I don't like the fact that this bill increases the deficit. | ||
| And I don't know what effect that, I assume that also affects our long-term debt of whatever it is, $36, $37 trillion. | ||
| I don't know if people, I don't think people really realize the significance of that because things like Social Security, I mean, we will go broke. | ||
| I mean, we are $37 in debt or whatever, but there will be a point where we can't afford to pay the, well, we can't afford the interest now, but where we can't afford to literally pay Social Security or anything else. | ||
| So, I mean, that's very scary, but people don't realize that that's going to be the effect. | ||
| My main thing I wanted to be on while your guest was there still, because the biggest thing that Democrats seem to get everybody roused up about are the cuts to Medicaid. | ||
| Now, from I follow like six different news sources on TV and primarily on TV and online as well. | ||
| The biggest thing is that they say that, you know, again, what, 12 million people will lose their health care coverage. | ||
| The main reason that so-called experts bring up why that is the case is because most people will not be able to comply with the more stringent reporting requirements. | ||
| Most other benefits that people get, social benefits, require very stringent reporting efforts. | ||
| So that goes to the education of our country. | ||
| Then we maybe should require people to get their high school diplomas or better yet, let's put some of the, we'll put some funding, maybe a million dollars for each state, so that just would be 50 million bucks, to help get volunteers like myself who would help people fill out the paperwork if they are truly going with the requirements. | ||
| Someone, you had a caller a little bit earlier who talked about the fact that she was already threatened to lose food stamps benefits for her great-grandchildren she was raising. | ||
| Well, if she can prove that they are dependents of hers, she's okay. | ||
| I mean, so I wanted to ask them how many, because I heard that the majority of that 12 million that will do it is because they won't be able to comply with the stringent paperwork requirements. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Understood. | ||
| Carrie there in Milwaukee with her thoughts. | ||
| If you are interested in what's in this legislation and you missed the 15 hours and 55 minutes of the Senate staff reading this bill over the weekend, Politico has a piece, fresh mega bill text overnight, what's in and what's out. | ||
| Here's what's new from this legislation. | ||
| Rural hospitals, Senate Republicans are planning to provide a $25 billion stabilization fund for rural hospitals over five years. | ||
| Senate Republicans are aiming to expand a Medicare drug price negotiation exemption for orphan drugs to include medicines that treat multiple rare diseases. | ||
| Physician fees, an effort to ban Medicaid spread pricing and a requirement that retail pharmacies complete a survey to help HHS understand national drug acquisition costs was knocked out of the bill. | ||
| But lawmakers added in a temporary one-year, 2.5% bump to the Medicaid physician fee schedule for 2026 to account for exceptional circumstances. | ||
| And SALT, the new Senate text keeps House Republicans planned to increase the deduction from $10,000 to $40,000, but it would snap back to current levels after 2029. | ||
| The change is expected to shave at least $100 billion from the approximately $350 billion price tag of the House plan. | ||
| Those are some of the provisions. | ||
| You can read more from Politico.com. | ||
| Gary in New Rochelle, New York, Independent. | ||
| Gary, let's hear from you. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for taking my call. | |
| I'd like to start by talking about the greatest generation. | ||
| The people that had a lot of money were paying the taxes. | ||
| I remember Bob Hope all the time talking about, you know, taxes in his movies and stuff. | ||
| But let's think realistically here. | ||
| We got to get rid of the big money people getting all these tax breaks. | ||
| First of all, that would reduce what we're dealing with. | ||
| And then we got to really deal with the fact that one of the largest things that we pay for is the interest on the debt. | ||
| If we could get rid of the interest on the debt, we would have money to do all kinds of things. | ||
| But because the richest people don't want to pay their fair share, they don't want to pay the money that helps build the roads. | ||
| Remember the greatest generation. | ||
| They're the ones that put together the money to allow us to build interstate highway systems. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Gary there in New Rochelle, New York, and Independent. | ||
| The Senate about to convene any moment now. | ||
| Our coverage of gavel to gavel uninterrupted coverage over on C-SPAN 2 here at 9 a.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| You can also follow along with our free video mobile app, C-SPAN Now, if you need to leave the House this morning or online at c-span.org. | ||
| The Senate slate is gone. | ||
| The lights are up. | ||
| We can see the chamber over on the Senate side. | ||
| You can see the staff is milling about over there. | ||
| We will bring you coverage of that here on C-SPAN as we continue to talk to all of you about your thoughts on the so-called Big Beautiful Bill. | ||
| If we see some leadership come to the microphones, we'll dip in and hear what they have to say ahead of today's Voterama. | ||
| Amendments begin here at 9 a.m. Eastern Time, debate and votes. | ||
| And then final passage could happen later today, possibly Tuesday, depending on the number of amendments that are put forth by Democrats and Republicans. | ||
| Donna in Las Vegas, Republican. | ||
| Donna, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Go ahead, we're listening. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| I just want to make a comment on all these people saying that the billionaires aren't paying their fair taxes. | ||
| In response to that, that is so untrue. | ||
| Without billionaires, we would not have the innovative businesses that we do have. | ||
| They were great creators. | ||
| These people created millions and millions of jobs. | ||
| So why do we keep bashing billionaires? | ||
| They pay plenty of taxes all the time when they buy houses, when they buy yachts, when they do this, when they spend their money. | ||
| They're always paying taxes. | ||
| Donna, hold your thought. | ||
| Hold your thought one second. | ||
| Here is the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy in their analysis, they're nonpartisan, of the Senate bill. | ||
| They say under the Senate bill, 69% of the net tax cuts would go to the richest fifth of Americans in 2026. | ||
| Only 11% would go to the middle fifth of Americans, and less than 1% would go to the poorest fifth. | ||
| They say that the effects of President, the richest 1% of Americans would receive a total of $107 billion in net tax cuts in 2026. | ||
| The middle 20% of taxpayers on the income scale, a group that has 20 times the number of taxpayers as the richest 1%, would receive less than half that much, $53 billion in net tax cuts that year. | ||
| Do you agree with that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I agree. | |
| Because the more money a billionaire has, guess what? | ||
| The more money he's reinvesting. | ||
| Okay, Donna there, a Republican in Nevada, with her thoughts. | ||
| Eugene in Boston, Independent. | ||
| Eugene, what do you say? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Hello. | ||
| Morning, Eugene. | ||
| Do you want these senators to vote yes or no on final passage of the so-called Big Beautiful Bill? | ||
|
unidentified
|
What it really is, is the big, ugly bill. | |
| But see, to understand why this bill even stands a chance, you have to understand how America was built. | ||
| America was built off of head rights, which basically was unlimited welfare for white men. | ||
| And that has remained in place. | ||
| That's how America functions. | ||
| And they take money from the VA, from veterans, from Medicare, food stamps, from hungry kids, to fatten up billionaires. | ||
| That just basically just tells you and shows you what America is truly and really all about. | ||
| That's all it is. | ||
| All right, Eugene, there in Boston. | ||
| We're going to go over to the White House, Linda Feldman, who is the White House correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, joining us from C-SPAN's location at the White House this morning. | ||
| Linda Feldman, have we heard from the president yet this morning on the so-called Big Beautiful Bill and this Senate debate that is getting underway? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| So I haven't actually looked at my phone in the last few minutes, so I don't know if he said anything, but we know that he's engaged, he's here, and he's ready to swing into action if needed to keep this bill on track. | ||
| What's been his role over the weekend? | ||
| Well, the senators have been stuck in Washington for a rare weekend session. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Well, for President Trump, it was also a rare weekend in Washington. | ||
| He didn't go to one of his other homes outside the city. | ||
| He went to his golf club. | ||
| He golfed with Lindsey Graham, Rand Paul, Eric Schmidt of Missouri, and also the head of the CIA. | ||
| And the main thing is that he wanted to make his presence felt here so that if needed, you know, and he was on the phone. | ||
| I mean, he could reach anybody by phone, and he's a big phone guy. | ||
| He'll answer, you know, he'll answer pretty much anybody's call. | ||
| But he's 100% dedicated to getting this passed. | ||
| What did he have to say to Senator Ram Paul? | ||
| Do we know if that was an effective strategy to go golfing with him? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think so. | |
| I think, you know, you can threaten people, which is what he did to Tom Tillis, the senator from North Carolina. | ||
| Tom Tillis voted against the procedural vote on Saturday night. | ||
| Tom Tillis is now retiring. | ||
| After Donald Trump threatened to punch somebody in a primary, Senator Tillis said, All right, I'm out, I'm done. | ||
| So he's now kind of a free agent. | ||
| Rand Paul is not up for re-election. | ||
| I don't know what kind of conversation they had on the golf course, but we know, you know, Rand Paul is a bit of a special exception. | ||
| He's a libertarian who votes Republican, and he is, you know, I'm sure, still unhappy with this bill. | ||
| But in the end, the president seems to get what he wants most of the time. | ||
| And I suspect that Rand Paul won't, at least he won't kill the bill. | ||
| The president is expected, wants, has said, set a deadline for this legislation on his desk by July 4th. | ||
| Is that deadline still in place? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, it is. | |
| And as of now, it's looking pretty good. | ||
| The voterama should have started at 9 o'clock. | ||
| It could go well into the evening, and then all these amendments, all these changes to the bill means it will have to go back to the House. | ||
| And that's, again, where it gets dicey. | ||
| Sort of threading the needle. | ||
| It passed the first time by one vote. | ||
| And, you know, I think I would say people here at the White House are optimistic. | ||
| And if I had to bet, I would say it will make it by or even maybe on July 4th. | ||
| What else is on the president's schedule for this week and later in the week for the 4th of July holiday? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| No, it's a busy week. | ||
| He's scheduled to go to Florida tomorrow, actually. | ||
| He's going to what's dubbed Alligator Alcatraz. | ||
| It's a new detention center being constructed in Miami-Dade. | ||
| It's actually being built on an airstrip, which will make it easy for to ship people in and out for detained migrants. | ||
| So that'll be a big deal. | ||
| I'm sure Ron DeSantis will be there. | ||
| Then on Thursday, he's expected to go to Iowa for the Iowa State Fair, which sounds like he's running for president. | ||
| But in fact, what he's doing is kicking off the countdown to the nation's 250th birthday. | ||
| So on Thursday, that'll be one year plus one day until we reach July 4th, 2026. | ||
| So we can expect a big patriotic speech then. | ||
| And then, of course, July 4th, he will be at the White House welcoming military families to the South Lawn to view the fireworks. | ||
| Linda Feldman with the Christian Science Monitor, their White House correspondent from C-SPAN's posts at the White House. | ||
| Thank you for your time this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure, my pleasure. | |
| And as Linda was saying, the voter rama set to begin here in the Senate. | ||
| They've gabbled in at 9 a.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| The Democratic leader for the Democrats, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York. | ||
| He's speaking now. | ||
| Let's listen to what he's saying to his colleagues. | ||
| We've shown how this bill kills climate jobs even more than the House bill. | ||
| With every rewrite, Senate Republicans have made their bill more extreme, pro-billionaire, and more hostile to people's health care and livelihood. | ||
| Why do they do that? | ||
| There's a small group on that side of the aisle, MAGA hard right-wingers who are dictating what's happened, and all the rest of the Senate, senators on the Republican side, who know it's wrong, go along. | ||
| A small group. | ||
| They don't represent more than 10% of the American people, but they're dictating what this body does. | ||
| A, because of the rules we have, a simple majority. | ||
| But B, because our colleagues on the Republican side lack the courage of their convictions to do the right thing for the American people. | ||
| It's outrageous. | ||
| Cutting people's health care, causing people to get sicker and to even die. | ||
| Cutting people's health care so that it's certain almost that more people will die. | ||
| Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat from New York, the party leader there, kicking off this marathon session in the Senate. | ||
| A voter will take place where senators get to offer amendments to the so-called big beautiful bill. | ||
| And they are in the final stretch after a weekend session here in Washington to get to final passage. | ||
| Watch our gavel-to-gavel coverage uninterrupted over on C-SPAN2. | ||
| Download our free video mobile app, C-SPAN Now, or you can watch online on demand at c-span.org. | ||
| We've been asking you to tell senators how you'd like them to vote today. | ||
| Tony in Madisonville, Tennessee, Independent. | ||
| What do you say? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, everyone is speaking about the cost of this big, beautiful bill, but no one is saying what it's going to save in the long run. | |
| If you look at it like you buy or you have a vehicle, it might be worth $10,000, but every thousand miles, you got to put two quarts of oil in it, and it's not getting but six miles to a gallon. | ||
| Where you go buy a new vehicle, it's going to cost more, but you don't have to put oil in it every thousand miles, and you're getting 20 miles to a gallon. | ||
| You got to think about the big picture. | ||
| All right. | ||
| All right, Tony. | ||
| Lee in Oklahoma, Democratic caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, yes, thank you. | |
| I have a question about the bill. | ||
| I'm not sure, but I saw this morning on a commercial from the utility companies that if they put this vote yes on it, that's your electric bill will skyrocket it. | ||
| And it was from the utility company? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, it was a commercial. | |
| And it gave the number to call and call Congress and tell them to not vote on that vote. | ||
| No. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, Lee, you may be interested in this article in the Washington Post this morning. | ||
| The massive tax and immigration bill advancing through Congress could raise energy prices in much of the United States and make it harder for Americans, companies to compete globally on artificial intelligence and manufacturing as a result of deep cuts to federal support for wind and solar power, batteries, and other renewable technologies. | ||
| In addition to phasing out tax credits for wind and solar power by 2027, the Senate version of the bill would add a new tax on wind and solar projects built after 2027 that use equipment made in China. | ||
| Solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries can be built more quickly and already make up more than 90% of the new electricity added to American power grids each year. | ||
| That means power companies will keep building them even without subsidies. | ||
| They'll just shift the cost on to their consumers, experts say. | ||
| Power companies won't just pass on the cost of their lost tax credits, experts say. | ||
| They'll also pass on the cost of a new tax on wind and solar equipment built in China, taking effect in 2027 that Senate Republicans included in their version. | ||
| It says that electricity demand is set to see enormous growth in this tax bill will increase prices. | ||
| So caller, you and others may be interested in this Washington Post piece because it also talks about how utility companies cite the demand from artificial intelligence, which will be mostly using natural gas to provide energy for artificial intelligence. | ||
| And that'll also put more demands on electricity and will raise the costs for consumers. | ||
| Mary in Florida and Independent. | ||
| Mary, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I just really have a question about the big bill and how this legislation works. | ||
| I mean, they spend a lot of time talking and debating about it, but when do they, why don't they propose the changes that they want to see? | ||
| I mean, like. | ||
| Well, that's what they're going to do, Mary. | ||
| That's what they're doing right now in the Senate, is that you will see amendments offered to make changes to this bill, largely from Democrats. | ||
| But we could see some Republicans who have concerns about the bill offer amendments as well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, yes, because I definitely think that amendments are needed, and I'll pay more attention to watch for that because I would like to see changes in the bill. | |
| I think it's basically a good bill, and we do need to move our country forward. | ||
| And the big concerns that needs to be amended so that people can get on board with the bill on behalf of the public. | ||
| Understood, Mary. | ||
| So for you and others, go over to C-SPAN 2. | ||
| Don't want to lose you here on C-SPAN. | ||
| But for you and others who are interested in these amendments, you can watch uninterrupted Gabble-Gavel over on C-SPAN 2 this morning and throughout the day as these senators make their way toward a final vote. | ||
| The leader for the Democratic Party, Chuck Schumer, he's still talking on the Senate floor right now ahead of this so-called Votarama. | ||
| That's unlimited number of amendments that can be offered. | ||
| Mary wants to see these Republicans who have concerns offer amendments to make changes. | ||
| Some senators to watch are Republican senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, and Susan Collins of Maine. | ||
| Will they offer amendments? | ||
| And will they be voting yes on final passage? | ||
| Those are just a few of the senators, Republican senators, to watch while the Senate picks up debate today. | ||
| Again, over on C-SPAN 2. | ||
| Nate in Milwaukee, Democratic caller. | ||
| Hi, Nate. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for having me. | ||
| I would start by pointing out that in his last term, Trump added about $8 trillion to the national debt. | ||
| So here we are, the first year of the second term is not even over, and we're talking about a bill that will add trillions more to the national debt. | ||
| And this is despite a 2016 campaign promise that we would actually pay off the national debt if he had two terms. | ||
| I cannot see any way that this is good for the long term since the long term already showed us that trillions of dollars more to the national debt is going to be coming with his presidency. | ||
| Also, touching on the energy changes being proposed, if we're in an energy emergency, as he declared, we would want all kinds of energy because we're apparently going to run low on it. | ||
| Taxing renewable energies in specific, not just the stuff in China, but making it harder, kind of is the opposite of that. | ||
| And it's being done at a time when there is a major heat wave hitting Spain right now. | ||
| So and also in the U.S., I'd point out there's a nice journal center, which is a Wisconsin newspaper article titled Melting Snow in Canada, Exacerbates Wildfires That Bring Smoke to Milwaukee. | ||
| And it basically mentions how global warming is making Canadian wildfires worse, and we get to breathe the air that comes from that wildfire. | ||
| All right, Nate in Milwaukee. | ||
| We'll go to Arkansas. | ||
| Jenny, a Republican. | ||
| You're up, Jenny. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Hi. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for having me. | |
| I unfortunately lost my 16-year-old son, Mason, to suicide just over two and a half years ago. | ||
| In this big, beautiful bill, there is an AI moratorium that is buried in there, and it will shut down parents' rights to go after big tech. | ||
| I just want to talk a little bit about that. | ||
| The new Blackburn Cruise compromise gives weapons to big tech to wield against parents whose kids have been injured or killed by social media platforms. | ||
| AI systems are broadly defined to include any machine-based system that makes predictions, recommendations, or decisions, which includes types of technologies at issues in cases involving social media harm to children, as well as in cases brought up by state AGs and over a thousand school districts seeking to change the platform's harmful practices. | ||
| This does nothing to help the kids and families hurt by big tech and only adds to the gauntlet that parents and families will face as they fight for justice and accountability for the deaths of their kids. | ||
| Carving out child online safety and child sex abuse material while giving tech a brand new defense to use against families is not what parents or kids deserve. | ||
| I know my son, Mason, definitely deserves better than this. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Jenny there in Arkansas, and sorry to hear about your loss. | ||
| Michael in Orlando, Florida, and Independent. | ||
| Michael? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| The Washington Post article about the solar energy rebates and incentives being cut back, I think a lot of people have to look at this in a couple ways. | ||
| One, if you take a person who is young, starting out out of high school, out of college, and they can't really afford a home and they're renting an apartment, let's say they're in a large apartment. | ||
| How are they all supposed to have an electric car and have the charging infrastructure for an apartment with like 500 residents? | ||
| The whole concept of buying Chinese solar panels and all this and then subsidizing it. | ||
| The article talks about it's going to be a tax later downstream. | ||
| Well, when it goes to the government and we then give incentives back, that's a major waste of money, meaning that that's the same thing that's happening there as far as that goes. | ||
| So you really can't say someone sorting out is going to get an electric car. | ||
| You know, if people want to put it in their home and have a charging station and solar panels, I have all that. | ||
| And it costs a lot of money and it's not a good return on my investment. | ||
| And people will argue that when you put the solar in your house, a few years later it depreciates. | ||
| And there'll be these purists out there saying, oh, it's going to pay for itself and this and that. | ||
| No, it's maybe a break-even, even with the incentives. | ||
| And the thing is, we're not building these in our country. | ||
| So that's one problem. | ||
| So we're shipping our money overseas for these panels and for the cars as well. | ||
| Now, if people want the car for climate change and everything, they can go do it. | ||
| But it doesn't mean the rest of the country has to subsidize it. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Michael, I'm going to leave it at that point. | ||
| Also wanted to let you know, in addition to the senate debate that you can watch over on C-SPAN 2 that's happening right now on this so-called Big Beautiful bill, also here on C-SPAN coming up this morning at 10 a.m. Eastern Time, we'll have live coverage of the UN Security Council as they debate the Middle East situation in Israel and Palestine. | ||
| That debate happening at 10 a.m. Eastern Time right here on C-SPAN, our free video mobile app, C-SPANNOWER online at c-span.org. | ||
| We'll take a break when we come back, a conversation with documentary writer, producer, and correspondent Martin Smith about his new PBS frontline film, Syria After Assad. | ||
| Stay with us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We'll be right back. | |
| This show and C-SPAN is one of the few places left in America where you actually have left and right coming together to talk and argue. | ||
| And you guys do a great service in that. | ||
| I love C-SPAN too. | ||
| That's why I'm here today. | ||
| Answer questions all day, every day. | ||
| Sometimes I get to do fun things like go on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN is, I think, one of the very few places that Americans can still go. | ||
|
unidentified
|
C-SPAN has such a distinguished and honorable and important mandate and mission in this country. | |
| I love this show. | ||
| This is my favorite show to do of all shows because I actually get to hear what the American people care about. | ||
| American people have access to their government in ways that they did not before the cable industry provided C-SPAN access. | ||
| That's why I like to come on C-SPAN is because this is one of the last places where people are actually having conversations, even people who disagree. | ||
| Shows that you can have a television network that can try to be objective. | ||
| Thank C-SPAN for all you do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's one of the reasons why this program is so valuable because it does bring people together where dissenting voices are heard, where hard questions are asked, and where people have to answer to them. | |
| Looking to contact your members of Congress? | ||
| Well, C-SPAN is making it easy for you with our 2025 Congressional Directory. | ||
| Get essential contact information for government officials all in one place. | ||
| This compact, spiral-bound guide contains bio and contact information for every House and Senate member of the 119th Congress. | ||
| Contact information on congressional committees, the President's Cabinet, federal agencies, and state governors. | ||
| The Congressional Directory costs $32.95 plus shipping and handling, and every purchase helps support C-SPAN's non-profit operations. | ||
| Scan the code on the right or go to c-spanshop.org to order your copy today. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| We want to welcome to the Washington Journal this morning Martin Smith. | ||
| He's the PBS frontline writer, producer, and correspondent of the new documentary called Syria After Assad. | ||
| Martin Smith, why did you decide to focus on Syria? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, in 2021, I had the opportunity to go to Idlib province and interview the fellow that is now president of Syria. | |
| Then he was going by Nom De Guerre, Al-Jalani. | ||
| And so I was the first Western journalist to interview him. | ||
| I had covered Syria for years, several documentaries over the years for Frontline. | ||
| But when he took Damascus and toppled Assad in 2024, in December of 2024, it was natural that I would go back and report on his Syria. | ||
| Let me show our viewers the opening of this documentary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
tens of thousands of people out on the streets celebrating, celebrating a new Syria and also tasting freedom after decades of repression. | |
| We saw this coming. | ||
| Assad has come on to power through years of civil war, but now a new rebel movement has managed to topple his regime in less than two weeks. | ||
| What we've been seeing from the rebel leadership is that clear attempts to signal that they want an inclusive Syria and that they want to avoid more conflict. | ||
| The leader, Al-Jalani, has even interestingly dropped his Jihadi Nomdegair. | ||
| He now calls himself by his original birth name, Ahmad al-Sharra. | ||
| And even that is a signal that he is not trying to impose his jihadist position. | ||
| We are tracking one of the most extraordinary events in Middle East history. | ||
| This will have a profound impact on the region and beyond. | ||
| There is real joy here, but there's also real concern. | ||
| No one knows what's going to happen next. | ||
| Syria after Assad is the new PBS frontline documentary. | ||
| Martin Smith is joining us. | ||
| He's the writer, producer, and correspondent of this new film. | ||
| Martin Smith, so much to unpack in the imagery there, but before we get to this new leadership, talk about the word freedom and what it means to the Syrians, all of them gathered in the square there. | ||
| What did you make of that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It means everything to them. | |
| They have suffered enormously with hundreds of thousands of people dying, many of them being tortured to death in Assad's prisons. | ||
| It's been 54 years, first under the father of Bashar al-Assad, the father, Hafez, and then his son took over in 2000 and continued this reign of repression, terror. | ||
| The Syrian people rose up in 2011, but it took 13 years before they were able to breathe freedom. | ||
| It means everything to all of those people. | ||
| And remind our viewers how the Assad regime was toppled. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know, nobody predicted this, but Al-Jalani was up in Idlib province, a corner of Syria in the northwest, and he was building his army. | |
| He was fighting against Assad's allies. | ||
| That would be Russia, Iran, Hezbollah. | ||
| And after October 7th, things shifted in the Middle East. | ||
| And as Israel took on Hezbollah on its northern border, who had entered the fight against Israel, and Russia was preoccupied with Ukraine, Assad's allies had disappeared. | ||
| They were no longer defending him, resupplying him in the way that they had. | ||
| And it's also a major factor that his army, after years of sanctions imposed on it, Assad's army, had been hollowed out and was weak and was really not prepared to fight an army, even a small army like Jalani had mustered in the northwest. | ||
| So when they moved out of Idlib and took Aleppo, it was pretty much clear sailing all the way to the capital. | ||
| Where is Assad now? | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's in Moscow. | |
| We don't hear much from him. | ||
| Some of the Syrians would like to have him back to put him on trial. | ||
| But he's quiet with Putin in Moscow. | ||
| And the new leader? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The new leader is attempting to hold together a country that's been fractured over the years under the Assad regime. | |
| And it's a huge challenge for him to bring peace, stability, and get inclusion from the people of Syria. | ||
| So he is working hard. | ||
| He came into Syria. | ||
| I mean, he came into Damascus into the new government and very quickly had to form a government. | ||
| He hardly had the resources or the manpower to take over a country. | ||
| Up in Idlib, he had maybe 3 million people under his, you know, that he was ruling. | ||
| And then suddenly he had a country of 25 or so million people that he had to administer to. | ||
| He changed his name. | ||
| Can you talk about that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, his birth name was Ahmed Al-Sharra. | |
| His nom de guerre that he'd taken on was Muhammad al-Jalani. | ||
| He was very secretive for many years. | ||
| He came to the fight against Assad in 2000, around 2011 when the people were rising up against Assad. | ||
| But as soon as he took office, he dropped his nom de guerre and adopted his birth name, Ahmed Al-Shara. | ||
| And what is the symbolism of that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think that it indicates that he is no longer a jihadist, which those are his roots. | |
| So he was dropping that and going back to his birth name. | ||
| He was no longer at war. | ||
| He was now the interim president of a new Syria. | ||
| We're taking your questions and your comments this morning about the fall of Assad. | ||
| The Syria after Assad is the name of the documentary, the title, by PBS Frontline and Martin Smith. | ||
| And we'll take your questions and comments about Syria and U.S. policy toward the Syria and the Middle East here this morning. | ||
| Republicans dial in at 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can also text with your question or comment at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Martin Smith, what changes have been made in the six months since the fall of Assad, and what transformations are you seeing? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the biggest change is perhaps the most recent change, which is the lifting of sanctions. | |
| Sanctions were imposed on Syria during the Assad regime. | ||
| President Trump lifted not all, but many of those sanctions in a speech he gave in Saudi Arabia on a recent trip to the Middle East. | ||
| The Syrian economy is in dire straits and in need of investment, in need of a banking system, all of which was stymied by the imposition of these sanctions over the years, and it had really hollowed out the economy. | ||
| But other changes that have happened are that he sees resistance from various quarters of the country, most notably in the south with the Druze religious minority, the Alawites along the Mediterranean coast and up in the northeast from the Kurds. | ||
| Getting everybody to be on board and rowing in the same direction has been a major challenge for him. | ||
| And as I said, he didn't have the resources that he needed when he came in. | ||
| But there he is, and I think he's, you know, I met him in 2021. | ||
| My impression was that he was sincere, that he was dropping his affiliation with al-Qaeda. | ||
| He was dropping his affiliation with ISIS. | ||
| His interest was in toppling Assad. | ||
| He had no interest in international terrorism. | ||
| And he was remarkably open and shared a lot of information. | ||
| I was there for seven days in Idlib in 2021. | ||
| And, you know, now he's got to do the hard part, which is governing. | ||
| Winning the war, you know, took him a long time, but I think governing is a greater and more complicated challenge for him. | ||
| Martin Smith is our guest here this morning. | ||
| You can join the conversation here with your questions or your comments. | ||
| Excuse me, this PBS frontline documentary will air tomorrow, July 1st, at 10 p.m. Eastern Time, 9 p.m. Central. | ||
| It's also available to watch at pbs.org/slash frontline. | ||
| Martin Smith, what do you hope the American audience gets out of watching this documentary? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, first of all, I think I hope that they understand the man better. | |
| It's very easy to look at his past and say, this is bad. | ||
| Nothing can come of this that's any good. | ||
| But we've seen this in history. | ||
| People have participated in armed battle against a government, Jerry Adams in Ireland, others. | ||
| And he's dropped that. | ||
| I think he is quite sincere in that he wants to run that country. | ||
| His problem, of course, and I hope this is clear to people from the documentary, is that he has an army, and he can give them orders, but he doesn't control all the militias that are in arms still in the country. | ||
| There's still a problem with even foreign jihadis that have come into Syria. | ||
| It's a complicated mess, if you will. | ||
| So he doesn't fully control, as I said, all the men with guns. | ||
| We'll go to Greg, who's in Willington, Connecticut. | ||
| Our first call here, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Greg. | ||
| Question or comment. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Well, you know, Al-Jelani is a terrorist. | ||
| Well, he was allegedly a terrorist for many, many years. | ||
| And then at some point, the United States government thought it would be a good idea to support his activities there in Syria. | ||
| And so I want to know, you know, with a $10 million price on his head, why is he accepted now? | ||
| And the PBS seems to be ignoring all of this, all his negative activities in the past. | ||
| I think a much better- Greg, let's talk about that. | ||
| Martin Smith talk about his terrorist activity, alleged terrorist activity, and was he backed by the United States? | ||
|
unidentified
|
He will admit that, I mean, he wouldn't use the word terrorist. | |
| He was a freedom fighter, as he saw it. | ||
| At 21, he was a young man. | ||
| He did what a lot of young men in the region did, and that was to join up in the fight against the American occupation of Iraq. | ||
| Many Americans, most Americans today would say that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. | ||
| He took up with the available group that was on the ground fighting the American occupation, and that was al-Qaeda and Iraq. | ||
| He was imprisoned. | ||
| He spent five or six years in American prisons like Abu Ghraib and Camp Buka. | ||
| When he came out, he went back to Syria and said that what he wanted to do was fight Assad. | ||
| no interest in international terrorism yes he had taken money from jihadist organizations like Isis but that was not his main it what was driving him was to topple Assad and that's what he's done Yes, his past troubles a lot of people, but it doesn't mean that he's insincere now. | ||
| There are those on the ground, as you will see in the documentary, that are not willing to trust him. | ||
| In fact, a lot of people distrust him, although the majority of Syrians are pleased that Assad is gone. | ||
| We haven't seen the kind of imprisoning of people and torture. | ||
| We've seen more freedom of speech. | ||
| We've seen more due process of law under the new leader under Al-Shara than we ever saw under Assad. | ||
| So many Americans in government have decided that we should give him a chance. | ||
| Sanctions can be reimposed. | ||
| But at this point in time, regional nations are urging the Americans and Europe to give this guy a chance and see what happens. | ||
| Who is investing in his government and will it hold? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the Saudis, the Qataris, the Turks. | |
| The Turks have long been a supporter of Al-Jalani even when he was fighting in the north before he came to Damascus. | ||
| They're the key ally in the region, I would say. | ||
| So those countries are supporting him. | ||
| They urge the United States to drop its terrorist designation on Al-Jalani. | ||
| A team went in, as you'll see in the documentary. | ||
| A team went in 10 days or so after the fall of Assad to meet with Al-Jalani, and as they say in the documentary, they were impressed. | ||
| We'll go to Georgia. | ||
| Woodrow is watching there. | ||
| Republican caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, how are you doing this morning? | |
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I think that this young man deserves an opportunity to see what he can do to rebuild his country. | |
| I mean, we've supported Bin Laden the whole while. | ||
| I was in the military 25 years, and Bin Laden turned on us. | ||
| So, I mean, everybody deserves a second chance, but his people are not being killed up. | ||
| We don't hear much from them. | ||
| And so, if he can get with President Trump, let somebody come in and show him how to really put together a good economy and everything, I think they got a chance. | ||
| Martin Smith? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I really think. | |
| Yeah, well, I tend to agree with you. | ||
| You know, I met him in 21. | ||
| I was the first Western journalist to be able to meet and sit down and talk with him at length over two long interviews. | ||
| I believed in his sincerity then. | ||
| And he was clearly using the interview that we did with him to get a word out to say to the rest of the world, reconsider me. | ||
| Take a look. | ||
| And nobody took him very seriously. | ||
| He was an obscure rebel leader in a country full of rebel leaders. | ||
| But he was the man who was able to put together an army and come to Damascus. | ||
| So given that, I think he deserves a chance. | ||
| And we'll just see how it goes. | ||
| There's no evidence so far that he is abusing in any big way, although we do criticize him in the documentary, as you will see. | ||
| Again, you can watch. | ||
| We see some of his moves, vis-a-vis the Kurds and the North as mistakes. | ||
| Again, you can watch this documentary tomorrow, July 1st, 10 p.m. Eastern, 9 p.m. Central on PBS's frontline. | ||
| Paige in El Paso, Texas, Independent. | ||
| Hi, Paige. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, how are you? | |
| Good. | ||
| Go ahead, Paige. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I am a big supporter of Martin Smith. | |
| I've watched most of your documentaries on Frontline, but this one was very deep and disturbing. | ||
| So I wonder how you go through that personally when you have to deal with these difficult issues. | ||
| Well, thank you for your viewership over the years. | ||
| You know, I think that it is curiosity that drives me. | ||
| And if that drives me to places that are dark, so be it. | ||
| That's the nature of my work as a journalist. | ||
| So my job is to go places, see things, and ask questions and report back. | ||
| So how does it affect me personally? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| We'll go to George, Frankfurt, Kentucky, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I just wanted to remind everyone that you can call the gentleman who was a rebel in Syria a terrorist, but they got to remember that when America was formed, Washington and all of his followers would be considered terrorist to England. | ||
| They went against them, they took what was considered theirs, and they say that they were fighting for the people. | ||
| Same things happen in Syria. | ||
| Martin Smith? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think that's right. | |
| I mean, I was going to mention George Washington earlier, but I didn't want to raise too many eyebrows. | ||
| But in fact, when you're engaged in a freedom fight, you see your role not as a terrorist, but as a freedom fighter. | ||
| I think the term terrorist is a very difficult one, and I try to avoid it. | ||
| You can call your opponent a terrorist, and especially if they're using tactics of war that target and kill civilians for the effect of cowering the population, such as ISIS did. | ||
| That crosses a line in my view, and most people's view. | ||
| But I think that with, in the case of Al-Jalani, when he was fighting Assad, he was targeting military installations by and large. | ||
| He did use suicide bombers. | ||
| He told me that he did that because he didn't have jet planes. | ||
| So you're right to raise the issue that there are people like Jerry Adams in Ireland or even Menachem Begin or George Washington who have or would be considered terrorists in the view of their opponents. | ||
| Here is a viewer in California who says, can Mr. Smith tell us how long it will take to create a Jeffersonian democracy in Syria? | ||
|
unidentified
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Never, I think. | |
| I mean, I don't think that democracy is in the ambition of Al-Jalani, I mean, or of Al-Shara, I should say. | ||
| I don't think that the country has to go through a tremendous process of transitional justice, of punishing those responsible for the horrors that were visited upon them before they get to anything that resembles a democracy. | ||
| I mean, the question of democracy is an interesting one because it is not in his belief system that democracy is al-Shara's belief system. | ||
| It's not in his belief system that that is the superior way of governing. | ||
| That doesn't mean that he's going to be a dictator. | ||
| It simply means that democracy, as seen by Islamists, is placing the will of man above the will of God. | ||
| And I challenged him on that. | ||
| I did discuss that with him when I was in Idlib back in 21. | ||
| It's clear to me that democracy is a long way off, if ever. | ||
| Here's another viewer who posts this on X. How can Syria make peace with Israel while the Golan Heights remain occupied? | ||
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unidentified
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Not only did the Golan Heights remain occupied, but since Al-Sharra took over Syria, the Israelis have expanded the Golan in order to increase what they call their security zone. | |
| They also immediately, before sending a memo or making a phone call, began to bomb all existing military facilities in Syria. | ||
| As they say, they didn't want chemical stockpiles to come into the wrong hands. | ||
| Israel and Syria have been at war with one another for a long time. | ||
| Al-Shara has not responded except to ask Israel to stop. | ||
| It has not responded in any military fashion to Israel's aggression, but he couldn't even if he wanted to. | ||
| He doesn't have the capability and he knows it. | ||
| And he wants to bring the country together, to heal Syria before he gets engaged in anything like pushing for the Golan Heights. | ||
| Interestingly, his nom de guerre, Muhammad al-Jalani, Jalani is a reference to the Golan Heights where his family had roots. | ||
| So it is something that is near to him. | ||
| But at this point in time, he's engaged in indirect talks through intermediaries with Israel to get them to stop bombing. | ||
| And so far, those acts from Israel have continued, and he's frustrated by it. | ||
| Well, here's some follow-up then on those points. | ||
| What would a stabilized Syria mean for Israel? | ||
| And is Israel interested in helping to stabilize Syria? | ||
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unidentified
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Well, Israel doesn't speak with one voice, but I think a lot of Israelis, and certainly in the government, the current government, are worried about Syria getting on its feet in a way that possibly could threaten them. | |
| They're also very concerned about Turkey. | ||
| And Turkey supported El-Shara when he was fighting Assad and continues to support him. | ||
| And I think the Israelis, Netanyahu, is very wary of Erdogan in Ankara, in Turkey. | ||
| So a lot of people will say they're trying to keep Syria divided and weak and not allow the Turks to come in and establish a foothold and possibly threaten Israel. | ||
| Jasmine in California, Republican. | ||
| Question or comment here from Martin Smith. | ||
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unidentified
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I have both a question and a comment, and thank you for taking my call. | |
| I want to congratulate Mr. Smith for his curiosity. | ||
| I'm a Persian origin, and I also want to congratulate the Syrian people for finally getting rid of Assad. | ||
| I think the first thing that the new leader can do is shave his beard, because that would indicate, at least visually, that he is for improving and perhaps westernizing, modernizing the country. | ||
| It's a beautiful country. | ||
| But my question to Mr. Smith is also, I know he did a documentary a couple of years ago about Iran, but I would appreciate if he would think about doing a documentary about what's going on inside of Iran today and how we can perhaps reach the same goal of freeing the Iranian people of this regime. | ||
| The Islamization of the Middle East has been to the Middle East's detriment, and I think de-Islamization of the area would be very, very good for the region. | ||
| Martin Smith. | ||
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unidentified
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A couple of things. | |
| One is shaving his beard would be offensive to his base. | ||
| He came to Damascus with the help of a lot of Islamist fighters who do not want to see symbolism that would indicate to them that he was somehow moderating and westernizing to the degree of shaving his beard. | ||
| So I don't think you're likely to see that happen. | ||
| I do understand what you're saying. | ||
| As far as Iran, Frontline is now producing a program about the relationship between Israel and Iran. | ||
| And so that's going to air, I think, on July 29th. | ||
| They're working very hard on pulling that together. | ||
| I would like very much to do more reporting about and inside Iran. | ||
| Iran makes it very difficult and not impossible, but it's difficult because they limit the time that you can spend there on a journalism visa quite severely to about 10 days. | ||
| And by the time you get there and oriented, you've lost another couple of days and it's just a very challenging place to work. | ||
| But the need for it is great. | ||
| I don't disagree with that. | ||
| In the documentary, in the opening clip that we showed, you talk about the impact on the region of a Syria with a new government. | ||
| What is that? | ||
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unidentified
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Well, Syria is squarely situated in the center of the Middle East. | |
| And there's many of our strategic partners in the Middle East border on Syria. | ||
| For Syria to fester as it did for so many years and for U.S. governments to be so ineffectual at bringing any kind of positive change to Syria, it's a tremendous opportunity now to establish a secure new Syria. | ||
| And that will have impacts on the flow of refugees abroad. | ||
| We saw an outflow of refugees in 15, 16, 17 that changed the way that politics were changed the political situation in Europe as a backlash mounted against immigration. | ||
| It's also true that ISIS took a foothold in northern Syria, seized oil wells, was able to mount its attacks within Europe. | ||
| So the outflow of international terrorism, the outflow of immigrants, it's important that that stop for the region to settle down. | ||
| So Syria is key. | ||
| AJ in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Democratic caller. | ||
| Good morning to you. | ||
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unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my phone call. | ||
| I am also native Iranian. | ||
| And when I hear that, that is wonderful. | ||
| I don't know why some people that complain about the background of that guy. | ||
| We all have some bad background in our lives. | ||
| However, what could be worse cannot be worse than Assad was. | ||
| Also, United States has very good control over sanction if this guy doesn't do what he said he is going to do. | ||
| And if you look at Syria, if you look at Iran, you look at Russia and China, these four countries are damaging the whole world. | ||
| Because if Syria and Iran, they change that, that's my hope, that one day Iran become a civilized country. | ||
| That most of us, person like me, 47 years ago came to this country and I wasn't planning to stay here. | ||
| And I stayed. | ||
| I'm glad that I'm here. | ||
| But most of the intelligent of those countries, they're escaping from the country, going to some other countries because they cannot tolerate the regime and suppression that these countries, they have, or the government of these countries, they have on the people. | ||
| Okay, AJ. | ||
| Martin Smith. | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah, I think an important thing to point out is, yeah, it would be good to see some of these repressive governments change as we have in Syria. | |
| As one of our interviewees said, it was good to see Assad go and be replaced, even if it was by the devil. | ||
| I mean, that's the depth of dislike and hatred that the Syrian people held for Bashar al-Assad. | ||
| The difference in Syria is that this is a homegrown revolution. | ||
| This was regime change from within. | ||
| It's much more difficult for the future of these countries when there is intervention from outside that results in the change of government. | ||
| So I caution, I think it's good to be cautious about getting behind foreign invaders into Iran to think that they can change the regime. | ||
| People don't like the Ayatollah. | ||
| They don't like the Islamic rule, but they love their country more, and they don't want to see foreigners come in and try and change the order of things. | ||
| What does this new government in Syria mean for Iran going forward? | ||
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unidentified
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Well, Iran got kicked out. | |
| I mean, Iran basic arm inside Syria was through Hezbollah. | ||
| Hezbollah was an army that was on the ground in Syria fighting to preserve the Assad regime. | ||
| They've lost that. | ||
| So they lost their proxy, Hezbollah, has been weakened, and their ability to exert their power in Syria is gone, at least for now. | ||
| And I think as long as Iran stays out of Syria, it's good for Syria. | ||
| I think as long as most foreign actors stay out of Syria, it's good. | ||
| Syria needs investment, but it doesn't need coups and foreign-backed militias stirring things up. | ||
| Martin Smith, there was analysis in one of the papers that the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, made the attack on Iran, made the plan for the attack on Iran, partly because of the fall of the Syrian regime, that that opened up the airspace for him then to attack Iran. | ||
| What is this all meant for Israel? | ||
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unidentified
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Well, it's as somebody said, the Middle East is the game of nations. | |
| And when one goes down, there are new opportunities to be exploited. | ||
| And that's what Al-Jalani saw when the Russians and the Iranians and Hezbollah were weakened and he was able to take Damascus. | ||
| You know, similarly, with Iran weakened in Syria, there was an opportunity for them to move as they did. | ||
| So it's a constantly shifting, as I say, game of nations. | ||
| We'll go to Maryland. | ||
| John is watching there. | ||
| Independent. | ||
| John, good morning. | ||
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unidentified
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Can you hear me clear? | |
| We can. | ||
|
unidentified
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Awesome. | |
| Great guys. | ||
| So just, I don't want to bounce around too much, but a few thoughts in regards to a caller had called and the notion that perhaps do we turn the cheek and give this new leader his fair share. | ||
| And I kind of go back and forth with a few of the callers. | ||
| I know in the past when supporting bin Laden against the Russians within Afghanistan, well, while that worked out on the early onset, the Afghan people were very much left with warlords that eventually ended up coming back to kind of bite us in the butt there. | ||
| And then I think to myself, well, you know, our nation's only about 200-some years old. | ||
| And you look at literature and you see guys like Tecumseh who were just fighting along for their land. | ||
| And you talk to your buddies who went to Iraq. | ||
| And I know a lot of them really struggled with the fact that when they got there, they kind of realized maybe we're fighting here for some unjust reasons. |