Ron Wyden Lays Out The 'Truly Disastrous' Impacts Of Trump's Big Beautiful Bill At Bessent Hearing

Forbes Breaking News

At today's Senate Finance Committee hearing, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) spoke about the Big Beautiful Bill before questions were asked of Treasury Sec. Scott Bessent.

Transcript

00:00Mr. Chairman, this morning's hearing could be the only opportunity Democratic senators have

00:07to question a top Trump official about the truly disastrous bill Republicans are writing

00:16behind closed doors. Robert Kennedy Jr. has been invited to appear. It looks like he's ducking us.

00:24Oz is waffling on the promise he made in this room to hear from rural Oregonians about this bill's

00:32catastrophic Medicaid cuts. There's a legislative wrecking ball about to devastate the lives of

00:41millions of Americans. That needs to be the focus of this hearing. While Senate Republicans are making

00:48these small tweaks to their bill, countless millions of people across the country feel

00:56like they're living on a knife's edge. Nurses and firefighters, teachers and machinists,

01:05they're living paycheck to paycheck, barely staying ahead of the bills. They're overworked and they're

01:12concerned about providing for their kids or caring for an older loved one. They see a rigged economy

01:20that creates enormous prosperity at the top but denies it to nearly everybody else.

01:28The plan Donald Trump and Republicans are scrambling to pass is going to do virtually nothing for them.

01:36In fact, it would make their lives worse. It's no exaggeration to say the Republican plan would ruin

01:42millions of lives to help the ultra-wealthy buy yachts and vacation homes. Their bill isn't a tax and

01:51spending cut. It's a class war. It is caviar over kids. It is mar-a-lago over the middle class.

02:01The version that passed the House, the only text we have to go by now since this is all unfolding in

02:08secret, includes the largest cuts to health care and food assistance in American history. More than

02:14$800 billion cut out of Medicaid. Nearly $300 billion cut from the Affordable Care Act. More than

02:20$500 billion in automatic cuts to Medicare. For Donald Trump and Republicans to hide behind the flimsy claim

02:31that this will not cut benefits is absurd. To say their bill protects seniors and kids and veterans

02:37and people with disabilities is absurd. It's insulting to the intelligence of millions of people who have

02:44health insurance today and stand to lose it as a direct result of this bill. 16 million Americans lose

02:51their health care. Working class and middle class Americans will be ensnared in a thicket of red tape,

02:58costing them their Medicaid and ACA benefits and making health coverage entirely unaffordable.

03:07This is going to inflame the mental health crisis in America. It's going to set back our progress

03:13against fentanyl deaths. Kids with disabilities will lose home care and school-based services.

03:19The cuts are going to shutter rural hospitals and take nurses out of nursing homes exposing seniors to abuse

03:24and neglect. My view is the $300 billion cut to SNAP can only be described as cruel. Two million kids

03:33lose some or all of their food assistance they receive today. It's just unthinkable that elected

03:39leaders in a country as rich as ours would knowingly inflict hunger on millions of kids. It'll set those

03:47kids back for years and years. A new study on the health issue found that the bill will cost thousands

03:56and thousands of lives, preventable deaths, each year. Why make that choice? Why ruin all these millions

04:03of lives by stripping away their health insurance and jacking up the cost of living? To pay for handouts

04:09to big corporations and the wealthy? That is an awful choice that Donald Trump and Republicans have made.

04:17The bill gives big corporations a trillion dollars in new tax breaks and they're hiding the cost once

04:22again with budget gimmicks. It would give the top 0.1 percent of earners a tax break of more than a quarter

04:29million dollars each year. Looking just at the tax changes, the typical lower income family would be lucky

04:37enough to cover groceries for a week in the Republican plan. 14 million families, particularly those of

04:44modest incomes, are going to get a tax increase. And when you factor in the Medicaid cuts, the food

04:50assistance cuts, and the tariffs that the secretary who joins us today once denied American families would

04:57not pay, nobody outside the fabulously wealthy is going to benefit from the tax changes at all.

05:03That overall Trump agenda is a big net loser for the vast majority of Americans. That's not tax reform.

05:11That's not a spending cut. That is a class war. Millions of atypical families will be made worse off

05:17and tens of thousands of people will die preventable deaths each year to pay for tax breaks for corporations

05:23and the very rich. That's what Republicans have to offer. So this committee has a chance now to have a serious

05:31debate. I'm sure there are one or two people in the room who may share a different view than I do. Let's

05:35have a serious debate because this is a watershed moment that's going to change our country for

05:41generations to come and it should not be playing out in secret. And one last point I want to mention,

05:46Mr. Chairman, I think there was questions about the process. We are asking for the kind of open markup,

05:53the kind of thing we did on clean energy taxes where we debated in this room and elsewhere for hours

06:00and hours in open and there were lots of amendments. Let's do that for the big issues. We did it on clean energy.

06:09Well before I get to you, Secretary Besson, I just have to say the markup you're talking about had

06:14nothing to do with what went into the reconciliation bill and the reconciliation bills that were done

06:21in the last administration were done exactly through the same process that we are pursuing today.

06:29Mr. Chairman, if I could, clean energy is in the reconciliation bill.

06:34But not the one we marked up.

06:36We had a big debate about it and essentially it is those issues that Republicans are

06:44against and we debated it in open session. I want to do that. That's what my colleagues want to do.

06:50Well, as you can see, Mr. Chairman,

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