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  • 6/9/2025
During Wednesday’s Senate Democrats’ ‘Ask Me Anything’ Virtual Event, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) discussed the Big Beautiful Bill's effect on the national debt.

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00:00how are you doing i'm doing great good let me move this out of the way amazing you got it
00:04thank you ccm bye thank you
00:13how awesome is uh senator cortez mastow she and i were in the class of 2016 together hi everyone
00:22um i have a call a question and on facebook what do you feel is the worst of this bill that we
00:28should be worrying about well there's so much in this bill that is so bad um it begins with
00:35how much it adds to our deficit uh in the short term uh upwards of two trillion dollars in the
00:42long term over 30 years as much as 47 to 50 trillion dollars that will put this country
00:48into an economic downward spiral that uh will be hard to recover from and i certainly don't want
00:54my 10 year old and my seven year old to have to be paying back a 47 trillion dollar uh a national
01:01debt um but within the bill itself uh in giving those tax cuts in in putting that deficit on the backs of
01:08the american people um it cuts significant amounts from medicaid and and frankly medicaid isn't just
01:15about people uh uh who are on the lower end of the economic spectrum it's about all of us because
01:20hospitals rely on medicaid dollars in order to function i sat down with the illinois hospital
01:27association and many of them said if these medicaid dollars go away we are the last hospital standing
01:34in a tri-county area in a quad county area uh that is serving people in this rural community and if
01:41these medicaid dollars go away and and people no longer have access to them our hospital will shut down
01:47and in addition to losing health care you will also be losing a major employer in the region
01:55my next question is from don don on facebook what are we doing to keep nih funding for cancer research
02:00well we're fighting them on this bill we're going to push to get that funding restored we're trying
02:05very hard to have it restored the president is trying to send over what's called a rescissions
02:10package which is uh his attempt to formalize the fun the cuts that doge uh made to nih funding uh so
02:18we're going to fight him on both the resistance package which is senate speak and and legislative
02:24speak for him trying to finalize uh what elon musk did by taking a chainsaw to the nih budget
02:29and it also at the same time in this bill in this budget bill is a huge cut to the national institutes of
02:37health um this is where we do the cutting edge research on cancer on all sorts of illnesses
02:43and we lead the world in this and you know what happens when we cut nih funding all these laboratories
02:48shut down and then we lose these scientists already we have uh other nations in europe in asia that are
02:54wooing our scientists saying hey you know what you're losing your nih funding come to us we'll give
02:58you a lab for 10 years for 20 years and you can do your research but but move to japan move to
03:04switzerland move to germany come here and we don't want that kind of a brain drain to happen so we need
03:09to make sure that we continue to fund the nih um so rachel bender's audience has asked what exactly
03:16is a budget reconciliation bill this is basically a way to uh uh put forward the the the nation's budget
03:24it's it's basically trying to reconcile between what the house is putting forward and what the senate is
03:29putting forward um and we need to make sure that uh whatever the how all the bad stuff that's in the
03:34house bill we need to go after it um and we need to make sure that uh we take out all of the really
03:40negative cuts uh to funding programs whether it is for ag whether it's for medicare medicaid there's
03:48significant cuts also to veterans services in this bill they basically it's a way for them to come
03:55through and just slash all sorts of funding and they're using it to get around there's um the
04:00parliamentarian of the senate which is be a form of procedure um and uh frankly they're not supposed
04:05to do that it's basically the nuclear option uh riding roughshod over the minority uh not listening
04:11to senate procedures and following for senate protocols and it's their way of shoving essentially
04:16trillions of dollars of debt down taxpayers throats in order to you know support the lifestyle of
04:23trump's billionaire buddies at the expense of families uh middle-income families they're just
04:27trying to get by kirk on facebook how can we stop the provision that defunds the university centers of
04:34excellence that focus on services and self-advocacy for people with disabilities these are some of the
04:39most marginalized people in our country it's unconscionable to me that we would become a country
04:44that doesn't ensure people with disabilities have what they need to be productive members of society
04:48i agree with you one thousand percent and i'm going to fight every chance that i get this is one of
04:54the places that we're going to push back as hard as we can on this bill to try to restore that funding
04:59uh it's it's also it's about the centers of excellence but it is also about uh medicaid
05:05programs and and and social security programs and medicare programs and health care uh services and
05:11it's also about wrap around services so the people with disabilities can get the support services that
05:16they need so that they can leave the house and go to work or to school but the centers of excellence
05:20are critically important for moving the agenda moving policy around the country to support persons
05:25with disabilities it's how under these these programs and advocacy groups that we move from
05:31institutionalized people as what we norm as the basic thing that we normally do to actually
05:36understanding that people do better when they stay there in their own homes when they live in the
05:39community now if you want to be in a group home setting you can choose to do that but really
05:44what people with disability want to do is live their lives like everybody else in our communities
05:48and if that is the best for you you should be able to do that but that shift in how we treat people
05:52with disabilities happened in the centers of excellence and happened with advocacy groups who
05:56stepped forward many of whom got training in those centers of excellence so we're going to do everything
06:00we can to push back this is all part of the cuts that they're using and they're basically cutting
06:06services for persons with disabilities in order to fund tax cuts for the mar-a-lago crowd and that's
06:13simply not acceptable and now it's my great pleasure to introduce senator patty murray um my good friend
06:22uh she is uh the person leading our fight in this uh she is uh pushing as hard as she can and trying
06:30every procedure that we can and she is our quarterback among all the democrats to push back on on this fight
06:36so without further ado senator patty murray of washington hi patty it's all yours

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