Speaker 1: Welcome.
Speaker 2: It is Verdict with Center, Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you,
Speaker 2: and we're doing a hybrid show this morning with the
Speaker 2: Ben Ferguson podcast as well because I'm on family vacation
Speaker 2: in Cabo. But when the Big Beautiful Bill happens, you
Speaker 2: do exactly what we're doing right now, and that is
Speaker 2: give you the latest, no matter where we are in
Speaker 2: the world of what's happening and how we got the
Speaker 2: deal done. Center, I have a feeling you are running
Speaker 2: on a very little sleep. Did you pull the all nighter?
Speaker 3: I definitely did you and I are recording this podcast
Speaker 3: at ten thirty seven pm Texas time on Tuesday night.
Speaker 3: I last slept on Sunday night. We were up at
Speaker 3: nine am Monday morning. On the Senate floor, we began
Speaker 3: consideration of the One Big Beautiful Bill under the reconciliation procedures.
Speaker 3: When you take up reconciliation, which as you know, you
Speaker 3: and I have talked about before, is the principal exception
Speaker 3: to the Senate filibuster rule. The ordinary rule in the
Speaker 3: Senate is you need sixty votes to pass legislation, but
Speaker 3: budget reconciliation is a special process that you can pass
Speaker 3: legislation with only fifty votes. But part of budget reconciliation
Speaker 3: is you have unlimited amendments, and that whole process is
Speaker 3: what's known as vot rama. We started at nine am
Speaker 3: Monday morning. We went all day Monday, we went all
Speaker 3: night Monday, we went all morning Tuesday, and we finished
Speaker 3: the whole thing at right about noon on Tuesday. And
Speaker 3: then I went and headed to the airport, got at
Speaker 3: a one o'clock flight, flew back to Texas. I'm home
Speaker 3: tonight in Texas and have yet to go to sleep.
Speaker 3: As soon as we finish this podcast, I am going
Speaker 3: to I've got a date with my bed, and I
Speaker 3: intend to be unconscious, very very soon.
Speaker 2: I feel bad for you, but welcome to how the
Speaker 2: sausage is made. So I have a lot of questions.
Speaker 2: I know everybody else is wanting to ask the same
Speaker 2: thing before we get into what is in the bill
Speaker 2: when this voter rama is happening.
Speaker 1: You're one of the youngest guys in the Senate.
Speaker 2: Your stamina is a little bit better, I would say,
Speaker 2: just ags and others. Do people sleep in their offices?
Speaker 2: Do you guys hang out? Do you decide to have dinner?
Speaker 2: Do you order pizzas. Do you guys go to the
Speaker 2: to the basement rooms that you guys have? How tell
Speaker 2: us how everybody feels the time.
Speaker 3: So, yes, all of the above. And there is a
Speaker 3: wide age variation in the Senate. I'm fifty four, I
Speaker 3: can pull an all nighter and I'm just fine. Look,
Speaker 3: Chuck Grassley is ninety. We've got a bunch of senators
Speaker 3: who are in their eighties. And I will tell you,
Speaker 3: particularly for the older senators doing an all nighter weighs
Speaker 3: upon them. This was the longest voterama in history. Some
Speaker 3: of this was Democrat delays. Some of this was just
Speaker 3: the fact that that Senate Republican leadership was scrambling to
Speaker 3: get the bill ready. One of the things to understand
Speaker 3: is the timeframe of this bill moved very quickly because
Speaker 3: President Trump announced he wanted this done by July fourth,
Speaker 3: and he was leaning on Senate leadership and House leaders
Speaker 3: to get it done. And so during the day we're
Speaker 3: taking I think we took something like forty seven votes
Speaker 3: in the twenty seven hours it took. And so there
Speaker 3: are periods of downtime. There are periods in between a
Speaker 3: vote when they're preparing the next vote, where they're revising statutes,
Speaker 3: revising amendments, they're also getting determinations from the Senate Parliamentarian.
Speaker 3: They're also getting scores. In order to have an amendment,
Speaker 3: you have to get a score, which is the Joint
Speaker 3: Committee on Taxation or the Congressional Budget Office will determine
Speaker 3: how much a particular provision will cost or how much
Speaker 3: it will save. Before you can vote on it in
Speaker 3: voter rama, you have to get that score. So during
Speaker 3: the day, yes, there are senators who are sitting back
Speaker 3: in the cloakroom, sleeping, either on a couch or in
Speaker 3: a chair. They're senators who go down to their hideaways.
Speaker 3: Every senator has what's called a hideaway, which is a
Speaker 3: smaller office in the US Capitol building. And most of
Speaker 3: us have a couch or two couches in the high away.
Speaker 3: And so senators would go and you know, get a
Speaker 3: twenty minute nap there. But and you would see you
Speaker 3: would see pages kind of a sleep behind the Senate floor.
Speaker 3: It's going long and furious. In terms of food, the
Speaker 3: food tends to be fairly lousy. It's kind of different.
Speaker 3: People host it. They'll bring in they'll bring in pizzas,
Speaker 3: they'll bring in sandwiches. One tradition that I started when
Speaker 3: I first got to the Senate is anytime we do
Speaker 3: an all night vodama, in the morning, I bring in
Speaker 3: McDonald's breakfast and I just give it to all the
Speaker 3: Republican senators. So I had seventy five egg mcmuffins and
Speaker 3: sausage m mcmuffins and breakfast burritos that just showed up
Speaker 3: about five point thirty in the morning. And you know,
Speaker 3: you know, I got to say, there are few things
Speaker 3: better after an all night or than than than Mickey
Speaker 3: D's breakfast. And I'll tell you ben some advice. And
Speaker 3: an old friend of mine gave me always always always
Speaker 3: pick up the breakfast check and you get you get
Speaker 3: some good will from you exactly right.
Speaker 1: All right? So do you guys hang out kind of
Speaker 1: in groups?
Speaker 2: And I asked this because like everybody kind of has
Speaker 2: their friends group that they hang out with, do you
Speaker 2: kind of have a text thread and say, hey, we're
Speaker 2: all over here, Hey, what do you want to do now?
Speaker 2: And I asked this for another reason. There are different
Speaker 2: centers that like to play different games. You, for example,
Speaker 2: love to play foosball.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: There there is a foosball table somewhere in the Senate.
Speaker 2: Do you guys like have games like that while you're
Speaker 2: just waiting in between?
Speaker 3: No, it's it's mostly just sitting around. Sometimes you'll be
Speaker 3: sitting on the Senate floor at your desk. Sometimes you'll
Speaker 3: be standing in the back of the Senate floor. In
Speaker 3: the back of the Senate it's what's called the cloakroom.
Speaker 3: The cloakroom has a couple of couches and probably twenty
Speaker 3: kind of big comfy chairs. A lot of us will
Speaker 3: sit back in the cloakroom, and then people will sort
Speaker 3: of huddle at different places. But it it is a
Speaker 3: little bit. I mean, you you hang out tipic with
Speaker 3: the folks that are your closest friends. But look, it's
Speaker 3: not that big a body. They're only one hundred of us,
Speaker 3: So you end up hanging out with a lot of
Speaker 3: your colleagues throughout the course of twenty seven hours.
Speaker 1: In a weird way.
Speaker 2: Is it kind of nice to see the Senate and
Speaker 2: come together in that way where you can actually be
Speaker 2: friendlier with somebody and chat with it. Does it build
Speaker 2: relationships at all?
Speaker 1: Long term?
Speaker 3: You know? Sure? I guess I wouldn't mind doing it
Speaker 3: without the all nighter at this point. You know, when
Speaker 3: I was nineteen twenty twenty one, I probably pulled one
Speaker 3: or two all nighters a week in college. And you know,
Speaker 3: I'm in a stage in life where I'm not eager
Speaker 3: to do all nighters anymore.
Speaker 1: I like that.
Speaker 2: All right, How close were we to this bill being
Speaker 2: in jeopardy? I asked that because there was a headline
Speaker 2: that came out and then it started kind of being
Speaker 2: run around nine o'clock yesterday evening, eight o'clock Central. It
Speaker 2: set up to six GP centers hold out on the
Speaker 2: big beautiful bill, and there was word that the president
Speaker 2: was working the phones. Was that a bunch to do
Speaker 2: about nothing? Or was it really whipping votes happening in
Speaker 2: the evening?
Speaker 3: Absolutely throughout the whole process, this was incredibly close. It
Speaker 3: was nip and tuck. I'll tell you. Tuesday morning, you know,
Speaker 3: we thought maybe we're going to get out there five
Speaker 3: or six in the morning. So I originally had an
Speaker 3: eight to twenty flight. Well, eight twenty came and went.
Speaker 3: Then I had an eleven am flight, and eleven am
Speaker 3: came and went. I ended up getting on a one
Speaker 3: pm flight, and so that and that was true for
Speaker 3: everyone You had senators who for Fourth of July, one
Speaker 3: of my colleagues was going to Hawaii, his wife and
Speaker 3: kids were already there. You had people flying all over
Speaker 3: the place for Fourth of July, but nobody could leave.
Speaker 3: So they're canceling their plans because we were supposed to
Speaker 3: be out this weekend. And this dragged on longer. And
Speaker 3: part of the reason it dragged on longer is it
Speaker 3: wasn't clear where the votes are. And so let me
Speaker 3: talk about some of the elements of what's in this bill.
Speaker 3: Probably the single most important thing that is in this
Speaker 3: bill is we extend the twenty seventeen Trump tax cuts.
Speaker 3: That's a big deal. When we passed those tax cuts,
Speaker 3: we passed them under reconciliation, but they only lasted They
Speaker 3: were only scheduled to last ten years, and so if
Speaker 3: we did nothing on December thirty first of this year,
Speaker 3: the tax cuts would expire, which meant on January first,
Speaker 3: there would be an automatic four trillion dollar tax increase.
Speaker 3: Your taxes would go up, My taxes would go up,
Speaker 3: the taxes of working Americans across this country would go up.
Speaker 3: That would have been devastating to the country, and so
Speaker 3: we had to pass this bill to extend the Trump
Speaker 3: tax cuts. Beyond that, we made historic investments in securing
Speaker 3: the border. We put one hundred and fifty billion dollars
Speaker 3: into securing the border, into building the wall, hiring border
Speaker 3: patrol agents, hiring ice agents, building detention facilities and detention.
Speaker 3: This is an investment. There's never been an investment like
Speaker 3: this at this order of magnitude. One of the great
Speaker 3: mandates out of this election was secure the border, and
Speaker 3: this bill provides the funding to enable President Trump to
Speaker 3: continue doing so. That is absolutely historic. On top of that,
Speaker 3: we also had a massive investment into rebuilding our military,
Speaker 3: an additional one hundred and fifty billion dollars into our
Speaker 3: military to bring it into the twenty first century, and
Speaker 3: in particular to invest in things like hypersonic weaponry, to
Speaker 3: invest in more subs, to invest in more ships, to
Speaker 3: invest in the Golden Dome, which President Trump rightly is advocating,
Speaker 3: missile defense for the homeland to keep us safe. That
Speaker 3: investment is in there as well. Incredibly important. Another component
Speaker 3: of that is investing in the Coastcard twenty four billion
Speaker 3: dollars in investments in the coast Guard. That means, among
Speaker 3: other things, building new polar ice breakers. Right now, China
Speaker 3: is kicking our tails in the Arctic, and and this
Speaker 3: is going to bring ship building back to this country
Speaker 3: and give us the ability to build ships here at
Speaker 3: home and have icebreakers so that we can defend our
Speaker 3: national security. All of those investments are enormously important.
Speaker 2: You know, Centater One that I think one of the
Speaker 2: most important things about this bill, and one of the
Speaker 2: things that you advocated for and I've advocated for, and
Speaker 2: it's something the present very clearly ran on, was making
Speaker 2: the Trump tax cuts permanent. This was a massive tax
Speaker 2: cut for the American people. Now, I know the media
Speaker 2: doesn't want to talk about that. I know they want
Speaker 2: to say that none of this is going to have
Speaker 2: a major impact on our economy, but it is in
Speaker 2: a ginormous way, especially for lower and middle class Americans.
Speaker 2: How catistraphic would it have been if this bill did
Speaker 2: not get passed When it comes to just basic tax policy,
Speaker 2: in these skyrocking taxes, without this.
Speaker 3: Bill, well, look, a four trillion dollar tax increase would
Speaker 3: have been enormously detrimental to the economy. Many of those
Speaker 3: taxes were on small businesses, their business to tax deductions
Speaker 3: for things like investing in new factories, investing in new equipment,
Speaker 3: and those deductions produced jobs, They raise wages, they incentivized
Speaker 3: deploying capital, and so if those taxes were to go up,
Speaker 3: you would end up seeing jobs go away. In twenty seventeen,
Speaker 3: when we passed the Trump tax cuts, we saw enormous
Speaker 3: economic prosperity. We saw the lowest unemployment in fifty years,
Speaker 3: and the lowest Black unemployment ever recorded, the lowest Hispanic
Speaker 3: unemployment ever recorded. And so if we did nothing, we
Speaker 3: would reverse those gains by having a massive tax increase. Now,
Speaker 3: ben the Democrats talking point, which every one of them
Speaker 3: said throughout this process, and which the media repeated, is
Speaker 3: this is tax cuts for billionaires. Now, I'm going to
Speaker 3: give you a hyper technical legal term for what that
Speaker 3: line is. That would be called a lie. What this
Speaker 3: did is maintained current tax rates. So the lie that
Speaker 3: it's tax cuts for billionaires is the Democrats say, well,
Speaker 3: if we do nothing, there's going to be a massive
Speaker 3: tax cut on everyone, a tax increase on everyone. And
Speaker 3: since this kept the tax rates exactly the same as
Speaker 3: they are today, the Democrats and media lie and say
Speaker 3: that's a massive tax cuts for billionaires. Everyone is paying
Speaker 3: the same rates. But as you rightly noted, where we
Speaker 3: provided additional tax relief was not at the top end
Speaker 3: of the income scale, but it was middle class and working.
Speaker 3: It was President Trump's blue collar agenda. So what are
Speaker 3: some of the new tax cuts that are in this provision?
Speaker 3: Number one, no tax on tips. That's my legislation. I
Speaker 3: wrote that legislation that is in this bill. That's going
Speaker 3: to benefit waiters and waitresses and bartenders and barbers and
Speaker 3: hair stylists and taxicab drivers and everyone who's working and
Speaker 3: getting compensated on tipped income. That is real and meaningful relief.
Speaker 3: Also included in this is no tax on overtime, and
Speaker 3: also included in this as tax relief for seniors getting
Speaker 3: solid security. All of those those are not going to
Speaker 3: millionaires and billionaires. They're going to working Americans. And in fact,
Speaker 3: the Joint Committee on Taxation put out an analysis of
Speaker 3: the distributional impacts of these tax cuts. They found that
Speaker 3: people making less than fifteen thousand dollars a year would
Speaker 3: get a sixteen point four percent cut in taxes, and
Speaker 3: they're paying very little. People making between fifteen thousand and
Speaker 3: thirty thousand a year would get a twenty seven point
Speaker 3: one percent cut, people making between thirty thousand and forty
Speaker 3: thousand a year would get a nine point five percent cut,
Speaker 3: and people making forty thousand to fifty thousand a year
Speaker 3: would get a seven point two percent cut. So those
Speaker 3: are our real and meaningful tax relief. And by the way,
Speaker 3: those numbers compared to the impact for people at the
Speaker 3: top end, those making over a million, was three percent.
Speaker 3: And mind you, that's not a cut for them. That's
Speaker 3: just saying that they don't have their taxes skyrocket automatically.
Speaker 3: They stay at exactly the same level they are today.
Speaker 3: Those that is real, meaningful middle class tax relief.
Speaker 2: You know, you go back to the campaign and that
Speaker 2: legislation that you just mentioned, the no tax on tips,
Speaker 2: and Donald Trump talked about how he wrote it down
Speaker 2: in a napkin after I think it was, if I
Speaker 2: remember correctly, outing in Nevada, yep. And they was just saying,
Speaker 2: this is a great idea I'm gonna write down. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he was in Vegas, and there's so many people in
Speaker 2: Vegas that work on tips. I can't tell you how
Speaker 2: many different people have talked to me about this that
Speaker 2: work in an industry that heavily revolves around tips. Uber
Speaker 2: and lyft drivers are a great example of that. I've
Speaker 2: had a lot of them talk to me about it.
Speaker 2: When they find out what you do, They're like, oh, man,
Speaker 2: this would change my life because it would it would
Speaker 2: allow me to keep so much more of my own
Speaker 2: money while you're trying to make it. If you've food delivery,
Speaker 2: you do it. I do it right, Uber Eats, whatever
Speaker 2: it may be. That's another example of where this can
Speaker 2: have a huge impact on someone giving them an instant
Speaker 2: pay raise, especially when you need it. Look, I taught
Speaker 2: tennis for years and tips are a large part of
Speaker 2: your salary. You knew that, but like you want to
Speaker 2: talk about giving Americans an instant pay raise, especially when
Speaker 2: you're starting out or you're living more paycheck to paycheck.
Speaker 2: This could have a catastrophic positive impact on our overall economy,
Speaker 2: especially for people in these jobs. I don't think people
Speaker 2: understand what a big differences can make.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's gonna make a big difference to a lot
Speaker 3: of people who need the relief. And I've had the
Speaker 3: same experience where people really see that. As President Trump
Speaker 3: and a Republican Congress delivering on our promises. You know,
Speaker 3: there are other elements in this bill. I got to
Speaker 3: tell you I'm particularly gratified because I had a lot
Speaker 3: of big victories that are included in this bill. So
Speaker 3: I mentioned no tax on tips. That's my legislation that's
Speaker 3: in there. We've talked before about spectrum wireless. Now, no, no,
Speaker 3: what does that mean? Every electronic device you have, your
Speaker 3: cell phone, Wi Fi, your laptops, streaming, satellite, everything operates
Speaker 3: over electromagnetic spectrum, and different bandwidths are assigned to different
Speaker 3: forms of communication. Of the most valuable spectrum, the midband spectrum,
Speaker 3: the federal government controls sixty percent of it. I wrote
Speaker 3: into this bill a mandate that the federal government must
Speaker 3: auction off to the private sector eight hundred megahertz of spectrum.
Speaker 3: Now what does that mean. That's going to do a
Speaker 3: couple of things. Number One, that's going to generate about
Speaker 3: one hundred billion dollars to the federal government. That's real
Speaker 3: money that goes to the taxpayers that can pay down
Speaker 3: our debt, pay down the lower the deficit. Those are
Speaker 3: real dollars that come into the federal government. But I'll
Speaker 3: tell you, Ben, that's not the biggest advantage. The biggest
Speaker 3: advantage is it is going to unleash billions of dollars
Speaker 3: of new investment and create hundreds of thousands of jobs
Speaker 3: because this is about winning the race for six G
Speaker 3: and beating China. And I got to tell you three
Speaker 3: months ago, nobody in Washington thought we would get spectrum
Speaker 3: auction in this bill. I wrote it. It's in there,
Speaker 3: and that is going to have a massive job creation impact.
Speaker 3: That's in this bill.
Speaker 2: You talk about. No one thought it was going to
Speaker 2: be in there. There was a lot of people lobbying
Speaker 2: trying to keep that out, and you stuck to your
Speaker 2: guns on this one.
Speaker 1: That's part of the I think the success story of
Speaker 1: this bill.
Speaker 3: It is. And I will tell you Ben, the two
Speaker 3: provisions that personally I care the most about that are
Speaker 3: in this bill that I think will be transformational our
Speaker 3: school choice and the Trump accounts. Both of those were
Speaker 3: my legislation that I wrote. And I told this story
Speaker 3: of the podcast. A little over a month ago. Senate
Speaker 3: Republicans we all went on a retreat and we were
Speaker 3: talking about the Reconciliation Bill and what we're going to do.
Speaker 3: And I stood up and I said to my colleagues,
Speaker 3: I said, listen, there are a lot of big and
Speaker 3: important things that we're doing in this bill, that we
Speaker 3: need to do in this bill, and I think that's good.
Speaker 3: And I think that's great. We auto at least pause
Speaker 3: and ask about legacy. Ask about what lasting difference we're
Speaker 3: going to make. Ask about in ten, twenty thirty years,
Speaker 3: what are people going to remember that is in this bill?
Speaker 3: And I made the case to my colleagues for two
Speaker 3: different provisions, neither one of which were in the bill
Speaker 3: at the time. Number one school choice and number two
Speaker 3: Trump accounts. Let's start with Trump accounts. Under this bill,
Speaker 3: the federal government will create a private investment account for
Speaker 3: every child in America, and it will seed that account
Speaker 3: with one thousand dollars for every newborn child in America.
Speaker 3: That money, then, parents and friends and family can invest
Speaker 3: every year in a tax advantage vehicle. That money is
Speaker 3: invested in the S and P. Five hundred to broad
Speaker 3: based equity. There are two massive advantages of this. Number one,
Speaker 3: every child in America is going to experience the incredible
Speaker 3: benefits of compound growth. What does that mean? Little girl
Speaker 3: is born, next year she's born, she has this private
Speaker 3: investment account open for her. It's seeded with one thousand dollars,
Speaker 3: and her parents or family or parents employers contribute five
Speaker 3: thousand a year every year. If you assume the historical
Speaker 3: rate of growth of the S and P five hundred,
Speaker 3: which is seven percent, by the time that little girl
Speaker 3: turns eighteen, she will have one hun one hundred and
Speaker 3: seventy thousand dollars in that account. And if she continues
Speaker 3: contributing five thousand a year, by the time she turns
Speaker 3: thirty five, she will have seven hundred thousand dollars in
Speaker 3: that account. That is massive. These are four oh one
Speaker 3: k's for kids, And think about how four oh one
Speaker 3: k's changed how we retire, how we say for retirement.
Speaker 3: This now gives the power of compound growth to every kid.
Speaker 3: But number two, this also will create a new generation
Speaker 3: of capitalist. Every child will be an owner, an owner
Speaker 3: of the largest employers in this country. That is a
Speaker 3: big deal. If you're tired of seeing all these kids
Speaker 3: that hate capitalism, that think socialism is a good idea,
Speaker 3: that think Mondami up in New York is boy, that
Speaker 3: sounds great. Let's elect a communists well. Having a new
Speaker 3: generation of capitalists who are owners and have skin in
Speaker 3: the game. I think in ten twenty thirty years, we're
Speaker 3: going to look back and say that change this country
Speaker 3: for the best. Are those Trump accounts. I wrote the legislation.
Speaker 3: It's in the bill, and it was a fight to
Speaker 3: get them in the bill, but we kept them in
Speaker 3: the bill.
Speaker 2: You know, you talk about financial literacy is how I
Speaker 2: was described it by a school teacher recently that said,
Speaker 2: I listened to you and the Senator show, and when
Speaker 2: you guys are talking about these savings accounts at birth
Speaker 2: and what this could do. They said, it also will
Speaker 2: allow us to then have curriculum. Yes, it will be
Speaker 2: for financial literacy, because we'll have something we can actually
Speaker 2: look at kids and say, this is what you have.
Speaker 2: We can show you your report, we can show you
Speaker 2: the power of comtown interest, we can show you what
Speaker 2: the tax savings look like. We can show you how
Speaker 2: to plan for your future. And then things like credit
Speaker 2: card debt and how to balance a checkbook and how
Speaker 2: to save and why you don't want to take out
Speaker 2: high interest loans become a reality and understandable to these
Speaker 2: kids because they can see what happens on the opposite
Speaker 2: of that when you are saving money and watching it grow.
Speaker 2: And to go back to the point you were making,
Speaker 2: this could fundamentally change an entire country number one, but
Speaker 2: also can change an entire generation. When you talk about
Speaker 2: generational wealth, which everybody wants for their kids.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, no, that's exactly right. And what you're talking
Speaker 3: about there is one of the real drivers of the
Speaker 3: wealth gap we have in America is that wealthy parents
Speaker 3: teach their kids how to invest, teach their kids how
Speaker 3: to save, teach them financial literacy, and that learning that
Speaker 3: perpetuates the wealth gap. And many low income parents don't
Speaker 3: themselves have a terribly high degree of financial literacy, so
Speaker 3: they don't teach their kids about it. They're not investors.
Speaker 3: A large percentage of Americans don't own a single stock
Speaker 3: or bond. You know, now, you're gonna end up in
Speaker 3: ten years, you're gonna have a ten year old boy
Speaker 3: who pulls out his phone and opens the app for
Speaker 3: his Trump account and sees how much money he's gotten.
Speaker 3: That count and it'll be broken down so it'll be
Speaker 3: the S and P five hundred, but he'll look and say, hey, wait,
Speaker 3: I own one hundred bucks of Apple. I own seventy
Speaker 3: five bucks of Boeing or fifty bucks of McDonald's. And
Speaker 3: that is a different thing when a ten year old
Speaker 3: says when he goes to McDonald's and orders a big mac,
Speaker 3: and he says, wait, I'm one of the owners of
Speaker 3: this company, and he gets to understand that, you know,
Speaker 3: a portion of those profits are accruing to his benefits
Speaker 3: because he's one of the owners of the company. That
Speaker 3: is transformational. And listen, rich kids accumulate capital all the time,
Speaker 3: but this is allowing low income kids, the kids of
Speaker 3: single moms who would never own a stock and bond otherwise,
Speaker 3: to begin accumulating earlier, and then a huge accelerator on this.
Speaker 3: So I'll tell you that the entire price tag of
Speaker 3: the bill was in the trillions, the price tag of
Speaker 3: this So they're three point seven million kids born on
Speaker 3: average in this country each year, a thousand bucks a
Speaker 3: year for that is three point seven billion dollars. So
Speaker 3: that's thirty seven billion dollars over ten years in the
Speaker 3: in the scope of this bill. That is a very
Speaker 3: small amount compared to the overall size of this bill.
Speaker 3: But that tiny amount is like priming a pump. Because
Speaker 3: one of the things we're going to see is we're
Speaker 3: going to see employers contributing to the accounts of the
Speaker 3: kids of their employees. Think about four oh one case
Speaker 3: when four Wait, that's.
Speaker 2: Not a theory. That's not a theory. I want to
Speaker 2: hold on. I want to be queer. That's not a
Speaker 2: theory you're talking about. This is a reality because you've
Speaker 2: actually talked with CEOs of companies who are saying they
Speaker 2: want to do this.
Speaker 3: So there is a CEO Council of Invest America and
Speaker 3: it's a bunch of major CEOs in this country who
Speaker 3: have said, if you create these Trump accounts, we will
Speaker 3: contribute to the accounts of the kids of our employees.
Speaker 3: We will match it. It's shared by Michael Dell. It's
Speaker 3: shared by a Texan. Michael is a good friend. Michael
Speaker 3: has committed that Dell is going to contribute to the
Speaker 3: counts of the kids of all their employees. And think
Speaker 3: about four oh one K. Look, four oh one K
Speaker 3: is just a provision in the tax code, and when
Speaker 3: it passed, it changed how America saves for retirement. There
Speaker 3: is right now today trillions of dollars invested in four
Speaker 3: oh one k's And without exaggeration, I think in twenty
Speaker 3: years we will see trillions of dollars invested in Trump accounts.
Speaker 3: That the multiplier effect there is really potent. And I
Speaker 3: think it will become an almost standard employee benefit, just
Speaker 3: like if you get a job at any big company,
Speaker 3: you're going to get a four oh one K contribution
Speaker 3: or match. I think this will be another standard employee benefit,
Speaker 3: and so it really unleashes savings early. That's a big deal.
Speaker 3: And then Ben, I want to talk about another provision
Speaker 3: that I.
Speaker 2: Was fighting, and by the way, I I yeah, I
Speaker 2: want to say one more thing about this real quick. Yes,
Speaker 2: just so people understand you when you talk about this.
Speaker 2: A great example of this. You know my three boys,
Speaker 2: and I'm made a deal with all of them. I said, Hey,
Speaker 2: whatever you say for your first car, I'm going to
Speaker 2: match it. If you want to drive a hooptee, you
Speaker 2: can drive a hooptee. If you want to drive a
Speaker 2: nicer car, I'll match whatever you say. But but you're
Speaker 2: going to.
Speaker 3: Have one exactly.
Speaker 1: And my Hooptie is my first car.
Speaker 2: When it's like a couple grand and you're and it
Speaker 2: barely makes it down the road.
Speaker 1: My first car was a Honda with one hundred eighty.
Speaker 2: Seven thousand miles it is with no conditioning, and I
Speaker 2: loved it.
Speaker 3: By the way, it is hooptie, like a Memphis word
Speaker 3: or something. I'm just I'm not sure that's English.
Speaker 2: It's I that's just that's the word that when I
Speaker 2: grew up in Memphis they called if you had a
Speaker 2: car that wasn't very nice, it was referred to as, oh,
Speaker 2: that's a nice hooptie.
Speaker 1: So what was your first car? Was a dialect that
Speaker 1: I grew up with, Honda Prelude, Prelude.
Speaker 2: It was nineteen nineteen eighty eight, one hundred and eighty
Speaker 2: seven thousand miles on it, and I could and I
Speaker 2: could afford it because it had a busted ace and
Speaker 2: it took the old R twelve, which was hard to
Speaker 2: find and more expensive.
Speaker 1: I remember this like it was yesterday. And I bought that.
Speaker 2: Car for twenty six hundred dollars and I was and
Speaker 2: I loved it, by the way, very proud of that car.
Speaker 1: But the point was to and by the way, my
Speaker 1: first car said look, you're gonna have ownership in this.
Speaker 1: What was it?
Speaker 3: My first car was a nineteen seventy eight Ford Fairmont,
Speaker 3: which which we called the Green Bomb, and it was
Speaker 3: actually my grandfather's car. And when I turned sixteen, my
Speaker 3: grandfather gave it to me. Ha he and he was
Speaker 3: kind of a gruff old irishman and he said, boy,
Speaker 3: stick your hands out. So I stuck my hands out
Speaker 3: and he put a car key in each hand, said
Speaker 3: happy birthday, and it was you know, they'd had it
Speaker 3: for eight years, so it was their car. And we
Speaker 3: called at the Green Bomb and I drove all my
Speaker 3: buddies in high school and we got to do a
Speaker 3: lot of trouble in that car.
Speaker 1: That's amazing.
Speaker 2: Well, I said to my son, I said, look, you
Speaker 2: can spend money on frivolous things and you'll have instant gratification.
Speaker 2: I said, Or you can save your money and I'll
Speaker 2: help you invest it in stocks. Well, my son now
Speaker 2: owns Lockheed Martin, not much of it, but he owned
Speaker 2: some of it. He owns Ford because he thought that
Speaker 2: was a good stock that had been around. And now
Speaker 2: every day when he comes home from school in the summer,
Speaker 2: he's like, hey, how did my stocks do today?
Speaker 1: And it's changed his mentality.
Speaker 2: As we're on family vacation, I told all the kids,
Speaker 2: I said, hey, you can get one cool thing while
Speaker 2: you're here, whatever you want to be, here's the price range.
Speaker 2: And literally two of my three boys are the same
Speaker 2: thing to me today. Hey, if I don't buy anything,
Speaker 2: can I put the money in stocks and save it
Speaker 2: for my car?
Speaker 1: When you have those conversations with a six year.
Speaker 2: Old and an eight year old, that you realize that
Speaker 2: now money is making sense to them. That's why I'm
Speaker 2: so excited about this legislation. I hope people thirty forty,
Speaker 2: fifty sixty years from now, when we're both gone, go
Speaker 2: back and they say, you know what, when Ted Kruz
Speaker 2: did this and got this in there, it changed people's
Speaker 2: lives for the better. So I want to say, sincerely,
Speaker 2: congratulations on making sure that's made it in there, because
Speaker 2: it's huge. Because that's not the only thing that was
Speaker 2: transformative in this bill. Something you've been champing now, I
Speaker 2: would say it's part of the legacy of your career
Speaker 2: is school choice. And there's some big stuff in this
Speaker 2: bill also on school choice.
Speaker 3: So school choice has been my passion for thirty years.
Speaker 3: I've been very active of the school choice movement. In
Speaker 3: twenty seventeen, when we did the first Trump tax cut,
Speaker 3: I authored the legislation that expanded college five twenty nine
Speaker 3: savings plans, so now parents can save for K through
Speaker 3: twelve education. We got that through. It passed, and it
Speaker 3: was at the time the most far reaching federal school
Speaker 3: choice legislation that had ever passed. And there are millions
Speaker 3: of kids now whose parents save for K through twelve
Speaker 3: education using five twenty nines. This time around, I took
Speaker 3: five twenty nine and I expanded them. I expanded what
Speaker 3: you can spend them for, and I raised the cap.
Speaker 3: It used to be you could spend ten thousand a
Speaker 3: year from the account. Now you can spend twenty thousand
Speaker 3: a year. But that actually is the smallest piece on
Speaker 3: school te that would be huge in any other year.
Speaker 3: But what we got in this year is the federal
Speaker 3: government will now grant a federal tax credit dollar for
Speaker 3: dollar for every taxpayer up to seventeen hundred dollars. So,
Speaker 3: ben you pay taxes every year you pay more than
Speaker 3: seventeen hundred dollars in taxes when this goes into effect,
Speaker 3: if you write a seven yes, so if you write
Speaker 3: a seventeen hundred dollars check to a scholarship granting organization
Speaker 3: in Texas, you will get a seventeen hundred dollars credit
Speaker 3: on your taxes. In other words, it's dollar for dollar,
Speaker 3: it disappears from your tax liability. What this will do
Speaker 3: is this is going to unleash billions and billions of
Speaker 3: dollars of new scholarships for K through twelve education in
Speaker 3: the states. And the way it operates, every state has
Speaker 3: to choose to opt in, so Texas will opt in.
Speaker 3: I suspect a number of Blue states will not opt
Speaker 3: in because the teachers' unions will not want them to.
Speaker 3: They will not want scholarships for kids to be able
Speaker 3: to go to the school of their choice. And the
Speaker 3: way we wrote the rule, the state, the law, the
Speaker 3: state has to opt in. But Texas will have scholarship
Speaker 3: granting organizations and any taxpayer can write a check up
Speaker 3: to seventeen hundred dollars a year and get a full
Speaker 3: tax credit on their irs what they owe. That is
Speaker 3: going to result in millions of kids across America, many
Speaker 3: of whom are stuck in failing schools. Schools they're not
Speaker 3: learning to read, they're not learning to write, Schools where
Speaker 3: there's violence there drug dealers, Schools where their future is
Speaker 3: really in peril, and they're suddenly going to have the
Speaker 3: ability to get a scholarship, to go to the school
Speaker 3: of their choice, to get a real education, to get
Speaker 3: a better education, to be safe, to not be subject
Speaker 3: to violence. This is I think school choice is the
Speaker 3: civil rights issue of the twenty four century. This has
Speaker 3: never happened before. And I gotta tell you, I fought
Speaker 3: tooth and nail. This almost got stripped out of the
Speaker 3: bill about five different times. And I made clear I'll
Speaker 3: shut this whole bill down if we don't get school
Speaker 3: choice in there. And and and this is I could
Speaker 3: not be more excited about about any provision in this
Speaker 3: bill than the impact school choice is gonna have for
Speaker 3: for the next next generation.
Speaker 2: So on these two issues, school choice and also the
Speaker 2: savings accounts, when does that start to become a reality timeline?
Speaker 2: There's there's a lot of people that say, hey, we
Speaker 2: pass bills and then things that were supposed to happen
Speaker 2: don't happen. They get undone because there's a new present
Speaker 2: that comes in, or you see a Senate flip or
Speaker 2: the House flip, whatever it may be. So so how
Speaker 2: sure are we that we are going to see the
Speaker 2: fruits of this fight and this labor.
Speaker 3: Yeah, these are both gonna happen, and they're both gonna
Speaker 3: happen in the next year. For the Trump accounts, I
Speaker 3: wrote into an effective date of one year from the signing,
Speaker 3: So if it's signed on July fourth, these will start
Speaker 3: on July fourth, twenty twenty six, our nation's two hundred
Speaker 3: and fiftieth anniversary. And I think that's something particularly fantastic.
Speaker 3: I'm quite confident President Trump will make a big deal
Speaker 3: about the facts that these accounts are being opened on
Speaker 3: our nation's birthday, or if it ends up being signed
Speaker 3: at a slightly different date somewhere honor about our nation's birthday,
Speaker 3: a great celebration. Same thing. The tax deductions are going
Speaker 3: to start, I believe next year on the on the
Speaker 3: school choice tax deductions. So these will happen. They will
Speaker 3: happen quickly. Now one question people are asking, what happens next.
Speaker 3: The Senate passed this, what happens next, Well, we sent
Speaker 3: the whole bill to the House. They have two choices
Speaker 3: number one, so they're coming back in in session. They
Speaker 3: can take it up and pass it. And if they
Speaker 3: pass the bill that we just passed, it will go
Speaker 3: to the President and he can sign it, and he
Speaker 3: said he wants to sign it on July fourth of
Speaker 3: this year. So if the House passes what the Senate passed,
Speaker 3: that'll be the end of the process and the President
Speaker 3: will sign it. The second thing they can do is
Speaker 3: they can say, Okay, we passed a bill, the Senate
Speaker 3: passed a different bill. We need to work out the
Speaker 3: differences between them, and that's called going to conference, and
Speaker 3: the House could insist we go to conference. I don't
Speaker 3: know which one they're going to do. There are some
Speaker 3: real differences in the Senate right now there or in
Speaker 3: the House right now, they're having fights. There's some aspects
Speaker 3: of the Senate bill that are really good, there's some
Speaker 3: aspects of the Senate bill that are not great, and
Speaker 3: so it's going to be a question of what can
Speaker 3: get two hundred and eighteen votes in the House. I
Speaker 3: know the Speaker wants if he can to take up
Speaker 3: and pass the Senate bill and just send it to
Speaker 3: the President. That's what the President wants also, so that
Speaker 3: may happen. If that doesn't happen, then we'll go to conference.
Speaker 3: And I think conference would take the month of July
Speaker 3: for us to work out the differences, and my guess
Speaker 3: is we would pass the final bill at the end
Speaker 3: of July, right before August.
Speaker 2: So this is one of those big moments that I
Speaker 2: think we should all enjoy.
Speaker 1: Elections have consequences.
Speaker 2: This time it was for conservative values and for kids
Speaker 2: to have a better future in education or savings accounts,
Speaker 2: and for tax cuts so that Americans that work hard
Speaker 2: can keep more of their own money. On a scout
Speaker 2: of one to ten, and nothing's perfect, how proud of
Speaker 2: you or of you are you with this bill? There's
Speaker 2: a lot of people that are saying, well, there's this,
Speaker 2: or's that, or does this look? Yeah, there was some compromises,
Speaker 2: no doubt that had to be made. You got a tight,
Speaker 2: you know, a very very slim majority that you're dealing
Speaker 2: with here. But overall, how happy are you with what
Speaker 2: the American people are now getting?
Speaker 3: I think there are many very very good things in
Speaker 3: this bill. I wish we cut spending significantly more. I
Speaker 3: was fighting hard to cut spending significantly more. I went
Speaker 3: to President to Trump with three trillion dollars of spending
Speaker 3: cuts we could do. I was urging my colleagues. I
Speaker 3: prevailed in some of those arguments, but not all of them.
Speaker 3: I wish we'd shown more fiscal restraint. That would have
Speaker 3: made me much happier. Look at six am on Tuesday,
Speaker 3: we were near the end of the amendments, and the
Speaker 3: question was could we get to fifty Republicans. They're fifty
Speaker 3: three in the Senate now. Susan Collins was a no.
Speaker 3: She is the most liberal of the Republicans. She did
Speaker 3: not like some of the reforms on Medicaid. The Democrats
Speaker 3: and the press are saying we slashed medicaid. That is
Speaker 3: a lie. We actually are spending more un medicaid every
Speaker 3: single year. What we did was slightly decrease the rate
Speaker 3: of growth of Medicaid in the future, and in particular,
Speaker 3: we increased efforts to fight waste, fraud, and abuse and
Speaker 3: to remove people from the Medicaid roles who don't qualify.
Speaker 3: And we also put in place a work requirement, which
Speaker 3: is really important and I think actually benefits people. If
Speaker 3: you look at the history of work requirements for federal
Speaker 3: welfare benefits, it ends up helping the recipients by getting
Speaker 3: them back into the workforce, which is ultimately much better
Speaker 3: for them in their families. So so, but anyway, Susan
Speaker 3: Collins did not like the reductions in spending on that side,
Speaker 3: so she voted no. Tom Tillis, a Republican from from
Speaker 3: North Carolina, also did not like the Medicaid changes and
Speaker 3: so he voted no. And so with fifty three Republicans,
Speaker 3: we could only lose three. The two other votes that
Speaker 3: were in play were Lisa Murkowski and Rand Paul and
Speaker 3: they were both between six am and noon. Nobody knew
Speaker 3: which one which one we would get if either, But
Speaker 3: if we didn't get one of them, this bill was
Speaker 3: going down because if four senators voted against it, four Republicans,
Speaker 3: we were at forty nine and it failed. So the
Speaker 3: consequence of which road we went down was really consequential
Speaker 3: because Lisa, after Susan, is the most liberal, demoderate Republican
Speaker 3: in the conference, and so Lisa was bargaining for a
Speaker 3: bunch more spending. She wanted a ton of spending, particularly
Speaker 3: at Alaska, and that was the price of her vote,
Speaker 3: and she was going back and forth. Rand on the
Speaker 3: other hand, Rand was always going to be no, always
Speaker 3: going to be a no. And Rand said at the
Speaker 3: end he would be a yes if the debt ceiling
Speaker 3: was not extended. We extend the debt ceiling throughout President
Speaker 3: Trump's term in this bill. That was a very high
Speaker 3: priority for President Trump. Rand said he would vote yes
Speaker 3: if we shortened the extension of the debt ceiling to
Speaker 3: September thirtieth. So we just did a couple of months
Speaker 3: of the debt ceiling. Now, the consequence of that would
Speaker 3: mean we'd have to come back in September thirtieth and
Speaker 3: address the debt ceiling again, and that would mean we'd
Speaker 3: probably have to negotiate with the Democrats and make a
Speaker 3: lousy deal with with Chuck Schumer. But between six am
Speaker 3: and noon, none of us knew which direction they were
Speaker 3: going to go. Were they going to go the direction
Speaker 3: of Lisa Rakowski or were they going to go the
Speaker 3: direction of Rand Paul. At the end of the day,
Speaker 3: Lisa is the one who got to yes. But it
Speaker 3: was literally up till the moment she cast her vote,
Speaker 3: we didn't know for sure. And she ended up She
Speaker 3: ended up increasing the Rural Hospital Fund by fifty billion dollars.
Speaker 3: She ended up dropping the Medicaid penalty for states that
Speaker 3: that that that are giving medicaid to illegal immigrants. She
Speaker 3: ended up delaying the work requirements for food stamps for Alaska,
Speaker 3: and the cost of that was billions and billions of dollars. Interestingly,
Speaker 3: if Rand had said yes instead of Lisa, we would
Speaker 3: have ended up spending much less. But the consequence of
Speaker 3: Rand being a no is that it drove It made
Speaker 3: Lisa the swing vote, and the price of her vote
Speaker 3: was billions and probably hundreds of billions more in spending
Speaker 3: and and so you know, I mean that that's where
Speaker 3: votes have consequences.
Speaker 2: Incredible, Well, it certainly is interesting to see your take
Speaker 2: on this. I'm glad that we were able to do
Speaker 2: the show. You deserve to get some sleep now that
Speaker 2: it's uh after midnight Eastern and uh and after the
Speaker 2: vote rama. But I I'm glad that we were able
Speaker 2: to unpack all of this for everyone because a lot
Speaker 2: of people have the same question, how did this happen?
Speaker 2: What did we get that was good? Are there things
Speaker 2: that we got taken advantage of? Is this gonna help
Speaker 2: the country when it's gonna hurt it? I think think
Speaker 2: we answered a lot of those questions. So don't forget
Speaker 2: download Verdict with tech Cruz wherever you get your podcasts
Speaker 2: to do this three days a week also my podcast
Speaker 2: as well, the Ben Ferguson Podcasts. You can also listen
Speaker 2: to that each and every day as well, and the
Speaker 2: Sin and I will see you back here in a
Speaker 2: couple of days