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July 3, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
12:35
Big Beautiful Charade - Republicans Cave; Democrats Rave

In one of the most easily predictable moves of all time, a small group of Republican "holdouts" quickly caved and green-lit the massive spending bill for passage; while Democrat Leader Jeffries has lurked at the House Floor microphone for hours pretending that there is any opposition to the Uniparty in DC. It is a shameful preview to the celebration of 249 years since we told King George, "later."

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Time Text
Final Vote Approaching 00:08:49
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
Dr. Paul is away today.
We are heading into a big holiday weekend.
I will inform you that the Liberty Report will be taking a vacation tomorrow, so we can all be outside by the pool, what have you.
But I do want to do a little briefing today because today is the day the big, beautiful bill will be passing.
In fact, as we speak, they're readying for a final vote on the floor.
There are a couple of procedural issues going on right now, but they will soon be dispensed with.
Now, let's have a recap of what happened.
Overnight, there was a vote on the rule.
A lot of people don't understand what a vote on the rule is.
No bill can be brought to the floor until a rule is passed.
And what a rule does, it defines the parameters of the debate.
How long does the debate last?
Can members come down?
How much time can they claim?
Are amendments allowed?
Are they not allowed?
This sort of thing.
It sort of defines how the debate goes.
Generally speaking, a rule vote is a vote that proceeds along party lines.
And I remember when Dr. Paul was in the House, as a general rule, even when he hated the bill, he would vote in favor of the rule because he thought that the bill should be debated.
And so that's what had happened last night.
But there was kind of a late night rebellion.
They held the vote open, I think, until three or so in the morning.
And there was a slight rebellion.
There were, I think, a group of about 10 Republicans who were voting against the rule, which would have prevented the big, beautiful bill from coming to the floor for a final vote and would have ruined President Trump's 4th of July signing ceremony.
So basically, they stayed up all night, twisting arms, twisting elbows, twisting anything in sight.
And I know this is going to shock you, but by morning, when the members started getting tired, they relented and they voted for the bill and the bill passed.
And this is probably the most predictable passage of a funding bill that you will ever see.
Having spent 12 years or 11 years on the Hill, this is how it happens.
The drama peaks because there are some holdouts who want to make a point.
And then, of course, they will relent.
It's almost like a struggle session.
And after they feel a little better, they relent.
And so I just want to make one note as well.
And that is that there are some comments about Thomas Massey, who originally voted in favor of the rule.
And then when he saw that there was a pretty decent-sized rebellion, he added his voice to the rebellion.
And then when they all predictably caved, he went ahead and voted yes to the rule again.
And some people are calling that flip-flopping.
It's not flip-flopping.
It's, again, a procedural vote to allow the bill to proceed.
So what happened?
A couple of things.
On the floor, this is an example of how things work.
Representative Ralph Norman of South Carolina, not picking on him.
He says that he's one of the holdouts, and he eventually ended up voting for the bill.
He said, President Trump did a masterful job of laying out how we could improve it, how he could use his chief executive office, use things to make the bill better.
Again, we have a, we've got to pass the bill to make the bill better.
That makes very little sense.
So the Republicans, yes, they caved.
And here's what Politico said.
They are quoting House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and could kind of see here the contempt dripping from his lips.
He said for a long time there were members that really thought there was a chance the bill was going to get opened up again to amendment.
It became clear from the president's meeting at the White House to further conversations later that for all the back and forth, you know, the bill's closed.
There's going to be no amendments to the bill.
That's it.
The bill is there.
It's going to be voted on.
Now, there were holdouts that are not going to surprise you.
For example, Chip Roy from Texas, he is the one member who talks the best game and who always caves and always votes yes.
And I listened to this.
This is yesterday, Chip Roy said.
Fact, the Senate BBB increases deficits and violates the terms of the budget bill in the White House.
The Senate OBB guts the strong provisions to terminate the green news scam.
The Senate OBB removes key provisions to stop illegal aliens from getting Medicare, etc., etc.
He goes down the list on how the bill was made worse by the Senate and then proceeded to vote to advance the bill.
So there you have it.
That's how things work in D.C. There's a lot of theater.
There's a lot of members pretending that they are outraged, outraged that this bill is passing.
And then after they've had their opportunity to chat with the president or with the leadership, and I think with the president, there was an assurance about some sort of green energy subsidies or what have you.
They all fall into line.
And now I'm not picking on Republicans because the same is true with Democrats.
So what do the Democrats do?
They have to have their own bit of theater after the Republicans caved and let the bill pass.
Now, this would be in the person of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who, as we speak, I believe, is still down on the floor because there's unlimited time in opposition to speak.
And I think he's into his maybe sixth hour, sixth hour.
Not sure if they get a potty break, but sixth hour on the floor.
He's saying he's going to keep talking about the bill.
He will give the impression, of course, then that he's standing up for all the things that he cares about, and he can bring that back to his constituency, just like the Republicans will pretend that they stood up for Republican fiscal conservative values when they go back over the long weekend and talk to their constituents.
The main point about this is that it is political theater.
This is what happens every single time.
They bring continuously worse bills to the floor.
They cannot seem to function as a proper legislative body in that they cannot seem to bring forth normal appropriations bills.
It's not that hard to do.
You fund each part of government that needs funded.
You do it individually.
You have a lengthy debate.
Instead of doing that, what we see in the House now, the Republican House, and it was true before, you see just more theater.
You see more endless bills passing condemning anti-Semitism.
We talked about it on the show before.
Marjorie Taylor Greene said she thinks they've had 23 of those bills this year so far.
Well, how about if you cut it in half and do some appropriations bills?
But no, they don't because they want to pile everything into a bill that cannot be read.
I would put money down that no member has actually read this bill.
Probably Thomas Massey has read a good chunk of it.
Impossible to read these bills.
You just have to pass them.
As we said on the show yesterday, this BBB bill is larger than some of the most of the previous most unbelievably expensive bills, including the CARES Act.
Remember when COVID came?
It dwarfs these three bills together.
It's going to add a massive amount of debt to our children.
It's going to probably rock the bond market.
And insult to injury, all the right-wing goodies that were thrown in by the House were taken out by the Senate.
So no carrots, just sticks.
And that's what we're seeing on the floor.
So they're going to be voting on it.
They may be voting on it soon.
As soon as Jeffries maybe has to take a potty break, they'll probably run down and do a quick vote on it and pass the bill.
My prediction is that there will be one Republican no vote, and that will be Thomas Massey.
There's speculation that he would vote for it.
Anyone who says that doesn't know Thomas Massey.
So I seriously, seriously doubt.
And if he does voted for it, there must be some very good reason.
So that's your Congress, guys and gals.
That's what you get.
That's why our country is dysfunctional because nobody is an adult.
So I only want to uncover one other thing, and then we'll run and get our weekend started.
I got to go fix my pool pump.
Israel's Expensive Missile War 00:03:44
But there was a report on anti-war.com.
Dave DeCamp wrote up an article from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which was extremely revealing.
Now, I'd say this would be the second entry in the why we can't have nice things.
First one being, of course, the Big Beautiful Bill.
And the second being the fact that we are living in a warfare state.
We're living in a state where constant war feeds the political elite.
By the way, our previous Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, has just opened a lobbying company, lobbying firm inside the Beltway.
What does that tell you?
The revolving door continues to revolve, and it continues to enrich people that promote constant war.
So here's the point from Haaretz.
A report estimated that the U.S. used $1.25 billion worth of FAD missiles to defend Israel from Iranian missiles.
93 FAAD interceptors was the estimate that Haeretz did on how many the U.S. shot off to defend Israel after its sneak attack on Iran.
And add to that a number of arrow missiles that are jointly produced by the U.S. and Israel.
And it looks like the price tag just for missiles is going to be about $1.5 billion.
Guess who pays for that?
We do.
And the other thing that's important is that these 93 interceptors that were spent on 12 days of war constitute, if I'm not mistaken, and I think I am not mistaken, the entire production capability of the United States for a full year.
So guess what, guys?
We are running out of missiles.
The last few that we had, we've sent off to Israel for them to use to fight back when they start a war that they can't continue.
So that shows that we are spending, you know, the Big Beautiful Bill spends $1.5 trillion or $1 trillion on the military.
Actually, the real number is more than that.
We're spending more than the rest of the next nine countries combined, yet we don't have any missiles.
What do we have?
Plenty of money for Lloyd Austin and all the people like Lloyd Austin who are lurking around the beltway pulling in cash.
So this 93 interceptors, $1.5 billion the U.S. spent.
And that's not counting some of the sea-based missiles that were launched.
I think those are up to $30 million each to knock down maybe a $50,000 drone or something of that nature from Iran.
Big time money being spent.
And don't forget, the B-2 bombers, we had, remember there was a diversionary flight off the west coast of the U.S. to Hawaii.
We had a group of bombers there that had to have all their own refueling tankers.
They had to have fighter jets and all the things that they have.
And the real one that went the other way, apparently, at least according to the stories, and dropped the payload of some 20 bunker buster bombs.
Now, these aren't cheap weapons.
These aren't cheap bombs.
And it also is not cheap to fly these massive planes, tons of them, 100, 150 planes across the world to undertake this bombing operation.
So I would guess that I don't have the number in front of me, another billion, $2 billion to send the Jets over there to bomb.
So this 12-day war that we did not start nevertheless has cost the United States probably $2, $3 billion.
Who knows what the final cost will be?
I would just enter this into the, this is why we cannot have, pardon me, nice things in America.
And with that, I will salute you all.
And I will thank you for tuning into the Liberty Report, wishing you a happy Independence Day.
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