00:00Last month, the House narrowly passed President Trump's Big Beautiful Bill, a massive piece of legislation that includes his signature tax and immigration policies.
00:10Now the Senate is taking it on, so I'm curious, what do you make of the budget package?
00:15Well, we're calling it the Big Ugly Bill or the Big Beautiful Betrayal because it just has such significant cuts to all sorts of programs that Americans rely on
00:27in order to fund tax cuts for billionaires, and it actually is going to add trillions of dollars to our budget deficit.
00:35And so I don't see where, you know, the only people that come out ahead in this are billionaires.
00:40And veterans are going to lose, families are going to lose, educational institutions, medical hospitals are all going to lose under this bill.
00:48It seems like those are the biggest points of contention in the Senate when it comes to this bill.
00:53One is that, according to the CBO, it could raise the deficit by $2.4 trillion.
00:59And then two, those Medicaid cuts, where, according to the CBO, again, millions could lose health insurance in the next decade.
01:05So what are your conversations with Republicans right now who aren't supportive of it and who have voiced their apprehension?
01:11Well, I start off with how many people in their states will lose health care coverage.
01:15It's estimated that 14 million Americans, including children and seniors, will lose their coverage entirely.
01:20And about 20 million Americans are going to see their health care costs go up.
01:24I also talked to my colleagues about veterans.
01:26There are significant cuts to veteran services in this bill, not to mention programs that help farmers and small businesses.
01:36I actually just sat down with some farmers not 15 minutes ago, and they are absolutely terrified of what's going to happen with the cuts that are in this bill that's going to really decimate our ag sector.
01:46Talk to us a little bit about that.
01:49I mean, what were the conversations with farmers?
01:51I mean, what alarms were they raising to you?
01:55Well, they're saying that, you know, the cuts that are in this bill, some of them are not directly aimed at the ag sector, but it's going to hurt the ag sector.
02:01It cuts to EPA, for example, cuts to the FDA because FDA and it looks at feed products that the feed that goes to animal feed, for example.
02:13And so there's all sorts of things in here that end up hurting middle class families or end up hurting ag in a significant way.
02:21It puts the air that we breathe in the water that our children drink at risk because it's going to go after the EPA and its ability to monitor the environmental health of this country.
02:32They're even looking to cut programs like the National Weather Service that farmers rely on to know that what they need to do with their crops from day to day.
02:40And, you know, you and I need the National Weather Service.
02:42I'm a I'm a pilot.
02:44Pilots need the National Weather Service.
02:45And so these cuts are going to be they're just so widespread and they're so, so egregious that it doesn't even, you know, if you're going to raise the budget, then raise it for a useful purpose.
02:58Right. To to extend more benefits to Americans or, you know, we've never as a nation raised the budget in order to fund tax cuts for billionaires and millionaires, except for under President Trump.
