00:09:20.940On 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.
00:09:34.340And 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,
00:09:43.760which President Trump rightly is advocating missile defense for the homeland to keep us safe.
00:09:53.080Another component of that is investing in the Coast Guard, twenty four billion dollars in investments in the Coast Guard.
00:09:59.380That means, among other things, building new polar icebreakers.
00:10:03.600Right now, China is kicking our tails in the Arctic.
00:10:07.500And 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.
00:10:19.380All of those investments are enormously important.
00:10:22.880You 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.
00:10:39.060This was a massive tax cut for the American people.
00:10:41.900Now, I know the media doesn't want to talk about that there.
00:10:45.000I 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.
00:10:55.420How 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?
00:11:08.280Well, look, a four trillion dollar tax increase would have been enormously detrimental to the economy.
00:11:13.460Many of those taxes were on small businesses, their business tax deductions for things like investing in new new factories, investing in new equipment.
00:11:29.680And so if those taxes were to go up, you would end up seeing jobs go away.
00:11:33.920And in 2017, when we passed the Trump tax cuts, we saw enormous economic prosperity.
00:11:39.520We saw the lowest unemployment in 50 years and the lowest black unemployment ever recorded, the lowest Hispanic unemployment ever recorded.
00:11:48.480And so if we did nothing, we would reverse those gains by having a massive tax increase.
00:11:54.040Now, 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.
00:12:03.680Now, I'm going to give you a hyper-technical legal term for what that line is.
00:12:11.940What this did is maintained current tax rates.
00:12:16.780So 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.
00:12:26.720And 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.
00:12:40.920But 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.
00:12:51.060It was President Trump's blue collar agenda.
00:12:53.200So what are some of the new tax cuts that are in this provision?
00:13:03.800That'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.
00:13:33.520And in fact, the Joint Committee on Taxation put out an analysis of the distributional impacts of these tax cuts.
00:13:43.200They 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.
00:13:53.500People making between fifteen thousand and thirty thousand a year would get a twenty seven point one percent cut.
00:14:01.940People making between thirty thousand and forty thousand a year would get a nine point five percent cut.
00:14:07.720And people making forty thousand to fifty thousand a year would get a seven point two percent cut.
00:14:13.080So those are are real and meaningful tax relief.
00:14:18.040And by the way, those numbers compared to the impact for people at the top end, those making over a million was three percent.
00:14:26.860And mind you, that's not that's not a cut for them.
00:14:30.080That's just saying that that they don't have their taxes skyrocket automatically.
00:14:34.720They stay at exactly the same level they are today, though, that those that is real, meaningful, middle class tax relief.
00:14:43.440You know, you go back to the campaign and that legislation that you just mentioned, the no tax on tips.
00:14:48.120And Donald Trump talked about how he wrote it down on a napkin after I think it was, if I remember correctly, out in Nevada.
00:14:54.800Yep. And it was just saying this is a great idea.
00:14:56.820I'm going to write down. Yeah, it was in Vegas.
00:14:58.740And there's so many people in Vegas that work on tips.
00:15:00.780I can't tell you how many different people have talked to me about this, that work in an industry that heavily revolves around tips.
00:15:08.660Uber and Lyft drivers are a great example of that.
00:15:11.200I've had a lot of them talk to me about it when they find out what you do.
00:15:13.880They'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.
00:15:44.180But 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.
00:15:51.760This could have a catastrophic positive impact on our overall economy, especially for people in these jobs.
00:16:00.120I don't think people understand what a big differences can make.
00:16:03.600Yeah, it's going to make a big difference to a lot of people who need the relief.
00:16:08.920And I've had the same experience where people really see that as as President Trump and a Republican Congress delivering on our promises.
00:16:16.040You know, there are other elements in this bill.
00:16:18.620I got to tell you, I'm particularly gratified because I had a lot of big victories that are included in this bill.
00:16:34.160Every electronic device you have, your cell phone, Wi-Fi, your laptop, streaming, satellite, everything operates over electromagnetic spectrum.
00:16:44.260And different bandwidths are assigned to different forms of communication.
00:16:49.660Of the most valuable spectrum, the mid-band spectrum, the federal government controls 60 percent of it.
00:16:56.680I wrote into this bill a mandate that the federal government must auction off to the private sector 800 megahertz of spectrum.
00:17:05.900That's going to do a couple of things.
00:17:07.120Number one, that's going to generate about $100 billion to the federal government.
00:17:12.600That's real money that goes to the taxpayers that can pay down our debt, lower the deficit.
00:17:18.500Those are real dollars that come into the federal government.
00:17:21.480But I'll tell you, Ben, that's not the biggest advantage.
00:17:23.580The 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.
00:17:36.140And I got to tell you, three months ago, nobody in Washington thought we would get spectrum auction in this bill.
00:17:49.860You talk about no one thought it was going to be in there.
00:17:52.200There was a lot of people lobbying, trying to keep that out.
00:17:54.600And you stuck to your guns on this one.
00:17:56.600That's part of, I think, the success story of this bill.
00:17:58.860It 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.
00:18:12.020Both of those were my legislation that I wrote.
00:18:14.980And I told this story on the podcast a little over a month ago.
00:18:18.140Senate Republicans, we all went on a retreat.
00:18:20.160And we were talking about the reconciliation bill and what we're going to do.
00:18:24.500And 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.
00:27:27.840It 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.
00:27:39.920I remember this like it was yesterday.
00:30:38.240But 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.
00:30:58.660When 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.
00:31:13.360In other words, it's dollar for dollar.
00:31:15.100It disappears from your tax liability.
00:31:17.100What this will do is this is going to unleash billions and billions of dollars of new scholarships for K-12 education in the states.
00:31:28.780And the way it operates, every state has to choose to opt in.
00:31:33.860I suspect a number of blue states will not opt in because the teachers' unions will not want them to.
00:31:40.740They will not want scholarships for kids to be able to go to the school of their choice.
00:31:45.380And the way we wrote the rule, the law, the state has to opt in.
00:31:50.340But Texas will have scholarship-granting organizations.
00:31:53.860And any taxpayer can write a check up to $1,700 a year and get a full tax credit on their IRS, what they owe.
00:32:03.560That 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.
00:32:18.780And 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.
00:32:31.800This is – I think school choice is the civil rights issue of the 21st century.
00:32:38.980And I got to tell you, I fought tooth and nail.
00:32:42.200Well, this almost got stripped out of the bill about five different times.
00:32:47.140And I made clear, I'll shut this whole bill down if we don't get school choice in there.
00:32:52.480And 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.
00:33:03.340So on these two issues, school choice and also the savings accounts, when does that start to become a reality timeline?
00:33:11.640There's a lot of people that say, hey, we passed bills, and then things that were supposed to happen don't happen.
00:33:16.980They 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.
00:33:24.060So how sure are we that we are going to see the fruits of this fight and this labor?
00:33:29.360Yeah, these are both going to happen, and they're both going to happen in the next year.
00:33:32.880For the Trump accounts, I wrote into it an effective date of one year from the signing.
00:33:38.240So if it's signed on July 4th, these will start on July 4th, 2026, our nation's 250th anniversary.
00:33:46.300And I think that's something particularly fantastic.
00:33:48.900I'm quite confident President Trump will make a big deal about the facts that these accounts are being opened on our nation's birthday.
00:33:55.160Or if it ends up being signed at a slightly different date, somewhere on or about our nation's birthday, a great celebration.
00:34:03.340Same thing, the tax deductions are going to start, I believe, next year on the school choice tax deductions.
00:34:09.720So these will happen. They will happen quickly.
00:34:12.300Now, one question people are asking, what happens next?
00:37:14.840We actually are spending more on Medicaid every single year.
00:37:18.900What we did was slightly decrease the rate of growth of Medicaid in the future.
00:37:23.400And in particular, we increased efforts to fight waste, fraud, and abuse and to remove people from the Medicaid rolls who don't qualify.
00:37:32.860And we also put in place a work requirement, which is really important and I think actually benefits people.
00:37:39.980If 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,
00:37:48.980which is ultimately much better for them and their families.
00:37:51.400So, but anyway, Susan Collins did not like the reductions in spending on that side, so she voted no.
00:38:00.820Tom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, also did not like the Medicaid changes, and so he voted no.
00:38:10.040And so with 53 Republicans, we could only lose three.
00:38:14.220The two other votes that were in play were Lisa Murkowski and Rand Paul.
00:38:22.060And they were both between 6 a.m. and noon.
00:38:28.500Nobody knew which one we would get if either.
00:38:35.920But 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.
00:38:45.660So 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.
00:38:56.040And so Lisa was bargaining for a bunch more spending.
00:39:00.860She wanted a ton of spending, particularly in Alaska.
00:40:07.280And she ended up increasing the rural hospital fund by $50 billion.
00:40:16.000She ended up dropping the Medicaid penalty for states that are giving Medicaid to illegal immigrants.
00:40:25.700She ended up delaying the work requirements for for food stamps for Alaska.
00:40:35.020And the cost of that was billions and billions of dollars.
00:40:38.960Interestingly, if Rand had said yes instead of Lisa, we would have ended up spending much less.
00:40:46.580But 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.
00:41:03.100And and so, you know, I mean, that that's where votes have consequences.
00:41:08.500Incredible. Well, it certainly is interesting to see your take on this.
00:41:13.700I'm glad that we were able to do the show.
00:41:15.360You deserve to get some sleep now that it's after midnight Eastern and and after the voter Rama.
00:41:22.200But I am glad that we were able to unpack all of this for everyone, because a lot of people have the same question.
00:41:27.000How did this happen? What did we get that was good?
00:41:29.800Are there things that we got taken advantage of?
00:41:31.980Is this going to help the country more?