Verdict with Ted Cruz - July 02, 2025


Inside the Senate All-Nighter Passing the One Big Beautiful Bill


Episode Stats


Length

41 minutes

Words per minute

175.49437

Word count

7,360

Sentence count

526

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Ted Cruz and Ben Fergusons talk about the impact of pulling an all-nighter on the vote on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which passed the Senate on a party-line vote and is now sitting in President Trump's desk.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:00:02.620 Guaranteed human.
00:00:05.360 Welcome.
00:00:06.080 It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you,
00:00:09.100 and we're doing a hybrid show this morning with the Ben Ferguson podcast as well
00:00:13.520 because I'm on family vacation in Cabo, but when the big, beautiful bill happens,
00:00:17.620 you do exactly what we're doing right now, and that is give you the latest
00:00:20.960 no matter where we are in the world of what's happening and how we got the deal done.
00:00:25.980 Senator, I have a feeling you are running on very little sleep.
00:00:31.040 Did you pull the all-nighter?
00:00:33.160 I definitely did.
00:00:34.480 You and I are recording this podcast at 10.37 p.m. Texas time on Tuesday night.
00:00:40.160 I last slept on Sunday night.
00:00:42.340 We were up at 9 a.m. Monday morning on the Senate floor.
00:00:45.400 We began consideration of the one big, beautiful bill.
00:00:48.680 Under the reconciliation procedures, when you take up reconciliation,
00:00:53.420 which, as you know, you and I have talked about before,
00:00:56.880 is the principal exception to the Senate filibuster rule.
00:01:00.120 The ordinary rule in the Senate is you need 60 votes to pass legislation,
00:01:04.400 but budget reconciliation is a special process that you can pass legislation with only 50 votes.
00:01:10.760 But part of budget reconciliation is you have unlimited amendments,
00:01:15.660 and that whole process is what's known as voterama.
00:01:18.640 We started at 9 a.m. Monday morning.
00:01:22.220 We went all day Monday.
00:01:23.900 We went all night Monday.
00:01:25.740 We went all morning Tuesday, and we finished the whole thing at right about noon on Tuesday.
00:01:32.080 And then I went and headed to the airport, got on a 1 o'clock flight, flew back to Texas.
00:01:37.440 I'm home tonight in Texas and have yet to go to sleep.
00:01:41.120 As soon as we finish this podcast, I've got a date with my bed,
00:01:45.200 and I intend to be unconscious very, very soon.
00:01:47.360 I feel bad for you, but welcome to How the Sausage is Made.
00:01:51.040 So I have a lot of questions.
00:01:52.840 I know everybody else is wanting to ask the same thing.
00:01:55.080 Before we get into what is in the bill, when this voterama is happening,
00:01:59.080 you're one of the youngest guys in the Senate.
00:02:01.720 Your stamina is a little bit better, I would say, just based on age than others.
00:02:06.540 Do people sleep in their offices?
00:02:08.700 Do you guys hang out?
00:02:10.100 Do you decide to have dinner?
00:02:11.260 Do you order pizzas?
00:02:12.280 Do you guys go to the basement rooms that you guys have?
00:02:15.680 Tell us how everybody fills the time.
00:02:19.360 So, yes, all of the above.
00:02:21.280 And there is a wide age variation in the Senate.
00:02:24.720 I'm 54.
00:02:25.600 I can pull an all-nighter, and I'm just fine.
00:02:28.780 Look, Chuck Grassley is 90.
00:02:30.940 We've got a bunch of senators who are in their 80s.
00:02:34.140 And I will tell you, particularly for the older senators,
00:02:36.680 doing an all-nighter weighs upon them.
00:02:38.760 This was the longest voterama in history.
00:02:41.700 Some of this was Democrat delays.
00:02:44.980 Some of this was just the fact that Senate Republican leadership was scrambling to get the bill ready.
00:02:51.240 One of the things to understand is the time frame of this bill moved very quickly
00:02:56.100 because President Trump announced he wanted this done by July 4th,
00:03:00.720 and he was leaning on Senate leadership and House leadership to get it done.
00:03:05.960 And so during the day, we're taking, I think we took something like 47 votes in the 27 hours it took.
00:03:13.640 And so there are periods of downtime.
00:03:15.620 There are periods in between a vote when they're preparing the next vote,
00:03:18.360 where they're revising statutes, revising amendments.
00:03:22.160 They're also getting determinations from the Senate parliamentarian.
00:03:26.340 They're also getting scores.
00:03:27.800 In order to have an amendment, you have to get a score,
00:03:30.080 which is the Joint Committee on Taxation or the Congressional Budget Office
00:03:35.920 will determine how much a particular provision will cost or how much it will save.
00:03:41.980 Before you can vote on it in Voterama, you have to get that score.
00:03:44.620 So during the day, yes, there are senators who are sitting back in the cloakroom,
00:03:51.080 sleeping either on a couch or in a chair.
00:03:53.480 There are senators who go down to their hideaways.
00:03:55.600 Every senator has what's called a hideaway, which is a smaller office in the U.S. Capitol building.
00:04:01.680 And most of us have a couch or two couches in the hideaway.
00:04:04.820 And so senators would go and, you know, get a 20-minute nap there.
00:04:09.380 And you would see pages kind of asleep behind the Senate floor.
00:04:17.220 It's going long and furious.
00:04:19.160 In terms of food, the food tends to be fairly lousy.
00:04:23.080 It's kind of different people host it.
00:04:24.680 They'll bring in pizzas.
00:04:26.940 They'll bring in sandwiches.
00:04:28.760 One tradition that I started when I first got to the Senate
00:04:32.040 is anytime we do an all-night Voterama in the morning,
00:04:35.600 I bring in McDonald's breakfast and I just give it to all the Republican senators.
00:04:40.480 So I had 75 Egg McMuffins and Sausage McMuffins and breakfast burritos
00:04:45.960 that just showed up about 5.30 in the morning.
00:04:48.820 And, you know, I got to say there are few things better after an all-nighter
00:04:53.460 than Mickey D's breakfast.
00:04:55.920 And I'll tell you, Ben, some advice an old friend of mine gave me.
00:05:00.140 Always, always, always pick up the breakfast check.
00:05:02.840 And so you get some goodwill from your colleagues.
00:05:06.160 It's cheaper than the dinner.
00:05:07.400 Exactly right.
00:05:08.880 All right, so do you guys hang out kind of in groups?
00:05:12.060 And I ask this because, like, everybody kind of has their friends group
00:05:15.640 that they hang out with.
00:05:16.580 Oh, sure.
00:05:17.200 Do you kind of have a text thread and say, hey, we're all over here.
00:05:21.300 Hey, what do you want to do now?
00:05:22.480 And I ask this for another reason.
00:05:24.460 There are different senators that like to play different games.
00:05:27.060 You, for example, love to play foosball.
00:05:29.200 There is a foosball table somewhere in the Senate.
00:05:32.920 Do you guys, like, have games like that while you're just waiting in between?
00:05:36.440 No, it's mostly just sitting around.
00:05:39.280 Sometimes you'll be sitting on the Senate floor at your desk.
00:05:42.520 Sometimes you'll be standing in the back of the Senate floor.
00:05:45.200 In the back of the Senate, it's what's called the cloakroom.
00:05:48.440 The cloakroom has a couple of couches
00:05:50.980 and probably 20 kind of big comfy chairs.
00:05:53.720 A lot of us will sit back in the cloakroom.
00:05:57.200 And then people will sort of huddle at different places.
00:06:00.800 But it is a little bit.
00:06:02.340 I mean, you hang out typically with the folks that are your closest friends.
00:06:07.160 But look, it's not that big a body.
00:06:08.680 There are only 100 of us.
00:06:10.160 So you end up hanging out with a lot of your colleagues
00:06:12.980 throughout the course of 27 hours.
00:06:15.060 In a weird way, is it kind of nice to see the Senate come together in that way
00:06:21.260 where you can actually be friendlier with somebody and chat with them?
00:06:25.200 Does it build relationships at all long term?
00:06:27.740 You know, sure.
00:06:29.160 I guess I wouldn't mind doing it without the all-nighter at this point.
00:06:33.640 You know, when I was 19, 20, 21,
00:06:35.620 I probably pulled one or two all-nighters a week in college.
00:06:38.640 And, you know, I'm at a stage in life where I'm not eager to do all-nighters anymore.
00:06:45.840 I like that.
00:06:47.220 All right.
00:06:47.500 How close were we to this bill being in jeopardy?
00:06:52.040 I ask that because there was a headline that came out.
00:06:55.320 And then it started kind of being run around 9 o'clock yesterday evening,
00:07:00.600 8 o'clock central.
00:07:01.920 It said up to six GOP senators hold out on the big, beautiful bill.
00:07:05.200 And there was word that the president was working the phones.
00:07:08.720 Was that a bunch to do about nothing?
00:07:10.620 Or was it really whipping votes happening in the evening?
00:07:14.180 Absolutely throughout the whole process.
00:07:17.060 This was incredibly close.
00:07:19.160 It was nip and tuck.
00:07:20.800 I'll tell you, Tuesday morning, you know,
00:07:23.340 we thought maybe we were going to get out there five or six in the morning.
00:07:26.000 So I originally had an 820 flight.
00:07:28.340 Well, 820 came and went.
00:07:30.620 Then I had an 11 a.m. flight and 11 a.m. came and went.
00:07:34.700 I ended up getting on a 1 p.m. flight.
00:07:36.780 And so that and that was true for everyone.
00:07:40.440 You had senators who for 4th of July, one of my colleagues was going to Hawaii.
00:07:46.220 His wife and kids were already there.
00:07:47.660 You had people flying all over the place for 4th of July, but nobody could leave.
00:07:51.820 So they're canceling their plans because we were supposed to be out this weekend.
00:07:55.920 And this dragged on longer.
00:07:57.560 And part of the reason it dragged on longer is it wasn't clear where the votes are.
00:08:01.720 And so let me talk about some of the elements of what's in this bill.
00:08:05.080 Probably the single most important thing that is in this bill is we extend the 2017 Trump tax cuts.
00:08:13.200 That's a big deal.
00:08:14.240 When we pass those tax cuts, we pass them under reconciliation.
00:08:17.660 But but they only lasted.
00:08:19.580 They were only scheduled to last 10 years.
00:08:21.940 And so if we did nothing on December 31st of this year, the tax cuts would expire,
00:08:27.460 which meant in on January 1st, there would be an automatic four trillion dollar tax increase.
00:08:35.380 Your taxes would go up.
00:08:36.600 My taxes would go up.
00:08:38.180 The taxes of working Americans across this country would go up.
00:08:41.780 That would have been devastating to the country.
00:08:43.820 And so we had to pass this bill to extend the Trump tax cuts.
00:08:48.260 Beyond that, we made historic investments in securing the border.
00:08:53.740 We put one hundred and fifty billion dollars into securing the border, into building the wall,
00:08:58.960 hiring Border Patrol agents, hiring ICE agents, building detention facilities and detention beds.
00:09:05.000 This is an investment.
00:09:06.240 There's never been an investment like this at this order of magnitude.
00:09:10.400 One of the great mandates out of this election was secure the border.
00:09:13.320 And this bill provides the funding to to enable President Trump to continue doing so.
00:09:19.140 That is absolutely historic.
00:09:20.940 On top of that, we also had a massive investment into rebuilding our military, an additional one hundred and fifty billion dollars into our military to bring it into the twenty twenty first century.
00:09:34.340 And in particular, to invest in things like hypersonic weaponry, to to invest in more subs, to invest in more ships, to invest in the Golden Dome,
00:09:43.760 which President Trump rightly is advocating missile defense for the homeland to keep us safe.
00:09:48.780 That investment is in there as well.
00:09:51.500 Incredibly important.
00:09:53.080 Another component of that is investing in the Coast Guard, twenty four billion dollars in investments in the Coast Guard.
00:09:59.380 That means, among other things, building new polar icebreakers.
00:10:03.600 Right now, China is kicking our tails in the Arctic. 0.97
00:10:07.500 And this is going to bring shipbuilding back to this country and give us the ability to build ships here at home and have icebreakers so that we can defend our national security.
00:10:19.380 All of those investments are enormously important.
00:10:22.880 You know, Senator, one of I think one of the most important things about this bill and one of the things that you advocated for and I've advocated for and it's something the president very clearly ran on was making the Trump tax cuts permanent.
00:10:39.060 This was a massive tax cut for the American people.
00:10:41.900 Now, I know the media doesn't want to talk about that there.
00:10:45.000 I know they want to say that none of this is going to have a major impact on our economy, but it is in a ginormous way, especially for lower and middle class Americans. 0.96
00:10:55.420 How catastrophic would it have been if this bill did not get passed when it comes to just basic tax policy and in the skyrocketing taxes without this bill?
00:11:08.280 Well, look, a four trillion dollar tax increase would have been enormously detrimental to the economy.
00:11:13.460 Many of those taxes were on small businesses, their business tax deductions for things like investing in new new factories, investing in new equipment.
00:11:23.320 And those deductions produce jobs.
00:11:25.880 They raise wages.
00:11:27.060 They incentivize deploying capital.
00:11:29.680 And so if those taxes were to go up, you would end up seeing jobs go away.
00:11:33.920 And in 2017, when we passed the Trump tax cuts, we saw enormous economic prosperity.
00:11:39.520 We saw the lowest unemployment in 50 years and the lowest black unemployment ever recorded, the lowest Hispanic unemployment ever recorded.
00:11:48.480 And so if we did nothing, we would reverse those gains by having a massive tax increase.
00:11:54.040 Now, Ben, the Democrats talking point, which every one of them said throughout this process and which the media repeated, is this is tax cuts for billionaires.
00:12:03.680 Now, I'm going to give you a hyper-technical legal term for what that line is.
00:12:09.440 That would be called a lie.
00:12:11.940 What this did is maintained current tax rates.
00:12:16.780 So the lie that it's tax cuts for billionaires is the Democrats say, well, if we do nothing, there's going to be a massive tax cut on everyone or tax increase on everyone.
00:12:26.720 And since this kept the tax rates exactly the same as they are today, the Democrats and media lie and say that's a massive tax cuts for billionaires.
00:12:37.820 Everyone is paying the same rates.
00:12:40.920 But as you rightly noted, where we provided additional tax relief was not at the top end of the income scale, but it was middle class and working.
00:12:51.060 It was President Trump's blue collar agenda.
00:12:53.200 So what are some of the new tax cuts that are in this provision?
00:12:57.560 Number one, no tax on tips.
00:12:59.180 That's my legislation.
00:13:00.440 I wrote that legislation.
00:13:01.880 That is in this bill.
00:13:03.800 That's going to benefit waiters and waitresses and bartenders and barbers and hairstylists and taxicab drivers and everyone who's working and getting compensated on tipped income.
00:13:17.420 That is real and meaningful relief.
00:13:19.560 Also included in this is no tax on overtime and also included in this is tax relief for seniors getting Social Security.
00:13:27.420 All of those, those are not going to millionaires and billionaires.
00:13:31.940 They're going to working Americans. 1.00
00:13:33.520 And in fact, the Joint Committee on Taxation put out an analysis of the distributional impacts of these tax cuts.
00:13:43.200 They found that that people making less than fifteen thousand dollars a year would get a sixteen point four percent cut in taxes and they're paying very little.
00:13:53.500 People making between fifteen thousand and thirty thousand a year would get a twenty seven point one percent cut.
00:14:01.940 People making between thirty thousand and forty thousand a year would get a nine point five percent cut.
00:14:07.720 And people making forty thousand to fifty thousand a year would get a seven point two percent cut.
00:14:13.080 So those are are real and meaningful tax relief.
00:14:18.040 And by the way, those numbers compared to the impact for people at the top end, those making over a million was three percent.
00:14:26.860 And mind you, that's not that's not a cut for them.
00:14:30.080 That's just saying that that they don't have their taxes skyrocket automatically.
00:14:34.720 They stay at exactly the same level they are today, though, that those that is real, meaningful, middle class tax relief.
00:14:43.440 You know, you go back to the campaign and that legislation that you just mentioned, the no tax on tips.
00:14:48.120 And Donald Trump talked about how he wrote it down on a napkin after I think it was, if I remember correctly, out in Nevada.
00:14:54.800 Yep. And it was just saying this is a great idea.
00:14:56.820 I'm going to write down. Yeah, it was in Vegas.
00:14:58.740 And there's so many people in Vegas that work on tips.
00:15:00.780 I can't tell you how many different people have talked to me about this, that work in an industry that heavily revolves around tips.
00:15:08.660 Uber and Lyft drivers are a great example of that.
00:15:11.200 I've had a lot of them talk to me about it when they find out what you do.
00:15:13.880 They're like, oh, man, this would change my life because it would it would allow me to keep so much more of my own money while you're trying to make it.
00:15:22.640 If you food delivery, you do it.
00:15:25.120 I do it right. Uber, whatever it may be.
00:15:27.620 That's another example of where this can have a huge impact on someone giving them an instant pay raise, especially when you need it.
00:15:37.940 Look, I taught tennis for years and tips are a large part of your salary.
00:15:43.300 You knew that.
00:15:44.180 But like you want to talk about giving Americans an instant pay raise, especially when you're starting out or you're living more paycheck to paycheck.
00:15:51.760 This could have a catastrophic positive impact on our overall economy, especially for people in these jobs.
00:16:00.120 I don't think people understand what a big differences can make.
00:16:03.600 Yeah, it's going to make a big difference to a lot of people who need the relief.
00:16:08.920 And I've had the same experience where people really see that as as President Trump and a Republican Congress delivering on our promises.
00:16:16.040 You know, there are other elements in this bill.
00:16:18.620 I got to tell you, I'm particularly gratified because I had a lot of big victories that are included in this bill.
00:16:24.400 So I mentioned no tax on tips.
00:16:26.440 That's my legislation.
00:16:27.420 That's in there.
00:16:28.720 We've talked before about spectrum wireless.
00:16:31.840 Now, what does that mean?
00:16:34.160 Every electronic device you have, your cell phone, Wi-Fi, your laptop, streaming, satellite, everything operates over electromagnetic spectrum.
00:16:44.260 And different bandwidths are assigned to different forms of communication.
00:16:49.660 Of the most valuable spectrum, the mid-band spectrum, the federal government controls 60 percent of it.
00:16:56.680 I wrote into this bill a mandate that the federal government must auction off to the private sector 800 megahertz of spectrum.
00:17:05.100 Now, what does that mean?
00:17:05.900 That's going to do a couple of things.
00:17:07.120 Number one, that's going to generate about $100 billion to the federal government.
00:17:12.600 That's real money that goes to the taxpayers that can pay down our debt, lower the deficit.
00:17:18.500 Those are real dollars that come into the federal government.
00:17:21.480 But I'll tell you, Ben, that's not the biggest advantage.
00:17:23.580 The biggest advantage is it is going to unleash billions of dollars of new investment and create hundreds of thousands of jobs because this is about winning the race for 6G and beating China.
00:17:36.140 And I got to tell you, three months ago, nobody in Washington thought we would get spectrum auction in this bill.
00:17:43.620 I wrote it.
00:17:44.240 It's in there.
00:17:44.840 And that is going to have a massive job creation impact.
00:17:48.660 That's in this bill.
00:17:49.860 You talk about no one thought it was going to be in there.
00:17:52.200 There was a lot of people lobbying, trying to keep that out.
00:17:54.600 And you stuck to your guns on this one.
00:17:56.600 That's part of, I think, the success story of this bill.
00:17:58.860 It is, and I will tell you, Ben, the two provisions that personally I care the most about that are in this bill that I think will be transformational are school choice and the Trump accounts.
00:18:12.020 Both of those were my legislation that I wrote.
00:18:14.980 And I told this story on the podcast a little over a month ago.
00:18:18.140 Senate Republicans, we all went on a retreat.
00:18:20.160 And we were talking about the reconciliation bill and what we're going to do.
00:18:24.500 And I stood up and I said to my colleagues, I said, listen, there are a lot of big and important things that we're doing in this bill that we need to do in this bill.
00:18:31.920 And I think that's good.
00:18:32.700 And I think that's great.
00:18:34.500 We ought to at least pause and ask about legacy.
00:18:38.800 Ask about what lasting difference we're going to make.
00:18:41.480 Ask about in 10, 20, 30 years, what are people going to remember that is in this bill?
00:18:49.480 And I made the case to my colleagues for two different provisions, neither one of which were in the bill at the time.
00:18:55.360 Number one, school choice.
00:18:57.400 And number two, Trump accounts.
00:18:59.560 Let's start with Trump accounts.
00:19:01.820 Under this bill, the federal government will create a private investment account for every child in America,
00:19:09.140 and it will cede that account with $1,000 for every newborn child in America.
00:19:14.280 That money, then, parents and friends and family can invest every year in a tax-advantaged vehicle.
00:19:22.820 That money is invested in the S&P 500, a broad-based equity.
00:19:27.520 There are two massive advantages of this.
00:19:29.780 Number one, every child in America is going to experience the incredible benefits of compound growth.
00:19:35.260 What does that mean?
00:19:36.480 Little girl is born next year.
00:19:38.800 She's born, she has this private investment account open for her.
00:19:43.400 It's ceded with $1,000, and her parents or family or parents' employers contribute $5,000 a year, every year.
00:19:52.840 If you assume the historical rate of growth of the S&P 500, which is 7%,
00:19:59.120 by the time that little girl turns 18, she will have $170,000 in that account.
00:20:07.760 And if she continues contributing $5,000 a year, by the time she turns 35, she will have $700,000 in that account.
00:20:18.260 That is massive.
00:20:19.560 These are 401ks for kids.
00:20:22.360 And think about how 401ks changed how we save for retirement.
00:20:26.780 This now gives the power of compound growth to every kid.
00:20:29.740 But number two, this also will create a new generation of capitalists.
00:20:34.920 Every child will be an owner, an owner of the largest employers in this country.
00:20:40.100 That is a big deal.
00:20:41.460 If you're tired of seeing all these kids that hate capitalism, that think socialism is a good idea,
00:20:46.580 that think Mondami up in New York is, boy, that sounds great.
00:20:50.520 Let's elect a communist.
00:20:52.120 Well, having a new generation of capitalists who are owners and have skin in the game,
00:20:57.280 I think in 10, 20, 30 years, we're going to look back and say that changed this country for the better.
00:21:04.660 Those Trump accounts, I wrote the legislation.
00:21:07.340 It's in the bill.
00:21:08.400 And it was a fight to get them in the bill, but we kept them in the bill.
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00:21:40.780 You know, you talk about financial literacy is how I was described it by a school teacher recently
00:21:48.460 that said, I listened to you and the Senator's show,
00:21:51.960 and when you guys were talking about these savings accounts at birth and what this could do,
00:21:57.920 they said it also will allow us to then have curriculum that will be for financial literacy
00:22:04.720 because we'll have something we can actually look at kids and say, this is what you have.
00:22:09.160 We can show you your report.
00:22:11.300 We can show you the power of compound interest.
00:22:13.680 We can show you what the tax savings look like.
00:22:16.660 We can show you how to plan for your future.
00:22:19.160 And then things like credit card debt and how to balance a checkbook and how to save
00:22:24.840 and why you don't want to take out high-interest loans become a reality and understandable to these kids
00:22:31.440 because they can see what happens on the opposite of that when you are saving money and watching it grow.
00:22:38.660 And to go back to the point you were making, this could fundamentally change an entire country, number one,
00:22:44.680 but also can change an entire generation when you talk about generational wealth,
00:22:49.540 which everybody wants for their kids.
00:22:51.300 Yeah, no, that's exactly right.
00:22:54.240 And what you're talking about there is one of the real drivers of the wealth gap we have in America
00:22:59.500 is that wealthy parents teach their kids how to invest, teach their kids how to save,
00:23:04.700 teach them financial literacy.
00:23:06.820 And learning that perpetuates the wealth gap.
00:23:10.700 And many low-income parents don't themselves have a terribly high degree of financial literacy,
00:23:17.500 so they don't teach their kids about it.
00:23:19.180 And they're not investors.
00:23:20.640 A large percentage of Americans don't own a single stock or bond.
00:23:24.760 You know, now you're going to end up in 10 years, you're going to have a 10-year-old boy
00:23:27.800 who pulls out his phone and opens the app for his Trump account
00:23:32.480 and sees how much money he's got in that account.
00:23:35.720 And it'll be broken down, so it'll be the S&P 500, but he'll look and say,
00:23:40.220 hey, wait, I own 100 bucks of Apple.
00:23:42.620 I own 75 bucks of Boeing or 50 bucks of McDonald's.
00:23:47.100 And that is a different thing when a 10-year-old says,
00:23:50.820 when he goes to McDonald's and orders a Big Mac,
00:23:53.340 and he says, wait, I'm one of the owners of this company.
00:23:57.380 And he gets to understand that, you know, a portion of those profits
00:24:01.460 are accruing to his benefits because he's one of the owners of the company.
00:24:05.600 That is transformational.
00:24:08.080 And listen, rich kids accumulate capital all the time,
00:24:11.400 but this is allowing low-income kids, the kids of single moms who would never own a stock and bond
00:24:17.900 otherwise, to begin accumulating earlier and then a huge accelerator on this.
00:24:23.920 So I'll tell you that the entire price tag of the bill was in the trillions.
00:24:28.460 The price tag of this, so there are 3.7 million kids born on average in this country each year.
00:24:34.160 $1,000 a year for that is $3.7 billion.
00:24:37.840 So that's $37 billion over 10 years.
00:24:40.940 In the scope of this bill, that is a very small amount compared to the overall size of this bill.
00:24:49.860 But that tiny amount is like priming a pump.
00:24:53.160 Because one of the things we're going to see is we're going to see employers
00:24:56.540 contributing to the accounts of the kids of their employees.
00:25:01.660 Think about 401ks.
00:25:02.940 And by the way, that's not a theory.
00:25:04.860 That's not a theory.
00:25:05.900 I want to be clear.
00:25:07.600 That's not a theory you're talking about.
00:25:09.280 This is a reality because you've actually talked with CEOs of companies
00:25:13.860 who are saying they want to do this.
00:25:15.980 So there is a CEO council of Invest America,
00:25:18.880 and it's a bunch of major CEOs in this country,
00:25:20.900 who have said if you create these Trump accounts,
00:25:23.540 we will contribute to the accounts of the kids of our employees.
00:25:27.460 We will match it.
00:25:28.880 It's chaired by Michael Dell.
00:25:30.360 It's chaired by a Texan.
00:25:31.480 Michael is a good friend.
00:25:32.420 Michael has committed that Dell is going to contribute to the accounts of the kids,
00:25:37.140 of all their employees.
00:25:38.840 And think about 401k.
00:25:40.360 Look, 401k is just a provision in the tax code.
00:25:43.980 And when it passed, it changed how America saves for retirement.
00:25:50.180 There is right now today trillions of dollars invested in 401ks.
00:25:54.780 And without exaggeration, I think in 20 years, we will see trillions of dollars invested in Trump accounts.
00:26:02.220 The multiplier effect there is really potent, and I think it will become an almost standard employee benefit.
00:26:09.960 Just like if you get a job at any big company, you're going to get a 401k contribution or match.
00:26:16.080 I think this will be another standard employee benefit.
00:26:19.120 And so it really unleashes savings early.
00:26:22.780 That's a big deal.
00:26:24.700 And then, Ben, I want to talk about another provision that I was fighting.
00:26:27.420 And by the way, I want to say one more thing about this real quick, just so people understand.
00:26:34.780 When you talk about this, a great example of this, you know my three boys, and I made a deal with all of them.
00:26:40.900 I said, hey, whatever you say for your first car, I'm going to match it.
00:26:46.020 If you want to drive a Hooptie, you can drive a Hooptie.
00:26:48.720 If you want to drive a nicer car, I'll match whatever you say.
00:26:51.900 But you're going to have ownership in that.
00:26:52.960 Ben, what exactly is a Hooptie?
00:26:54.140 And Hooptie is my first car when it's like a couple grand and it barely makes it down the road.
00:27:00.620 My first car was a Honda Prelude with 187,000 miles with no air conditioning, and I loved it, by the way.
00:27:07.800 Is Hooptie like a Memphis word or something?
00:27:10.780 I'm just not sure that's English.
00:27:13.880 That's the word that when I grew up in Memphis, if you had a car that wasn't very nice, it was referred to as, oh, that's a nice Hooptie.
00:27:21.880 So what was your first car?
00:27:23.940 It's just part of the dialect that I grew up with.
00:27:26.060 Honda Prelude, what year?
00:27:27.180 Honda Prelude.
00:27:27.840 It was a 1988, 187,000 miles on it, and I could afford it because it had a busted AC, and it took the old R12, which was hard to find and more expensive.
00:27:39.920 I remember this like it was yesterday.
00:27:42.120 And I bought that car for $2,600.
00:27:46.320 And I loved it, by the way.
00:27:47.880 Very proud of that car.
00:27:48.960 But the point was to my kids, and I said, look, you're going to have ownership in this.
00:27:54.300 What was it?
00:27:55.040 My first car was a 1978 Ford Fairmont, which we called the Green Bomb, and it was actually my grandfather's car.
00:28:03.360 And when I turned 16, my grandfather gave it to me.
00:28:06.640 And he was kind of a gruff old Irishman, and he said, boy, stick your hands out.
00:28:12.040 So I stuck my hands out, and he put a car key in each hand.
00:28:15.480 He said, happy birthday.
00:28:16.300 And it was, you know, they'd had it for eight years, so it was their car.
00:28:20.040 And we called it the Green Bomb, and I drove all my buddies in high school, and we got into a lot of trouble in that car.
00:28:26.320 That's amazing.
00:28:27.200 Well, I said to my son, I said, look, you can spend money on frivolous things, and you'll have instant gratification.
00:28:33.920 I said, or you can save your money, and I'll help you invest it in stocks.
00:28:38.200 Well, my son now owns Lockheed Martin.
00:28:40.400 Not much of it, but he owns some of it.
00:28:42.500 He owns Ford because he thought that was a good stock that had been around.
00:28:46.100 And now every day when he comes home from school in the summer, he's like, hey, how did my stocks do today?
00:28:50.680 And it's changed his mentality.
00:28:52.840 As we're on family vacation, I told all the kids, I said, hey, you can get one cool thing while you're here, whatever you want it to be.
00:28:58.060 Here's the price range.
00:28:59.380 And literally two of my three boys do the same thing to me today.
00:29:01.900 Hey, if I don't buy anything, can I put the money in stocks and save it for my car?
00:29:06.660 That's awesome.
00:29:07.140 When you have those conversations with a six-year-old and an eight-year-old that you realize that now money is making sense to them,
00:29:14.960 that's why I'm so excited about this legislation.
00:29:18.000 I hope people 30, 40, 50, 60 years from now, when we're both gone, go back and they say, you know what?
00:29:23.980 When Ted Cruz did this and got this in there, it changed people's lives for the better.
00:29:29.640 So I want to say sincerely, congratulations on making sure this made it in there because it's huge.
00:29:34.400 Because that's not the only thing that was transformative in this bill.
00:29:37.540 Something you've been championing now, and I would say it's part of the legacy of your career, is school choice.
00:29:44.140 And there's some big stuff in this bill also on school choice.
00:29:48.320 So school choice has been my passion for 30 years.
00:29:51.960 I've been very active in the school choice movement.
00:29:54.520 In 2017, when we did the first Trump tax cut, I authored the legislation that expanded College 529 savings plans.
00:30:02.700 So now parents can save for K-12 education.
00:30:05.600 We got that through, it passed, and it was at the time the most far-reaching federal school choice legislation that had ever passed.
00:30:13.280 And there are millions of kids now whose parents save for K-12 education using 529s.
00:30:19.940 This time around, I took 529s and I expanded them.
00:30:23.900 I expanded what you can spend them for, and I raised the cap.
00:30:27.780 It used to be you could spend $10,000 a year from the account.
00:30:30.360 Now you can spend $20,000 a year.
00:30:31.960 But that actually is the smallest piece on school choice.
00:30:35.520 That would be huge in any other year.
00:30:38.240 But what we got in this year is the federal government will now grant a federal tax credit, dollar for dollar, for every taxpayer up to $1,700.
00:30:53.360 So, Ben, you pay taxes every year.
00:30:54.900 You pay more than $1,700 in taxes.
00:30:58.660 When this goes into effect, if you write a $1,700 check to a scholarship-granting organization in Texas, you will get a $1,700 credit on your taxes.
00:31:13.360 In other words, it's dollar for dollar.
00:31:15.100 It disappears from your tax liability.
00:31:17.100 What this will do is this is going to unleash billions and billions of dollars of new scholarships for K-12 education in the states.
00:31:28.780 And the way it operates, every state has to choose to opt in.
00:31:32.640 So Texas will opt in.
00:31:33.860 I suspect a number of blue states will not opt in because the teachers' unions will not want them to.
00:31:40.740 They will not want scholarships for kids to be able to go to the school of their choice.
00:31:45.380 And the way we wrote the rule, the law, the state has to opt in.
00:31:50.340 But Texas will have scholarship-granting organizations.
00:31:53.860 And any taxpayer can write a check up to $1,700 a year and get a full tax credit on their IRS, what they owe.
00:32:03.560 That is going to result in millions of kids across America, many of whom are stuck in failing schools, schools that are not learning to read, they're not learning to write, schools where there's violence, they're drug dealers, schools where their future is really in peril.
00:32:18.780 And they're suddenly going to have the ability to get a scholarship, to go to the school of their choice, to get a real education, to get a better education, to be safe, to not be subject to violence.
00:32:31.800 This is – I think school choice is the civil rights issue of the 21st century.
00:32:36.460 This has never happened before.
00:32:38.980 And I got to tell you, I fought tooth and nail.
00:32:42.200 Well, this almost got stripped out of the bill about five different times.
00:32:47.140 And I made clear, I'll shut this whole bill down if we don't get school choice in there.
00:32:52.480 And this is – I could not be more excited about any provision in this bill than the impact school choice is going to have for the next generation.
00:33:03.340 So on these two issues, school choice and also the savings accounts, when does that start to become a reality timeline?
00:33:11.640 There's a lot of people that say, hey, we passed bills, and then things that were supposed to happen don't happen.
00:33:16.980 They get undone because there's a new president that comes in, or you see a Senate flip or the House flip, whatever it may be.
00:33:24.060 So how sure are we that we are going to see the fruits of this fight and this labor?
00:33:29.360 Yeah, these are both going to happen, and they're both going to happen in the next year.
00:33:32.880 For the Trump accounts, I wrote into it an effective date of one year from the signing.
00:33:38.240 So if it's signed on July 4th, these will start on July 4th, 2026, our nation's 250th anniversary.
00:33:46.300 And I think that's something particularly fantastic.
00:33:48.900 I'm quite confident President Trump will make a big deal about the facts that these accounts are being opened on our nation's birthday.
00:33:55.160 Or if it ends up being signed at a slightly different date, somewhere on or about our nation's birthday, a great celebration.
00:34:03.340 Same thing, the tax deductions are going to start, I believe, next year on the school choice tax deductions.
00:34:09.720 So these will happen. They will happen quickly.
00:34:12.300 Now, one question people are asking, what happens next?
00:34:15.700 The Senate passed this.
00:34:17.460 What happens next?
00:34:18.360 Well, we sent the whole bill to the House.
00:34:22.580 They have two choices.
00:34:24.820 Number one, so they're coming back in session.
00:34:28.980 They can take it up and pass it.
00:34:31.000 And if they pass the bill that we just passed, it will go to the President and he can sign it.
00:34:35.600 And he said he wants to sign it on July 4th of this year.
00:34:38.260 So if the House passes what the Senate passed, that'll be the end of the process and the President will sign it.
00:34:43.680 The second thing they can do is they can say, OK, we passed a bill.
00:34:50.900 The Senate passed a different bill.
00:34:53.200 We need to work out the differences between them.
00:34:55.720 And that's that's called going to conference.
00:34:57.940 And the House could insist we go to conference.
00:35:00.320 I don't know which one they're going to do.
00:35:02.080 There are some real differences in the Senate right now.
00:35:04.640 They're in the House right now.
00:35:05.680 They're having fights.
00:35:06.500 There's some aspects of the Senate bill that are really good.
00:35:09.480 There's some aspects of the Senate bill that are not great.
00:35:11.740 And so it's going to be a question of what can get 218 votes in the House.
00:35:18.100 I know the Speaker wants, if he can, to take up and pass the Senate bill and just send it to the President.
00:35:24.860 That's what the President wants also.
00:35:26.500 So that may happen.
00:35:28.160 If that doesn't happen, then we'll go to conference.
00:35:31.340 And I think conference would take the month of July for us to work out the differences.
00:35:35.720 And my guess is we would pass the final bill at the end of July, right before August.
00:35:42.640 So this is one of those big moments that I think we should all enjoy.
00:35:48.100 Elections have consequences.
00:35:49.960 This time it was for conservative values and for kids to have a better future in education or savings accounts.
00:35:57.200 And for tax cuts so that Americans that work hard can keep more of their own money.
00:36:02.900 On a scale of 1 to 10, and nothing's perfect, how proud of you are you with this bill?
00:36:09.420 There's a lot of people that are saying, well, there's this, there's that, or there's this.
00:36:12.400 Look, yeah, there were some compromises, no doubt, that had to be made.
00:36:15.540 You got a tight, you know, a very, very slim majority that you're dealing with here.
00:36:20.860 But overall, how happy are you with what the American people are now getting?
00:36:25.360 I think there are many very, very good things in this bill.
00:36:29.600 I wish we cut spending significantly more.
00:36:32.080 I was fighting hard to cut spending significantly more.
00:36:34.680 I went to President Trump with $3 trillion of spending cuts we could do.
00:36:39.260 I was urging my colleagues.
00:36:40.980 I prevailed in some of those arguments, but not all of them.
00:36:44.280 I wish we'd shown more fiscal restraint.
00:36:47.040 That would have made me much happier.
00:36:48.640 Look, at 6 a.m. on Tuesday, we were near the end of the amendments, and the question was,
00:36:55.940 could we get to 50 Republicans?
00:36:57.800 There are 53 in the Senate.
00:37:01.260 Now, Susan Collins was a no.
00:37:05.220 She is the most liberal of the Republicans.
00:37:07.760 She did not like some of the reforms on Medicaid.
00:37:10.940 The Democrats in the press are saying, we slashed Medicaid.
00:37:13.920 That is a lie.
00:37:14.840 We actually are spending more on Medicaid every single year.
00:37:18.900 What we did was slightly decrease the rate of growth of Medicaid in the future.
00:37:23.400 And in particular, we increased efforts to fight waste, fraud, and abuse and to remove people from the Medicaid rolls who don't qualify.
00:37:32.860 And we also put in place a work requirement, which is really important and I think actually benefits people.
00:37:39.980 If you look at the history of work requirements for federal welfare benefits, it ends up helping the recipients by getting them back into the workforce,
00:37:48.980 which is ultimately much better for them and their families.
00:37:51.400 So, but anyway, Susan Collins did not like the reductions in spending on that side, so she voted no.
00:38:00.820 Tom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, also did not like the Medicaid changes, and so he voted no.
00:38:10.040 And so with 53 Republicans, we could only lose three.
00:38:14.220 The two other votes that were in play were Lisa Murkowski and Rand Paul.
00:38:22.060 And they were both between 6 a.m. and noon.
00:38:28.500 Nobody knew which one we would get if either.
00:38:35.920 But if we didn't get one of them, this bill was going down because if four senators voted against it, four Republicans, we were at 49 and it failed.
00:38:45.660 So the consequence of which road we went down was really consequential because Lisa, after Susan, is the most liberal to moderate Republican in the conference.
00:38:56.040 And so Lisa was bargaining for a bunch more spending. 1.00
00:39:00.860 She wanted a ton of spending, particularly in Alaska.
00:39:04.160 And that was the price of her vote.
00:39:05.900 And she was going back and forth.
00:39:07.460 Rand, on the other hand, Rand was always going to be no, always going to be a no.
00:39:11.920 And Rand said at the end he would be a yes if the debt ceiling was not extended.
00:39:18.620 We extend the debt ceiling throughout President Trump's term in this bill.
00:39:22.600 That was a very high priority for President Trump.
00:39:25.060 Rand said he would vote yes if we shortened the extension of the debt ceiling to September 30th.
00:39:32.340 So we just did a couple of months of the debt ceiling.
00:39:35.200 Now, the consequence of that would mean we'd have to come back in September 30th and address the debt ceiling again.
00:39:41.600 And that would mean we'd probably have to negotiate with the Democrats and make a lousy deal with Chuck Schumer.
00:39:48.640 But between 6 a.m. and noon, none of us knew which direction they were going to go.
00:39:54.160 Were they going to go the direction of Lisa Murkowski or were they going to go the direction of Rand Paul?
00:40:00.020 At the end of the day, Lisa is the one who got to yes.
00:40:03.220 But it was literally up until the moment she cast her vote.
00:40:06.380 We didn't know for sure.
00:40:07.280 And she ended up increasing the rural hospital fund by $50 billion.
00:40:16.000 She ended up dropping the Medicaid penalty for states that are giving Medicaid to illegal immigrants.
00:40:25.700 She ended up delaying the work requirements for for food stamps for Alaska.
00:40:35.020 And the cost of that was billions and billions of dollars.
00:40:38.960 Interestingly, if Rand had said yes instead of Lisa, we would have ended up spending much less.
00:40:46.580 But the consequence of Rand being a no is that it drove it made Lisa the swing vote and the price of her vote was billions and probably hundreds of billions more in spending.
00:41:03.100 And and so, you know, I mean, that that's where votes have consequences.
00:41:08.500 Incredible. Well, it certainly is interesting to see your take on this.
00:41:13.700 I'm glad that we were able to do the show.
00:41:15.360 You deserve to get some sleep now that it's after midnight Eastern and and after the voter Rama.
00:41:22.200 But I am glad that we were able to unpack all of this for everyone, because a lot of people have the same question.
00:41:27.000 How did this happen? What did we get that was good?
00:41:29.800 Are there things that we got taken advantage of?
00:41:31.980 Is this going to help the country more?
00:41:34.460 It's going to hurt it.
00:41:35.020 I think we answered a lot of those questions.
00:41:36.880 So don't forget, download Verdict with Ted Cruz, wherever you get your podcast.
00:41:40.900 We do this three days a week.
00:41:41.960 Also, my podcast as well, the Ben Ferguson podcast.
00:41:45.460 You can also listen to that each and every day as well.
00:41:49.220 And the center and I will see you back here in a couple of days.
00:41:52.760 This is an iHeart podcast.
00:41:55.660 Guaranteed human.