The Budget Bill passed the House of Representatives, and now the Senate has to pass a version of the bill to become law. In this episode, we talk about the process of getting the bill passed, what it means for the economy, and the impact it could have on the economy.
00:00:00.000Discipline, but we're cutting a path that hasn't been cut before, and we're doing it in a responsible way, and I'm very proud of this product.
00:00:07.000Not perfect, not far enough for a deficit, Hawk, but certainly a good, big, and meaningful step in the right direction.
00:00:17.000So let's talk about the process from here.
00:00:19.000Obviously, let's assume that it passes through the lower House of Congress, and now a version has to pass in the Senate.
00:00:25.000I mean, there's only a framework, is my understanding, in the Senate at this point, so they have to pass their own version of the bill.
00:00:29.000The Senate says that they could get their work done by July 4th.
00:02:14.000Congressman Jody Arrington, the House Budget Committee Chairman.
00:02:17.000So Congressman Arrington, when you look at the possibility of passage, obviously there's going to have to be pressure brought to bear to make sure this gets over the finish line.
00:02:26.000President Trump was doing some of that yesterday, I think actually quite effectively.
00:02:29.000The markets have already priced in the passage of the bill.
00:02:32.000If this bill were to fail, if this were not to pass, the consequences could be pretty disastrous on the American economy, on investment, on everything else.
00:02:43.000I think that's sort of the unspoken pressure here, is that taxes and a massive tax increase in this sort of fragile economy, that spells doom for a lot of folks.
00:03:02.000On predicting a 1.8% annual average GDP, that's the growth rate on average for the next 10 years, while assuming that the tax cuts would expire.
00:03:15.000The tax cuts expiring were a $4.5 trillion tax hike on the American people and our job creators would be devastating.
00:03:59.000The bottom line is, as you said, and I think you said it well, we've got to extend the tax cuts.
00:04:05.000We put a few more in place that are targeted on working people in this country.
00:04:11.000I think after about, I think it was a 20% regressive inflation tax over the last few years, that's appropriate.
00:04:18.000So it's about bringing the prices down.
00:04:21.000It's about getting our economy off high center.
00:04:24.000If you grow the economy, Ben, by one percentage point, Over the next 10 years, over the budget window, we will reduce the deficit by $3 trillion.
00:04:33.000So it's important, again, that we get our economy growing, create those conditions, unleash prosperity, build on that, and also build the political will and the support from the American people to understand that all this...
00:04:51.000All these entitlements that are on auto-spend that represent 90% of the increase in spending over the next 10 years that will drive us from World War II levels of debt to $125 trillion on top of that, which is unsustainable.
00:05:07.000It's the biggest threat to the economy, to our security, to our global leadership, our children's future in the world.
00:05:40.000Alrighty, folks, also on the line to discuss the big, beautiful bill, we have the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vogt.
00:05:47.000Director, thanks so much for joining the program.
00:05:54.000Obviously, there's been a lot of heartburn, particularly by fiscal hawks about this bill's suggestion that the bill doesn't do enough to cut the national deficit.
00:06:02.000It adds to the deficit or adds to the debt.
00:06:06.000Well, I think, look, this is the most historic level of mandatory savings that we've had ever, $1.6 trillion.
00:06:13.000And just to give people a little bit of context, for 30 years, we've had virtually no efforts to cut mandatory savings, which are the things that are hardwired into permanent law, welfare benefits, things like Medicaid.
00:06:30.000Of consequence since the 1997 balanced budget agreement, which included the work requirements with the Republican Congress and Bill Clinton.
00:06:38.000This bill essentially doubles that with $1.6 trillion, begins to have sizable savings to get illegal immigrants off of Medicaid, to have a work requirement in Medicaid, to take those reforms from 1997 and apply them to more of the federal program to get people back into the labor force.
00:06:57.000So it does sizable things at the same time as being in addition to the economic growth that we think will come from this, because, you know, my view as a budget guy, you can't cut spending if you don't have a growing economy.
00:07:11.000And so the last thing you want to do is not preserve these tax cuts, get them extended.
00:07:17.000That is really just what current law is.
00:07:19.000There's a unique thing in budget land where you allow for...
00:07:27.000So all that we're doing is extending what is essentially current law and then adding $1.6 trillion in mandatory savings.
00:07:34.000We think it's actually historic and something this town has even begun to approach.
00:07:38.000And we're working with members to be able to tell that story.
00:07:43.000So, Director, one of the things that I think is kind of interesting about this debate is that many of the fiscal hawks seem to be railing against what the bill is not rather than what the bill is, meaning...
00:07:52.000Would it be great if the bill actually took on mandatory entitlement programs in a far bigger way that actually moved towards solving our systemic national debt problem, which, of course, is going to accrue over the course of the next 10, 20 years?
00:08:04.000The cost curve is being bent here, but it's not being bent to the extent that it totally solves our national debt or deficit crisis.
00:08:10.000But, of course, it never was going to.
00:08:12.000The Republicans have a two-vote majority, essentially, in the House.
00:08:16.000They have a three-vote majority, if you include the vice president, in the Senate.
00:08:19.000The sort of idea that there is going to be a widespread rejiggering of the entire way that America does its welfare state in this bill, I think that that is asking a little much.
00:08:29.000I assume that's why President Trump has been a little bit upset with, for example, Representative Thomas Massey, who's out there basically saying that unless we completely hamstring the entire welfare state, he's against.
00:08:40.000We definitely have very slim majorities, and this is what we believe that we can accomplish.
00:08:45.000And the way I look at it is we have had no successes at all for so many years.
00:08:50.000We've been living in this town and working and laboring, fiscal conservatives all among us, and had no victories.
00:08:57.000And this has massive victories, not just on the policies, securing the border, national defense, the tax relief, but $1.6 trillion in real mandatory relief, not gimmicks.
00:09:10.000Our biggest problem, Ben, is that we have not been able to achieve any successes over 30 years.
00:09:16.000This one would, and it allows us to then go to the next vehicle and make more progress.
00:09:22.000And once you get in the business of having things that pass and are enacted into law...
00:09:27.000Now you've got the country moving in the right direction and we can get more of the way down the road with regard to restoring our fiscal house to order.
00:09:34.000But I think you summed it up very, very, very importantly.
00:09:38.000This was not originally the debate to be able to fundamentally balance the budget.
00:09:44.000This was to figure out how much we could do on a critical leverage point to make sure that we weren't hurting the fiscal situation and to make as much...
00:09:56.000We're trying to communicate, look, we've got a lot of different levers.
00:09:59.000We haven't even talked about what's happening in the appropriations process.
00:10:02.000We sent up a budget that is 20% below non-defense cut from last year, which is the lowest level since fiscal year 17. If you adjust for inflation, it's the lowest since 20...
00:10:17.000So that's something that you have to zoom out to be able to look at what's going on here and tell that story about all the moving parts.
00:10:26.000So, Director, one of the other things that you've been working on, obviously, is you've been working closely with Doge with regard to going through the federal government, looking for cuts, waste, fraud, abuse, restructuring of the administrative state.
00:10:38.000What should we be looking for from Doge in the future?
00:10:40.000Obviously, the first few months, there's been a lot of action.
00:10:42.000It's kind of unclear how many of those cuts are going to be made permanent.
00:10:45.000What actually can be done just purely at the executive level as opposed to requiring some sort of confirmation from Congress?
00:10:51.000What's your view on what Doge is capable of doing in and of itself?
00:10:54.000What can be done just within the executive branch to stop spending, cut regulation, and what does require the help of Congress?
00:11:00.000Well, it depends on the specific funding that we're talking about, but we've identified $160 billion of waste, abuse, of reforms and savings that we are trying to make permanent.
00:11:12.000And so we will use the Impoundment Control Act, which Congress put in law in the 1970s.
00:11:41.000We're now also working to think through what are the other things that can go through the various features of the Impoundment Control Act at different...
00:11:52.000And also, impoundment continues to be on the table.
00:11:55.000We, 200 years of presidents, had the ability to spend less.
00:12:00.000The constitutional principle is that Congress puts that ceiling in it, but it was never meant to be a floor.
00:12:07.000And in the aftermath of Watergate, the lowest point of the presidency, Congress stepped in and said, no, we're going to make this a floor and we're going to make it so if we give you $100 million for apprenticeships and you feel like you could do it for $75 million, we're going to make you spend that extra $25 million.
00:12:47.000If you're not, we're going to definitely keep these things, I call them executive tools, to reduce spending beneath.
00:12:53.000The appropriation from Congress, those are very much on the table.
00:12:58.000And, Director, one of the other questions, obviously, that's arising right now, Moody's recently downgraded the American debt, basically suggesting that, obviously, many of the problems we're talking about are systemic and on into the future.
00:13:10.000The timing of that Moody's decision, obviously, may be politically suspect.
00:13:14.000Moody's is not known for being particularly apolitical.
00:13:18.000Much of what you're worried about over at OMB is specifically that.
00:13:22.000You are worried about the long-term national debt.
00:13:25.000What do you think are the next steps beyond this big, beautiful bill in the future for the rest of the Trump administration in terms of moving toward bringing America's fiscal house back toward order?
00:13:35.000I think it's using every leverage point that we possibly can fiscally to make progress.
00:13:39.000And there's kind of some big, the big moving parts are economic growth numbers, tariff revenues that are coming in, it's discretionary cuts that I just talked about.
00:13:49.000That $160 billion in the first year over 10 years is $4 trillion of the answer.
00:14:13.000We're going to need Congress on more of these, particularly on the mandatory side of the reforms and the savings.
00:14:20.000And we'll just keep using leverage points to move forward.
00:14:23.000But I think when you look at what we've done on the tariffs, even what is Already right now in place, not just kind of being, you know, negotiated as part of the reciprocal tariffs.
00:14:34.000Those have sizable impact over 10 years that we never really assumed for in years past.
00:14:42.000Well, that is the director of the Office of Management and Budget, one of the most transformative people in the American government, Russ Vogt.
00:14:49.000Well, meanwhile, Elon Musk has now announced that he is likely to step back from his political involvement over the course of the next couple of years.
00:14:57.000He announced this at the Qatar Economic Forum in an interview with Bloomberg.
00:15:32.000Okay, so there are a couple of things that are happening here.
00:15:34.000One is that Elon happens to be correct, actually, that when he injects himself into any political controversy in, say, a purple state, it actually sometimes creates the opposite effect.
00:15:45.000So, for example, he spent an awful lot of money on a key Wisconsin Supreme Court race last month.
00:15:50.000But the negative publicity that emerged from him spending on that race actually may have outweighed the signal contribution that he made to the race.
00:15:57.000When it comes to presidential races, obviously, that is a different thing.
00:16:04.000It is not a great shock that he is moving out of that realm.
00:16:08.000Obviously, many of his major businesses have suffered as a result of his contribution to the public discourse, his involvement in Doge, and all the rest.
00:16:18.000That Democrats do not have that same incentive structure.
00:16:20.000There are a lot of Democrats who have involved themselves, you know, we're talking about people in business, at a very high level and continue to do so volubly with huge amounts of money, and they've never received the kind of public blowback that Elon Musk has received for having gotten involved in the political arena in that way.
00:16:35.000Now, to be fair, Elon is obviously a lot more voluble than many of those other Democrats.
00:16:40.000Many of these Democrats are sort of behind the scenes, contributing money.
00:16:43.000They're not as publicly going out there and...
00:16:46.000And holding chainsaws or flamethrowers or anything like that.
00:16:48.000However, it is a reminder that while the right will constantly say the legacy media are dead, the impact of the left dead, that is obviously not totally true.
00:16:57.000And we should keep an eye out for it in the future because the pressures that were unleashed on Elon Musk here are very much still in play for other corporate heads.
00:17:05.000I think the right sometimes declares victory a little bit too early on fronts like this one.
00:17:09.000Meanwhile, all the controversy has not abated with regard to Joe Biden's health.
00:17:28.000And the reason I don't believe that is because the Biden family has actually a pretty long and storied history of covering up actual cancer among members of its family.
00:17:36.000The new book by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, Original Sin, which has a lot of fascinating parts of it.
00:17:42.000It's a section where they talk about how the Biden family covered up Bo's cancer, actually.
00:17:46.000The book explains, quote, Bo's cancer treatment also demonstrated the Biden's capacity for denial and the lengths they would go to avoid transparency about health issues, even when the person in question is an elected official, in this case, the sitting attorney general of Delaware.
00:17:59.000So in summer of 2013, Bo Biden had surgery because he had a stage four tumor removed from his brain afterward.
00:18:06.000And he started looking very sick, obviously.
00:18:11.000In November 2013, Bo told a local reporter he had a clean bill of health after an exam.
00:18:16.000He remained the sitting attorney general of Delaware for the entirety of 2014, even while the family was secretly flying him all over the country for a variety of experimental treatments.
00:18:23.000In April 2014, he began having difficulties with speech.
00:18:26.000He would often enter hospitals under an alias, George Lincoln.
00:18:30.000Apparently, Bo's wife's Hallie didn't like this, but Joe Biden insisted on it.
00:18:34.000According to the book, making it public likely would have led people to rally around the family who's an elected official.
00:18:39.000But both Biden and Beau oppose the disclosure.
00:18:42.000At times, Biden also instructed his team to mislead the media about his whereabouts.
00:18:45.000They would publicly say the vice president was going to Delaware for the weekend, then returning to D.C. the next week.
00:18:49.000That was technically true, but sometimes Biden flew to Houston, where Beau was receiving treatment to be with his eldest son over the weekend.
00:18:57.000That, again, all the questions that are being asked right now about the cover-up of Joe Biden's health are perfectly legitimate.
00:19:03.000Like, every single bit of it is perfectly legitimate.
00:19:05.000Do I believe that he just found out about his cancer last week?
00:19:07.000I have a very difficult time believing that.
00:19:10.000Why in the world would his last PSA be in 2014, 11 years ago?
00:19:13.000In the interim, he was Vice President of the United States and President of the United States.
00:19:17.000And by the way, these sort of old guidance that you don't bother doing PSAs for older people because the cancer develops so slowly that if they're really old, they probably die of old age before the cancer kills them.
00:19:27.000The rates of survival of prostate cancer have increased dramatically over the course.
00:19:34.000And so, you know, my parents, my dad, obviously, as he gets older, he has a routine prostate exam and routine PSA, obviously, as he should.
00:19:52.000Well, Tapper and Thompson are making the rounds.
00:19:54.000And Tapper and Thompson said yesterday, That even Biden's top aides were astonished by the fact that the media were so complicit in the cover-up.
00:20:04.000And Alex and I are here to say that conservative media was right and conservative media was correct and that there should be a lot of soul-searching, not just among me, but among the legacy media to begin with, all of us, for how this was covered or not covered sufficiently.
00:20:36.000Megyn really held Jake's feet to the fire with regard to his coverage of Joe Biden's health conditions, suggesting that he should have done more.
00:20:42.000And Tapper himself acknowledged that he certainly should have done more.
00:20:45.000And that goes to deeper questions about why the legacy media were so complicit in Biden's health cover-up when it was perfectly obvious to everyone with the naked eye that Joe Biden was in the middle of a health decline.
00:20:55.000Would they have been quite as conciliatory?
00:20:57.000To the Trump administration, if Trump were in the middle of a real health collapse.
00:21:02.000Well, according to Tapper, the person driving the decision making in the White House was Hunter Biden, which is just insane.
00:22:45.000And again, you can take or leave the...
00:22:48.000You can either take it or leave it, what he's saying, but at least he is saying the thing.
00:22:52.000That is not the case with, say, Joe Scarborough.
00:22:54.000Joe Scarborough, Like, a couple of weeks before Joe Biden went on national TV and died, said that Joe Biden was at his best ever and you were crazy if you didn't think so.
00:23:04.000He is still kind of holding by that now, which is just wild.
00:23:10.000In fact, when I finished talking to Biden on, I guess it was 22, late 22, I hung up the phone and I said to me, I go, He doesn't have dementia.
00:23:24.000Because, again, it was not just cogent.
00:23:28.000It was a better, really, analysis of the situation than I'd heard from most people unless it was, let's say, it was Chairman McCall or somebody running a permanent committee.
00:23:41.000And you're confident if someone heard the audio of that conversation, they would come away with the same conclusion.
00:23:49.000But looking back at that, do you say, well, it was misleading to say Best Buy never, without caveating it, and say, except on the days when he's not the Best Buy now.
00:23:59.000Well, but I never saw those days, personally.
00:24:46.000Again, when people change their opinions based on new facts, or when they apologize for screwing it up in the first place, that is better than this.
00:24:54.000Whoopi Goldberg, by the way, continues to claim that there was no way, there were no outside indicators that Joe Biden was ever in decline, except for your own eyes, lady.
00:25:47.000That's the best they can do, seriously, but they're not actually doing it.
00:25:50.000Again, just another reason I should point out why I think AOC continues to do well in the polling, because AOC is sort of outside the Democratic Party.
00:25:59.000I've cited Matt Continetti, the political commentator, to the point before that people who tend to be successful electorally in presidential politics, Well, apparently, a brand new coefficient survey conducted May 7th to May 9th found that 26% identified Ocasio-Cortez as the face of the Democratic Party.
00:26:25.00026% said there is no one currently leading the party.
00:27:52.000She's got Bernie Sanders' base of support.
00:27:54.000She's probably got finance from that wing of the party.
00:27:56.000Everybody on the right who's very sanguine about this, by the way, oh, we'll definitely beat AOC.
00:28:01.000I'd just like to recall a person named Barack Obama who was running against the establishment Democrat, Hillary Clinton, and ended up being a two-term president.
00:28:07.000So don't be sanguine about anything, I think, should be the message of the last 20 years in American politics at the very, very least.
00:28:16.000Okay, meanwhile, the Europeans are apparently angry at Israel for, you know, trying to destroy Hamas.
00:28:24.000The Europeans were very angry at Israel for surviving the 1973 war.
00:28:27.000They were angry at Israel for attacking the Osirak reactor.
00:28:29.000They've been historically angry at Israel for defending itself.
00:28:32.000Now, the British government, which, again, is subject to a very large Muslim population and also is a very left-wing government, and the French government, run by the absolutely ridiculous and politically bile Emmanuel Macron, is also calling on Israel.
00:28:52.000to stop its final moves against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, despite the fact that Hamas is not surrendering the hostages and continues to wield enough authority in the Gaza Strip to kill people who oppose it.
00:29:09.000According to the EU, EU Foreign Policy Chief Kaha Kallis announced that the bloc of 27 countries would begin a formal review of its trade accord with Israel.
00:29:18.000A huge majority, Kala said, of EU foreign ministers backed a proposal to reconsider the deal, which includes provisions on international human rights law.
00:29:26.000A spokesperson for Israel's foreign ministry said that this reflects a total misunderstanding of the complex reality Israel is facing.
00:29:35.000Now, to be fair, part of this is Israel's fault.
00:29:56.000They do not understand the notion of trade-offs.
00:29:58.000They don't understand that war is necessarily ugly, particularly when one of those sides is a terrorist regime hell-bent on civilian casualties and holding hostages.
00:30:06.000That's just the reality of the situation.
00:30:28.000By the way, it is worth noting here that while the EU is considering sanctioning Israel, essentially, for finishing off a terrorist group in the Gaza Strip, the EU is trying to lift sanctions on Syria, which is run by a literal, honest-to-God terrorist group backed by the Turkish government that just a few weeks ago we were discussing.
00:30:45.000was trying to slaughter the Druze and not just a few Christians, apparently.
00:30:49.000And so the EU is like, no sanctions on the Syrian terrorist group, sanctions on Israel, which I think shows you exactly where their head is at.
00:30:57.000Pretty amazing stuff from the EU, but I would expect nothing more and nothing less.
00:31:02.000All right, folks, the show is continuing for our members right now.
00:31:04.000We are going to get to the beautiful relationship between Bill Belichick and Jordan Hudson.
00:31:07.000And we have new details from the New York Times, just beautiful and inspiring details of a wonderful relationship.