'Weaponizing The Bureaucracy Against People': Mike Levin Bashes Trump's Big Beautiful Bill

On "Forbes Newsroom," Congressman Mike Levin (D-CA) spoke about Republican cuts to social programs.

Transcript

00:00I want to talk about that a little more because as you said at the beginning of

00:03this conversation you think aspects of this bill are cruel and I'm assuming

00:07you're talking about cuts to those social programs so when you're looking

00:11at this bill when you're looking at the tax cuts paired with the changes to

00:15social programs estimates say that this legislation would make the poorest in

00:20this country poorer and the richest Americans even richer and so Medicaid

00:25cuts there's going to be estimates say between 8.6 and 14 million Americans

00:30who could lose health insurance over the next 10 years and around 3 million

00:34people could lose food assistance with snap I've had plenty of Republicans on my

00:40program here I asked them directly about Medicaid each of them have said to me

00:44your coverage will not be lost we are not touching your Medicaid we're going after

00:49the waste fraud and abuse President Trump himself has said we're not going to touch

00:54your Medicaid we're going after the waste fraud and abuse I mean what's your

00:58reaction to that rhetoric versus what we're seeing coming out of this bill well

01:04the the sad reality of this is that they're talking about work requirements

01:09and that sounds good until you unpack what it actually has meant where it's

01:13been implemented in states like Arkansas and Georgia where you have people who do

01:19qualify for Medicaid but run into all the bureaucracy and the red tape that is put

01:26in place by these requirements and they wind up not getting the care that they

01:31need because they don't meet the the bureaucratic requirements that are imposed so I see

01:39this really is weaponizing the bureaucracy against people in a manner where they do

01:45qualify for the care they do actually meet the standard of the work requirement or

01:50they they you know meet the exceptions to the work requirement but because they

01:56don't fill the paperwork out promptly or correctly and because those you know

02:03bureaucratic requirements are onerous then they're not getting the care that

02:06they need and what you just talked about the estimate of around 8 million people

02:12that'll be booted off of Medicaid that's not something that you know Democrats made

02:17up or something that was partisan that was a nonpartisan independent analysis that

02:24was conducted that resulted in in that number and that's that's a direct result of

02:29what we know has happened in states like Arkansas and Georgia where these

02:34bureaucratic hurdles have been imposed we all want waste fraud and abuse out of

02:40government I just think this is not that this is something fundamentally

02:44different it's a backdoor way to cut millions of people off Medicaid and then

02:48the other thing I should mention is the Affordable Care Act so you mentioned that

02:53overall number of around 14 million that includes roughly another 5 million

02:57people that will lose coverage under the Affordable Care Act because the premium

03:01subsidies that were put in place in order to try to incentivize people to get on the ACA

03:07exchanges those are going to be taken away and so you're going to have another 5 million

03:12or so people that are going to be without their Affordable Care Act health care and so

03:17you add it all up and it's just a really really in my view immoral piece of legislation

03:25that will result in a lot more people getting sick and and it seems to be the Republicans

03:30health care plan is don't get sick