How Trump’s Massive, Wide Ranging Budget Bill Could Affect You
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From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal. President Trump's budget bill is working its way through the Republican-controlled Congress, having already passed the House. It would roll back clean energy initiatives, restrict Medicaid benefits, and extend tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans.

It would also add massively to the national debt, cut taxes on tips, reduce food assistance, increase defense spending, and tinker with a wide variety of other rules. We're going to break it down with two reporters right after this news. Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. They say that a budget is a document about priorities. Following the money reveals the actual focus of an organization. So what then are the priorities of the Trump administration?

First and foremost, there are tax cuts, most of which will go to the wealthiest Americans. But spending on ICE and the Border Patrol will also go up, spending on defense likewise.

There aren't really tons of cuts, as were promised by the Doge faction in the government, which is one reason that the bill will expand the national debt massively. But there would be cuts to Medicaid that could lead millions to lose their health insurance. Here to help us walk through some of the processes and provisions, we're joined by two reporters. Russell Berman is a staff writer at The Atlantic. Welcome back, Russell.

We also have Claudia Grisales, who is congressional correspondent at NPR. Welcome, Claudia. Thank you for having me. Claudia, let's start with you. Before we get into what is in this budget bill, I just want to talk about the budget process a little bit. It seems in recent years that Congress passes fewer and fewer bills, rolling up more and more consequential things into one big budget package. Is that an accurate assessment? And also, why is this happening?

Yeah, that is a very accurate assessment. It is just getting harder and harder to move legislation through these times of really deep divide of partisan politics.

And now is a unique moment for a Republican controlled Washington to get this major plan. It carries the bulk of President Trump's domestic agenda through in one shot. And the reason they see this is there's going to be fewer and fewer chances for them to do this during the rest of his term, potentially. And what does this have to do with the filibuster? Right. I mean, this is that Democrats potentially could hold up other bills by filibustering.

Right, they are using a special budget tool to fast track this plan in order to get just a simple majority to get this plan passed out of the Senate. That's 51 votes.

So they don't need to aim for the 60 votes. That's what the filibuster requires. And that would mean Democrats would have to be on board. They definitely are not. And so they're using this process. It's known as budget reconciliation. It has a procedural hurdle where the Senate parliamentarian is involved. And

And in order to get this plan past that and to get 51 votes, they all need to be on the same page. And that's what they're hoping to do with avoiding that filibuster by Democrats. Russell Berman, kind of taking a look at the big picture and thinking about what President Trump promised on the campaign trail. Does it feel like this budget is a reflection of the campaign trail promises?

Well, in some ways it is because it does contain a lot of his big promises to extend his signature 2017 tax cuts to boost border security, to increase defense spending, to

implement other tax cuts like no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, which he sort of rolled out in the closing stages of the campaign as a way to sort of get over the top. But of course, Trump says a lot of things. He makes a lot of promises on the campaign trail. Some of them are contradictory, right? So this

You know, they're trying to claim that this bill will reduce the debt and that they're broadly cutting spending overall, but that is not the case. According to all of the projections of this bill, the nonpartisan, you know, credible projections, this bill would, you know, hugely increase deficits and the debt by trillions of dollars over 10 years.

And what's the process now? I mean, is this basically a done deal and we're just waiting until the procedural things play out? Not at all. You know, the Republican margins both in the House and in the Senate are quite small. They had a big victory by getting this through the House, which just has a, you know, three or four vote margin on the Republican side a couple of weeks ago.

In the Senate, the margin is relatively a little bit more comfortable, proportional to the size of the Senate. Republicans can lose three votes, but not four, to pass this bill. But the challenge that they have in the Senate is that this bill has critics from both ends of the party. You have people who are criticizing it for essentially cutting too much, and then you have people who are criticizing it for not cutting nearly enough.

And so then, of course, even if the Senate were to pass it, they're almost certainly going to make changes, perhaps significant changes to it. And then it would have to go back to the House, where again, it would have to pass through this very narrow majority. So it's not done yet. I wouldn't bet against the Republicans passing something at the end of the day, but it still has a couple more hills to climb.

Claudia, given the size of the tax cuts, I mean, is there a way to actually cut their way to something that wouldn't add more to the deficit? It seems essentially impossible at this stage because that tax cut program is going to cost more than $4 trillion. And Republicans argue they can find savings in places, controversial places, such as Medicaid, for example.

But they haven't laid out exactly how they can reach this very big number, even a trillion, $2 trillion. It's still not clear that Republicans can get there. And when it comes to cuts to Medicaid, that would be needed to hit a big number like that. There's too many members that would be,

drawing a red line there they can only lose three as we just covered in the Senate and there's more than three Senate moderates who are going to not sign off if there's any significant cuts to Medicaid yeah

You know, Russell, that was one of the promises, you know, Republicans said, you know, Medicaid wouldn't be, you know, affected. But that really hasn't ended up being the case. I mean, at least in the current bill as it passed the House, right, there would be pretty major cuts to Medicaid. That's right. I mean, the biggest one is to implement so-called work requirements, which would require able-bodied adults to either be employed or actively looking for employment in order to receive benefits.

Medicaid, and that would cut essentially $260 billion or so from the program over a decade or so. And now the Republicans will try to claim that it does not cut from people who are currently

eligible and appropriately, in their view, receiving Medicaid benefits. But that's not really true. And of course, we see these misstatements all the time. And that's the debate that Democrats are trying to push back on.

You know, Claudia, you know, Medicaid seems both broadly popular and also heavily used in some congressional districts that, you know, have Republican representation. So are those the Republicans who are pushing back the hardest on this?

Well, it's interesting on the Senate side. We're looking at members who represent their states. When we look at the House side, as Russell is mentioning, we saw a lot of Republicans there sign off on the potential for the size of cuts. So yes, they could be going against their constituents in a lot of these cases. Now, when we look at Senate moderates, this is like Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and more.

What their stance is, is that this legislation cannot go that far to eliminate millions from the rolls when it comes to Medicaid. And on the House side, we saw it's pretty evident that President Trump has such sway that members there are voting against provisions that they're not fans of. But on the Senate side, it's not clear he has that same sway. So we're going to see how it plays out when it comes to these moderates. They seem to be drawing quite the red line.

Who you mentioned, Susan Collins, are they actually saying they're not going to vote for this if it has Medicaid cuts? Yeah, we're seeing these moderate members speak publicly against these plans. And Collins and Murkowski are often on the opposite sides of Trump. And they've made it pretty clear that they're not going to bend to his will. This is a unique situation.

unique stance to take during this Congress. You really do stand out in these moments. We have other members too that you wouldn't necessarily call a moderate anytime and that's Josh Hawley of Missouri who wrote an op-ed

Ed, a column, an editorial column, talking about the concerns there. If there are cuts to Medicaid, this would really be a big concern for him in terms of his constituency. So they are speaking out publicly. And that for us is a big clue when we see senators speaking publicly against

issues like this, it's pretty much shaping what they're going to be doing, what we'll see them do when it comes to negotiating these tough provisions of this legislation. You know, Russell, is the reason that Medicaid essentially has become

the big sticking point in this legislation because Social Security and Medicare are even more popular as government programs. And so, you know, but that's where a lot of spending goes within the U.S. government. And so this is kind of like the only pot that's big enough to make a difference. And so that's where people have gone.

That's right. And, you know, for cynical reasons, the people who rely on Medicaid have less political power than the people who rely on Medicare and Social Security. The people who rely on Medicare and Social Security are older people, people over the age of 65, and older people vote. They pay attention to politics. They vote in high numbers. And then the people who rely on Medicaid, again, this is

proportionally more, it's not to say everybody and to generalize, but they are lower income people and they don't have...they're not big donors, obviously, because they have less money and they don't have the political power. But what we're seeing, and there's been this shift in the Republican Party where their base

is now made up more of people who rely on Medicaid because it's the lower and working classes who have shifted from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. And so you have somebody, as Claudia mentioned, in Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, who is most famous for sticking his fist in the air on January 6th

2021. He is not a mushy moderate in the way that conservatives criticize Lisa Murkowski or Susan Collins, but he, representing a lot of rural voters who rely on Medicaid in Missouri, he's also stood up against cuts to the Postal Service for the same reasons. And we'll see, you know, if his red line is as sharp as it is right now.

We're talking about the Republican budget bill, what's in it, what it means for the rest of us. We're joined by Russell Berman, staff writer at The Atlantic, and Claudia Grisales, who is a congressional correspondent at NPR. We want to hear from you, too. What are your questions about the bill? What are your concerns about the bill? Obviously, there's a lot in it. You can give us a call. The number is 866-733-6786. That's 866-733-6786.

6786. You can email forum at kqed.org or find us on all the social media things where we're also KQED Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. We'll be back with more right after the break. Support for Forum comes from the University of San Francisco School of Management. Celebrating 100 years of partnership with the Bay Area business community, the USF School of Management connects students to the city's vibrant culture, hands-on internships, and a wealth of career opportunities.

where AI and sustainability are integrated into every facet of business education, and where students bring innovation, ethics, and entrepreneurial leadership to a planet in need. The University of San Francisco School of Management. Change the world from here. Support for KQED Podcasts comes from Earthjustice. As a national legal nonprofit, Earthjustice has more than 200 full-time lawyers who fight for a healthy environment.

They wield the power of the law to protect people's health, preserve magnificent places and wildlife, and advance clean energy to combat climate change. Earthjustice fights in court because the Earth needs a good lawyer. Learn more about how you can get involved and become a supporter at earthjustice.org.

Welcome back to Forum. Alexis Madrigal here. We're talking about the big Republican budget bill making its way through Congress right now. Turned by Claudia Grisales, who is congressional correspondent at NPR, Russell Berman, staff writer at The Atlantic. We've actually got a question from Irene in Berkeley on some of the things in the bill. Welcome, Irene.

Hi. So I'm 80 years old and disabled. So I've been on Medi-Cal for many years. And then I guess when I turned 65, they put me on Medicare and Medi-Cal. And I heard that there is a provision in the bill that is going to take people who are what they call Medi-Medi off of the Medicaid part, which

Yeah.

Hey, Irene, I appreciate that. You know, Claudia, do you want to take a stab at this? I know this may be a little more California specific than you sometimes have the opportunity to report on. Well, it is California specific in that case. But truly, this is the kind of feedback that the Senate Republicans will get in places like Maine. Susan Collins will hear from moderates there, which really reflects the political state situation.

um where it's at at this moment and that is what is driving this big concern and this red line by some of these senators is that the backlash and the fury that they will face if there are significant cuts to medicaid where millions are forced off that there will be a big political price to pay

And a lot of these moderates, they can sometimes be referred to as the majority makers. They're key segments of the conference in both chambers. And so those concerns are very real and senators are hearing them. And in some cases, it looks like they're moving forward in ways that signal they want to act on them and make sure that folks in those cases do not lose their coverage. Yeah. Russell, do you want to chip in on this one?

Yeah, I don't know specifically about the issue that Irene mentioned, but yeah, this is an 1100-page bill and there is a lot of policy details that are only now coming to light because the Republicans in the House really rushed this through very quickly. I mean, the final changes

to the bill were made mere hours before the House voted on it in the early morning hours a couple weeks ago. And, you know, this was a criticism that Republicans made, you know, somewhat exaggerated of Democrats when they were moving legislation through. But this legislation really was pushed through very quickly. And people are only starting to realize what exactly is in it. And as Claudia mentioned,

The Senate now is going to take its time. It's known as the cooling saucer in terms of Congress, where things get a little bit more deliberation. And so they're probably going to be taking a lot of this under consideration. Let's bring in Henry in San Francisco. Welcome, Henry. Hey, thanks for having me on. Go ahead.

Oh, yeah. So I keep hearing about this being referred to as a budget bill. But my understanding is that it encompasses a lot more, including something I want to ask about. I heard it. There's a clause in there that shields them from contempt charges. Do you know anything about that? Yeah.

Russell? So there is a line, I think it's really just one line, that would limit the ability of federal district judges to enforce contempt

contempt of court charges against government officials. It's worded in such a way that it would probably only apply to government officials, and this could be a way for the Trump administration to sort of escalate its battle with the courts. Now, the question here is whether this line, this policy change, would survive the

process in the Senate. The Senate, unlike the House, has strict rules that are more or less enforced by an official known as the parliamentarian about what kinds of changes can be made in a record, what Claudia talked about earlier, reconciliation bill that is not subject to the Senate filibuster.

And senators have already said, even on the Republican side, that this change that is included in the House bill regarding contempt and the judiciary seems like a policy change which would not affect taxes and spending, which is what

Republicans kind of have to stick to in this process. Right. That's what reconciliation is supposed to be. Money stuff. That's right. Money stuff. That's a good way of putting it, Alexis. The technical term, Russell. Let's stick with Nadine and San Anselmo. Welcome, Nadine.

Hi. Can you hear me okay? Yeah, sure can. Go ahead. Okay. Well, I've really been surprised that this has not been covered in the media enough. The fact that Medicaid pays for a very large percentage of births, you know, prenatal care, postnatal wraparound, and the hospitals that deliver it. And I'd like the speakers to speak about it. And it's mostly a large percentage of that is in rural communities. And I'm just shocked.

that this has not been put forward more by people who are, you know, the Republicans tend to be very pro-family, pro-birth, you know, and that they're not talking about that rural women rely on this for their birth. So can your speaker speak to what the percentage is? I think it's like 30 or 50 percent of birth, maybe more. Wow.

Nadine, thanks for that excellent point. I think anyone who's had a baby and gotten a call from the hospital a couple days before asking for some thousands of dollars knows how stressful it is. Claudia, do you want to speak to this? Yes, I'm not as familiar with the exact percentage, and this kind of goes to Russell's point of this 1,100-plus page bill, and it was tweaked in the middle of the night before it was passed on.

on the House floor. So it will have wide reaching impacts. Yes. And I could see in terms of especially situations where deliveries would be a significant source of income that families may rely on.

for Medicaid. But in terms of that percentage, I'm not as clear. But again, it's one of those kind of lesser known provisions that probably we're still taking our time in terms of trying to figure out the full impact of what we're going to see. Yeah, I've got the Kaiser Family Foundation stats up in front of me here. And I think you've got overall for the U.S., 41 percent, California, just just about the same here, about 40 percent. And

In some cases, like Louisiana, as high as 64%. Mississippi, 57%. So, Nadine, such a great point, and thanks so much for bringing that up.

Another thing that is in the bill on the same point of birth, pregnancy care that, you know, Republicans are looking to prohibit Medicaid funds from going to Planned Parenthood, which provides abortion care. I assume that is something that can be baked into a reconciliation bill, Russell.

Right. I believe, I'm not sure again whether it would get through the process. But again, this is another thing that politically in the past, Republicans have talked a lot about cutting, defunding Planned Parenthood. We've heard that in campaigns for years. But in the Senate, they may or may not have a majority to actually do that. So the senators that we've talked about, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of

Alaska has historically been supportive of reproductive rights and opposed to cuts to Planned Parenthood. There may be a couple of other Republican senators who are leery of doing this because, of course, Planned Parenthood provides a lot of services that have nothing to do with abortion, and there's already a federal ban on funding that goes directly to abortions that is known as the Hyde Amendment, which

Even Democrats did not change when they were in office or in power. So this is going to be one of the many fights that the Senate is going to have to decide on, and deciding whether they can defund Planned Parenthood procedurally and whether politically they want to. Yeah. Let's bring in Bill in Los Altos. Loving all these questions. Thanks so much. Bill, welcome.

Thank you. Thanks for taking my call. I wanted to ask about the, not only the proposed, but actually ongoing cuts to basic research, NIH, NSF, NASA, and how the government's terminology of these as spending makes it easy to attack them as just more unnecessary spending that we can't afford. And yet, I think the evidence is quite clear that

that federal spending for basic research and science has a positive return on investment anywhere from 150 to 300 percent or more, and that this spending historically has given rise to 75 years of economic and technology leadership in this country. So it seems like these proposed cuts are not just shooting ourselves in the foot, but kind of blowing our legs off the house of science.

economic prosperity and technology leadership is built on a foundation of funding for basic research, and it doesn't seem as though the administration understands that.

Bill, appreciate that perspective. Claudia, this has obviously been a hot button issue, you know, cuts to the NSF, possible cuts to the Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, and a wide variety of the federal governmental agencies that do both basic and applied research. Can you talk a little bit about where that stands in this, Bill?

Right there, they are indeed looking at reductions in those areas. And this is just part of an ongoing wave since President Trump took office. And we saw Elon Musk trigger the Doge efforts. And we've seen that really make some quick, quick, fast, incredible progress through eliminating positions and

and services through federal agencies. And so what we've heard a lot during that process from Republicans in Congress is they want to make sure they codify some of these reductions, maybe go a step further in some of these cases. And also Bill's call reminds me, this is not the only bite at the apple. Reconciliation, as it's known, this special budget process to fast track this plan is not

members only opportunity to reduce spending. They also are looking at a rescissions package that will come across, we expect this week to reduce spending for certain entities. And then there's the appropriations plan for fiscal year 2026. And I've heard some Republicans say that's going to be another opportunity to dojify the government further. So this is just

Won in a series of dramatic cuts to government spending in all areas. Yeah, and

You know, Russell, one of our listeners writes, you know, for the future of our kids, I'm really concerned about the rollback of environmental research and moves towards clean energy. Even Elon Musk, Mr. Tesla, couldn't get Trump to back off his drill baby drill stance. How are we supposed to fight climate change when we don't put in the money and research into figuring out how to make clean energy? It's insanity. And I don't think Republican senators will care. Talk to me a little bit about the rollback.

to clean energy incentives and how much of that Biden era policy will survive?

Right. Well, this is going to be a huge fight in the Senate among Republicans because, you know, so just to backtrack a little bit, the Democrats passed under President Biden this first huge climate bill in years, which they titled not a climate bill, but the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. And it had billions and billions, hundreds of billions of dollars in incentives for clean energy, electric vehicles, etc. And there was also some in his infrastructure plan. And

And President Trump has been targeting this. They call it repealing the so-called Green New Deal. It wasn't the Green New Deal, but that's how the Republicans describe it. Now, in the House, there were a number of Republicans who didn't, even though they didn't vote for the bills that included these tax credits under Democrats.

They have wanted to protect them because a lot of these tax credits benefit their districts and their states. And so they fought to either sort of roll back the rollbacks and protect some of these clean energy tax cuts. Conservatives pushed back because they wanted basically Biden's entire economic legacy to be repealed. They met in the middle. They moved up some of the dates and the levels of cuts to the clean energy tax credits.

But now it goes to the Senate and you also have the same dynamic where you have Republican senators who did not vote for the Inflation Reduction Act. Many of them did vote for the infrastructure law. But now they are standing up for tax credits that are benefiting their states, their businesses, their constituents.

constituents. And we're going to have to see. Some of them have basically promised that they are going to make sure that the bill does not roll back these or repeal these clean energy tax credits as much as the House bill. And so we'll see if they deliver on that. It's such a fascinating, almost like political science case study, because I remember during the IRA, the Inflation Reduction Act debates in sort of left policy circles or liberal policy circles.

that people are saying, you know, we've got to make sure that a bunch of this money goes to red states because that's how we will create a more politically durable solution to climate change is to make sure that, you know, all these congressional districts in red states have projects in them, clean energy projects in them because that will then protect this bill in the future. Didn't work in the House that well, it seems like, but maybe it will work more broadly.

Yeah, I think that's the big question. I mean, and senators, you know, for all the reasons we've talked about, are a little bit more insulated from the pressure that Trump brings to bear. You know, his sort of political weight where if you're against him, he'll threaten to primary you if

if you're Republican. In the Senate, they have six-year terms. Some of them have terms that will outlast President Trump's term. So we'll see if his pressure campaign works as well in the Senate as it did in the House.

We are talking about the Republican budget bill. A lot still to be figured out as you're hearing, of course, but what's in it now, what it means for the rest of us, how this thing might end up. We're joined by Russell Berman, staff writer at The Atlantic. We're also joined by Claudia Grisales.

who is congressional correspondent at NPR. And of course, we're taking a bunch of your questions and calls and concerns as well. The number is 866-733-6786. That's 866-733-6786. You can email forum at kqed.org. You can find us on social media, Blue Sky, Instagram, etc. Of course, there's a Discord discussion as well.

You know, Claudia, on the energy provisions, too, are there incentives for more drilling, too? I mean, that has been one of the big touch points of the Trump campaign.

Yeah, there are a lot of incentives in terms of focusing more on these older forms of energy production. And as Russell was mentioning, that's come into conflict with some Republican senators, such as Tom Tillis of North Carolina and the other senators we mentioned earlier, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine. They issued a statement earlier this year

before the bill was passed in the House expressing deep concerns about eliminating some of these advantages for clean energy, these credits. And it's interesting, especially for California, as the Senate has taken a very direct look at the waivers allowed there and even looked at overruling the parliamentarian to get rid of those waivers.

climate change related waivers in California. And so this is an issue that's very familiar there. And it is, as Russell mentioned, one of the big fights that awaits is what is going to be eliminated, repealed exactly from the Inflation Reduction Act when it comes to clean energy, when it comes to former President Biden's

efforts there and Democrats efforts there. And if some of these Republicans like Tillis, Murkowski, Collins have their way, they're going to ensure that some of these do not get repealed and stay in place. Yeah.

We again are talking about the Republican budget bill. What's in the bill as it was passed in the House? What could survive in the Senate? What could actually make it to President Trump? We're joined by Claudia Grisales, congressional correspondent at NPR, as well as Russell Berman, staff writer at The Atlantic.

We'll get to more of your calls and comments, 866-733-6786 or forum at kqed.org. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned.

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Welcome back to Forum. Lexis Madrigal here with Russell Berman, staffer at The Atlantic, and Claudia Grisales, congressional correspondent at NPR. We're talking about the Republican budget bill. One of our listeners over on the Discord wants to make this point. Despite what Trump is shouting from the rooftops, this bill is highly unpopular, even among Republicans and certainly among the actual population in Russia.

red states. It seems that it passed the House because not one, not two, but three elected Democrats have died in office since November. If they were present to vote, this bill would not even have passed. So don't let Trump fool you into saying things about a mandate and about unanimous support. A majority of the population hates what's being done, despite the stupidly transparent propaganda. Claudia, do you think that is an accurate read on the whole politics of this bill?

I would say not. In terms of that one vote margin, yes, it was very close in terms of how this legislation finally got passed through on a party line vote in the House. But House Republicans control the chamber. And what we have seen time and time and time again is President Trump will weigh in and make sure that any of those who are looking to vote know they're considering it. He's been able

to flip those no's to his benefit. So I imagine if the same exercise had played out with Democrats with a full deck of their members, that we would have seen Republicans and especially President Trump weigh in to make sure they got that one vote margin again. Yeah. Russell, what would you say in general, though, like if you were to put the pieces of this budget's

priorities before the American public one by one, what do you think would be the most and least popular things? Right. I just want to add real quick to Claudia's point. One Republican actually missed the vote because he fell asleep. And so again, if they had really needed that extra vote, they would have woken him up and another one missed the vote. So probably not the very sad deaths by Democrats that caused this to pass.

But yeah, it really all depends on how you ask the question and what policies you're asking about. Because this bill, as Trump calls it, "one big beautiful bill," as the Democrats call it, "one ugly bill," does a whole lot, right? So if you're asking them, "Do you support cuts to Medicaid?" The answer polls have shown again and again is no. Cutting Medicaid is very unpopular.

Now, the Republicans would try to frame it as, "Well, we're just cutting waste, fraud, and abuse," which is how they've sort of messaged all of the Doge cuts. And then maybe it pulls a little bit better. If you ask, "Do you want your taxes to go up?" Because that's what would happen if the Congress does not extend the 2017 tax rates, most people probably would say, "No, I don't want my taxes to go up."

So it really depends on which policies you're talking about. Some of them are popular, like extending the tax cuts generally. Of course, if you're asking people, do you support extending the tax cuts for the wealthy people, they'll probably say no, because historically that's unpopular.

And what we're seeing now is in the next few weeks, there's going to be this big political debate about and Democrats are going to try to frame this bill around the most unpopular elements of it, like the cuts to Medicaid and the tax cuts for the rich. And the Republicans are going to try to frame it as, well, Democrats just want to raise your taxes. And so that's going to have some, you know, some sway in whether this bill gets across the finish line intact.

You know, I was looking at some reporting from Reuters, you know, and they were saying they were quoting this Penn Wharton budget model here. I'm just quoting from Reuters here. The Penn Wharton budget model, for example, found the bill would reduce after tax income by fifteen hundred dollars for families earning less than twenty two thousand dollars per year and boost income by one hundred and four thousand dollars for those earning more than five point two million dollars.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reached a similar conclusion. So there are people who would see their after-tax income decline in this, right? I mean, it's not just tax cuts, and it's basically the poorest people would be hurt the most.

Right. And I'm not sure if that model includes sort of factoring in the cuts to the federal benefits that they may receive, right? So if you're losing access to food stamps or if you're losing access to health insurance, it's not going to matter if your taxes go down

by a couple of hundred dollars or would go up by a couple of hundred dollars because health insurance losing that is going to be thousands of dollars. You know, so broadly speaking, you're correct in that the sort of experts have found that the bill would benefit the wealthy by the most and it would hurt people on the lower end of the income scale. Yeah.

Let's talk a little bit about where more spending is going to happen. Claudia, a budget winner in this bill, right, are defense and homeland security budgets, yeah?

Exactly. These are the areas that were key on the campaign trail for Republicans, for President Trump, for congressional Republicans. And this is where they really want to show they're going to shake up areas such as immigration and boost enforcement along the U.S.-Mexico border. And so they are winners, definitely, in this case. And I wanted to add one more point to Russell's

point about the impact that we'll see with families with less income. There's also a child tax credit impact here and families would see that child tax credit reduce possibly in half. And so that's another hit for the families that could see this. But

But overall, in terms of the overall impact of this bill, it's a reminder of just sweeping changes that we could see if a lot of these provisions stay in. Yeah, yeah. You know, Russell, on just sticking with the defense side here, I just want to get a little bit of an explanation for how we fund defense. Because aren't there like sort of special bills that have happened for Ukraine and other places here?

And so how did this sort of increased defense spending kind of tie in with our overall defense spending? Right. Well, the Pentagon never gets left behind. And so you have bills that are basically characterized as emergency appropriations or blanking on the word, but you're right, the bills that have funded the war in Ukraine or sort of

They've thrown in with disaster relief funding. But Republicans generally have wanted to plus up the Pentagon by more, and so they're taking this opportunity again where they don't have to worry about the Senate filibuster.

You know, this has been sort of one of the ways in which President Trump has been a traditional Republican is supporting defense spending, even though he's talking about the problem with the deficit and wanting to cut spending overall. And you saw this with the Doge debate as well. You had Democrats like California's own Ro Khanna who was saying, "Look, I'll work with you, Elon Musk, if you want to find efficiencies and waste fraud in a

abuse in the Defense Department, and he had trouble getting his calls returned because even though they sometimes talk about that, they have not made that a priority this year. I do ... Well, I don't, but I do want to talk about the deficit.

Claudia, I mean, this is one of these topics that I think it's very difficult to find people who are intellectually honest all across the board on this. It seems like people care about it when their party is in power. They don't care about it when their party is not in power. Talk to me a little bit about how we should be thinking about this deficit, which is so huge that it...

It kind of boggles that you know the individual human mind. Yeah when it comes to the deficit That's really the biggest fight that held up this legislation in the House chamber and where President Trump really had to lean in on these deficit Hawks like members of the House Freedom Caucus for example and their argument is we're doing all this new spending with the extending the tax cut program making it permanent in some cases and

And we need to look for savings. We can't be going. And we even saw one of the president's allies, Elon Musk, speak against the legislation for this reason. And so this is something that is going to come to a head in the Senate. We have heard members such as Senator Ron Johnson, who want to see more than the trillion dollars in savings that has been

proposed maybe up to two trillion or more. And so this is something that is a reoccurring issue for the country for federal spending. Republicans want to finally address it. But with all of this debate going back and forth and where to find these these savings,

It's not clear they're going to get there. That's going to be a really, really tough sell for moderates. So tough fight ahead. One listener writes, you know, Republicans or at least some part of the Republican Party have historically positioned themselves as balanced budget fiscal hawks. This bill adds trillions of dollars in and even more to the deficit. It's ironic Republicans say that government should be run like a business. If you ran a business like this, you'd go bankrupt. You'd probably get bailed out by Republicans. Yeah.

You know, it's interesting, though, because no one really has tried to balance the budget since the Clinton years, right? I mean, that was the last time we had a balanced budget, which is almost, what, you know, 20, 26 years ago, Russell? That's right. You know, the...

The debate here is that we've heard time and again from people who care about the deficit and the debt that at some point this bomb is going to go off and the sheer magnitude of the national debt is going to cause markets to crash and interest rates to spike, and it hasn't happened.

happened, right? And these people are sort of then considered these chicken littles, and it's given license to both Republicans and Democrats to say, "Hey, it really doesn't matter." Even Dick Cheney was talking about funding the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq on building the deficit, and we've been hearing it for years. And now the Republicans are about to really explode the deficit in a really huge way. And so those concerns are coming

back. But to Claudia's point, Republicans have always found it a lot easier to cut taxes than they have to cut spending. They campaign on spending cuts, but then when it comes to actually time to do it when they have power, they really just cut taxes and explode the deficit in that way. And we're seeing that dynamic

play out again. I mean, even the Trump administration, they've been doing so much unilaterally or trying to do so much unilaterally to cut spending without the approval of Congress, in part because they know that Congress, even with Republicans in charge of the House and the Senate and the presidency,

are unwilling to do so. And they're about to send what's called a rescissions package that is really a drop in the bucket, $9 billion of congressionally approved spending cuts that they need the sign-off of Congress for. And it's really an open question whether Republicans will be able to cut $9 billion out of all of these trillions that they're spending. And so I think that illustrates the dynamic pretty well.

And our, I mean, just so we can see, I mean, the U.S. debt, right, is in the realm of tens of trillions, right? So $9 billion is essentially...

Nothing. Yes, that's right. And yet it's basically to codify things that the Trump administration has already cut. You know, obviously USAID, right? They basically eliminated the foreign aid agency without anybody's say-so, and now they want Congress to basically codify the cuts they've already made, and they might not even be able to do that. Yeah.

It's interesting too, just so folks can get a sense of this, you know, kind of largest budget items, you know, Medicare, Medicaid, you're talking, you know, one and a half trillion dollars, right? Social Security, kind of similar. Defense, closer to a trillion. And the interest on this debt, of course, as well. What about, Claudia, we did see a change in the U.S. government bonds did get a lower rating. This was from Moody's, right? For the first time.

in Moody's rating history, at least. Does that indicate that maybe we are getting to some, you know, despite, you know, and I have been hearing this for my entire life, that the deficit, that our debt is a problem. And, you know, here we are with not having done anything about it for a very long time. It does feel like at a certain point that could be a bad thing. But what are we seeing here?

Right, exactly. That was pretty alarming, seeing that downgrade this year. And it's part of a pattern for several years. We've seen downgrades for the U.S. in terms of its credit rating. And this comes as members of Congress struggle.

struggle over lifting the debt ceiling over and over again and coming really close to those deadlines they're going to potentially do it again this summer that's the big worry with this legislation it has a lift to the debt ceiling uh in this legislation we're supposed to reach the so-called x date at some point this summer perhaps the end of the summer they're trying to beat the clock

Meanwhile, this legislation could be very well poised to boosting that debt. There's a member of the House, Thomas Massey of Kentucky, walks around Congress with a clock, a debt clock showing where we're at.

And he is one of those unique Republican members. This is the hill he's going to die on that he argues that this needs to be addressed. But time and time again, as Russell mentioned, it's not clear even Republicans can do that after talking about it on the campaign trail.

Russell, Susan writes and say, you know, we've gotten a bunch of comments like this one. Actually, I've yet to hear anyone give a justification for continuing the tax cuts of 2017. Did they help the economy or just add to the deficit? Well, it's a tough question because they were passed and then the Republicans would claim that the economy in 2018 and 2019 was great.

great. Maybe not everybody would agree with that, but it was certainly better than it was in 2020 when we had, of course, the coronavirus pandemic and the economy for a time crashed. So it's a hard thing to judge. But now, and this is always the case with tax cuts, which is if they go away, your taxes

go up and who wants to pay more and and you know, these are the the people who are the constituents of the Republicans that they're worried about and and that's in same thing with the Democrats the Democrats have actually said that if the Republicans Just wanted to extend all of the tax cuts except for those for the wealthy They would they would extend them to even though they didn't vote for them at the time So it's actually quite for the most part of bipartisan support for extending at least most

of these tax cuts, regardless of the impact that it's going to have on the deficit. You know, one of our listeners, Stan, has kind of a civics question here in the sense that, you know, he's going to be hosting these letter writing sessions about the bill and he's looking for summaries of the bill's provisions for people to reference. Do you have any recommendations on where he could find one?

Yeah, there are summaries everywhere. A lot of think tank programs here out of Washington, DC put out summaries. Of course, you have to proceed cautiously. There may be a slant depending if the program is nonpartisan or consider which way they lean. And some

Some of the members' offices as well will put out one-page summaries or more. Perhaps we'll see more of that on the Senate side. They'll have an opportunity to flush out more of the details for constituents to understand this massive mega bill.

So that I would probably go to think tanks first, keep an eye on members offices on budget committees, for example, see what kind of information they're putting out if they're putting out any summaries. You can also look up bill summaries on the congress.gov website, which will

put out highlights for legislation, just dial in the information that should pull that up. So there's a lot of resources out there and I've seen a lot of professors out there who are studying this bill, putting out their own summaries as well. I've also been really impressed with the independent group at Uncensored

unbreaking.org and they kind of have these issue pages about a bunch of different stuff. So if you go to Medicaid, you can see, you know, they'll have all kinds of information and sources there. So you can check that one out as well, unbreaking.org. One,

We have been talking about this budget bill, but do we know the date? I heard before, the 4th of July. Is that right, Russell, when they want to get this thing passed? Yes, they would like to do that, whether they do or not is a question. Of course, they were talking about Memorial Day for the House version, and most people were doubting that they could do that, and they were able to do it. The debt limit date, as Claudia mentioned, is really the

with the impetus for getting a final bill to President Trump. That's going to be in middle of summer. All right.

We have been talking about the Republican budget bill with Russell Berman, staff writer at The Atlantic. Thank you so much for joining us, Russell. Thank you. Always nice to talk to you. Claudia Grisales as well has joined us, congressional correspondent with NPR. Thank you. Thanks for having me. And thank you to our listeners for your calls, your comments, your questions. We're going to be coming back to this, of course, as the bill progresses through Congress. So stay tuned. I'm Alexis Madrigal. There's another hour of Forum Ahead with Mina Kim.

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