On "Forbes Newsroom," Congresswoman Teresa Leger Fernández (D-NM) spoke about Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) voting for the budget reconciliation bill twice.
00:00I want to read some things and some points that the White House is highlighting about this will, because this is what the White House's rapid response team posted, that the big, beautiful bill will, quote, make the Trump tax cuts permanent, raise take-home pay for the average family by as much as $13,300, increase the average worker's wages by as much as $11,600, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and support made in America.
00:27What do you make about those points that they're highlighting?
00:31Well, look at how they talk about that.
00:32They say the average.
00:34Well, the reason they get to the average is because they are taking the tax benefits that primarily go to the wealthiest Americans.
00:43I use the $3 million.
00:44If you earn $3 million or more a year, you're going to make a lot of money.
00:49Your benefits are going to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
00:52But if you are a working family, you might get $1 a day versus they're going to get about $700 a day in tax benefits.
01:02That is not fair.
01:03Now, if you average that out, that's what you come to.
01:06But if you're a working-class family, if you're a middle-class family, you are not seeing that.
01:10Indeed, because of the way they're changing the child tax credit, because of the way they're changing and kicking people off of the Affordable Care Act, of Medicare, the impacts to middle-class Americans and working families are negative.
01:31They're actually going to see, in many instances, a tax increase.
01:35And those things like the no tax on tips, they're actually very limited, and they're not permanent.
01:40They're very temporary.
01:42Well, they are making the tax cuts for the wealthy and the biggest corporations permanent.
01:47Once again, a budget reflects your morals, and this is an amoral budget.
01:53It does not reflect my faith tradition, which says that you should care for the poor.
02:00You should care for the least of us.
02:02Indeed, my archbishop in New Mexico said the church must stand in opposition to this, because if we believe in the teachings of Jesus Christ and the teachings of the church, we must stand in opposition to this bill.
02:15So that kind of shows you that if you actually have an archbishop of the Catholic Church carrying on and saying, this is not right, this is not consistent with our values, it tells you what this bill is really about and who it favors.
02:29Yes, it gives tax cuts, but it's sending them to the wealthiest Americans.
02:35The richest man in the world also took issue with this bill.
02:38He was opposed to it before he got in, or after he got, rather, in that back and forth with President Trump on social media.
02:45Now he says he regrets some of his messaging, but he did call this bill a disgusting abomination.
02:50He also called it pork-filled, and that really opened the floodgates, it seemed, to some of your Republican colleagues really criticizing this bill.
03:00Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said she missed a part on one of the pages of the bill regarding AI and states being able to enforce it.
03:08Also, members of the House Freedom Caucus spoke against it, said that they were trying to raise the alarms, but these were people who voted for the legislation when the House was voting for it.
03:17So what do you make of that maybe perhaps Monday morning quarterbacking from your colleagues, Republicans who did initially support this bill?
03:26So the Oops Caucus, you mean?
03:28The people who said, oh, I didn't know it was in there.
03:31You voted for it?
03:32And I need to remind people that 101 Democrats came before the World Committee.
03:38I sit on the Rules Committee.
03:39I sat there for two nights.
03:42You know, I showed up.
03:43We worked through the night, all the next day and all the next night, where we heard Democrats show up and offer amendments to the bill.
03:51We read it.
03:52We knew all the bad things that were in it.
03:54We opposed it.
03:55But they didn't even show up.
03:57The Republicans on the Rules Committee didn't even show up for most of the hearing, or they fell asleep at the hearing.
04:02If you would have read that bill, you would have known everything that was bad.
04:05If you would have just listened to us, you would have known everything was bad.
04:08And that Oops Caucus, that after the fact said, oh, we wouldn't have voted for it, if we would have known it had a $3 trillion increase to the deficit.
04:18Well, guess what?
04:19We gave them another opportunity.
04:21We didn't give them.
04:21The Republicans, we just voted on a rule in the House floor that was a do-over, that allowed them, if they had a problem with the bill, they could have voted against the rule that we just passed a couple of hours ago.
04:36Because that rule brought the bill back up again and made changes.
04:42It didn't address the things that Marjorie Taylor Greene said she had a problem with.
04:46So your statement that you would have voted against the bill if you would have known it was in, well, guess what?
04:52You just voted for the bill twice.
04:55We had 12 Republicans ask the Senate to take out the cuts to the energy tax credits because those will hurt their districts.
05:05They voted for the bill again.
05:08So when they say those things, it doesn't matter.
05:10You can't send a CYA letter that said, I wouldn't have voted for it if I would have known, and then vote for it again.
05:18We need to make sure that the American public knows that Republicans continue to vote for a bill that they know is wrong.
05:26And they say in tweets and they say in letters, this bill has things I don't like and I would have voted against it.
05:32But then they had a chance for a do-over and they still did do wrong.
