Speaker 1: Call Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome Dick it appened here a podcast that is now
Speaker 2: more than ever about the world crumbling and what you
Speaker 2: can do about it. I am your host Bio Wong
Speaker 2: and with me as Karison Davis.
Speaker 3: Hello, Happy big, beautiful Bill Day. So today we are
Speaker 3: here to.
Speaker 2: Talk about the Genocide Budget. I am calling it the
Speaker 2: genocide budget because that is what this budget is designed
Speaker 2: to do. It is designed to create the apparatus that
Speaker 2: will allow the Republican Party to carry out mass deportations
Speaker 2: on a scale that be unlike anything else in American history.
Speaker 2: But Comma, and I want to be very clear about this.
Speaker 2: There has been a lot of talk about the new budgets,
Speaker 2: deportation procedures and the funding of it, and it's important
Speaker 2: to note a few things. From the get go right,
Speaker 2: you have been hearing a lot of numbers, and I
Speaker 2: have been saying this too, because it's true with the
Speaker 2: total amount of funding for order provisions is one hundred
Speaker 2: and seventy billion dollars, which is larger, like a third
Speaker 2: larger than the military budget of Russia. This is true, However,
Speaker 2: com that money is not all going to one agency.
Speaker 2: I see a lot of people who think that all
Speaker 2: of that money is going to ICE. That is not true.
Speaker 2: It is dispersed along a bunch of different kinds of things.
Speaker 2: I'm going to do a little bit of a breakdown
Speaker 2: of where that money is going, because it's not all
Speaker 2: just going to like here's the deportation thing. I'm again
Speaker 2: going to be relying on the American Immigration Council's figures
Speaker 2: because they are very good. So of this one hundred
Speaker 2: and seventy billion, about fifty one billion, almost fifty two
Speaker 2: billion is going to quote, construction and maintenance of border walls,
Speaker 2: CPD checkpoints, and CPB facilities. About seven point eight billion
Speaker 2: is going to This is the part that is one
Speaker 2: of the parts that's really fucking scary, is going towards
Speaker 2: hiring more border patrol agents and doing like training for
Speaker 2: law enforcements and doing training center improvements. There's about forty
Speaker 2: five billion that's going into making more attention centers and
Speaker 2: putting more beds in attention centers. That's fucking terrifying. There
Speaker 2: is about thirty billion going into hiring ICE agents, and
Speaker 2: that's just like directly, this is the part that's removing people,
Speaker 2: hiring ICE agents deporting people. There's about a billion for
Speaker 2: the Department of Defense to like help with all of this.
Speaker 2: There's thirteen and a half billion for state immigration and
Speaker 2: border enforcements like cost fu imbursement stuff, so state programs
Speaker 2: can can do things, and there's money for the federal
Speaker 2: government to reimburse the states for doing their own programs,
Speaker 2: a lot of which will be used. But this is
Speaker 2: not all going to one department. A lot of it's
Speaker 2: going to a bunch of different places, and a lot
Speaker 2: of it's going towards border wall construction, which is very bad,
Speaker 2: but it's also like a third of well it's like
Speaker 2: a quarter roughly of the budget is going to that.
Speaker 2: It's also worth noting that these numbers are all over
Speaker 2: the course of a decade, right. This stuff doesn't just
Speaker 2: like instantly appear. They have to build all of that
Speaker 2: apparatus up, and that means they can be stopped now, right,
Speaker 2: because it's going to take a fucking decade for them
Speaker 2: to get all of this up and running. And that means,
Speaker 2: on the one hand, the longer we wait to resist
Speaker 2: them and to basically neutralize ices and Border Patrol's capacity
Speaker 2: to do this stuff, the worse it gets. But also
Speaker 2: they have to be in power for a fucking decade
Speaker 2: for all of this shit to kick in, and if
Speaker 2: they're still in power in a decade, we have quite
Speaker 2: frankly larger problems here. So that's just the initial stuff
Speaker 2: that I want to I want to make sure people
Speaker 2: understand about this, because there's a lot of not good
Speaker 2: reporting happening about it that doesn't break the stuff down.
Speaker 2: So the downside, again, as I said, one hundred and
Speaker 2: seventy billion dollars just directly to the deportation engine in
Speaker 2: various forms and to the border wall. ICE's total tension
Speaker 2: budget goes too, and this is again from the American
Speaker 2: Immigration Council. ICE's total detention budget goes at minimum to
Speaker 2: fourteen billion a year. This is and I this amount
Speaker 2: would represent a three hundred and eight percent increase on
Speaker 2: an annual basis over ICE's twenty twenty four detention budget.
Speaker 2: By comparison, the entire Federal Bureau of Prisons budget was
Speaker 2: eight point six billion. So they're trying to do a
Speaker 2: yearly detention budget that is significantly larger than the entire
Speaker 2: detension budget of the federal prison system.
Speaker 3: I mean, they're just creating a whole separate prison system. Yeah,
Speaker 3: a lot of the extra funding for DHS is essentially
Speaker 3: creating a second army that is allowed to operate on
Speaker 3: domestic soil with way less strings attached.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep.
Speaker 3: And that's like the primary ten year plan. You can
Speaker 3: see what they tried to do in Los Angeles and
Speaker 3: what they did do in Los Angeles like a few
Speaker 3: weeks ago. They're gonna want to do that everywhere, but
Speaker 3: with their own DHS military, with their own DHS prisons
Speaker 3: completely siloed away from the rest of the government.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: And there's also and this is something that goes for
Speaker 2: most of this bill, there is very very little straints
Speaker 2: on how this money can be spent. These groups have
Speaker 2: a lot of latitude on it now. It is also
Speaker 2: worth noting a lot of this is going to be
Speaker 2: spent on absolutely just incredibly stupid bullshit, Like they're going
Speaker 2: to spend a bunch of money on border wall shit
Speaker 2: that's going to go to a bunch of like contract grifts.
Speaker 2: They're going to spend like an unbelievable portion of this
Speaker 2: money somehow is going to go to like extremely stupid
Speaker 2: AI startups. But yeah, it's very, very fucking bad. There
Speaker 2: is also again a lot of money for state and
Speaker 2: local governments to spend working with ICE. They estimate that
Speaker 2: this could lead to one hundred and twenty five thousand
Speaker 2: beds for holding people, which is again only slightly less
Speaker 2: than the entire federal prison system. So yeah, they want
Speaker 2: to make a second prison system specifically to do these
Speaker 2: these fucking this deportation like ethnic cleansing, genocide, and just
Speaker 2: directly under the control of Stephen Miller, like Stephen Miller
Speaker 2: gets his own military and his own prisons. And Trump
Speaker 2: is on the record saying that Stephen Miller, if Stephen
Speaker 2: Miller had his way, they would be hundred million people
Speaker 2: in the US and they would all look like Stephen Miller, right,
Speaker 2: Like they want to get rid of like every non
Speaker 2: white person in the US. That is like the end
Speaker 2: goal of someone like Steven Miller. Billions must ball. But
Speaker 2: the exception, and this is also something that's worth noting,
Speaker 2: is that recently Trump has been talking about like this
Speaker 2: like system where you'd have farm workers who were like
Speaker 2: quote unquote the responsibility of the farm owners. So they're
Speaker 2: talking about slavery, right, And people like Curtis Jarvin are
Speaker 2: like very explicitly being like h I wonder if there's
Speaker 2: another domestic population that could do ag your cultural labor.
Speaker 2: So like, yeah, they want the non white population in
Speaker 2: the US to do slavery, right, This is just explicitly
Speaker 2: what they're talking about. Also, they want to hire ten
Speaker 2: thousand more iceations. But it's also worth noting, and I
Speaker 2: think this is very important. Even ten thousand more ICE
Speaker 2: agents is not enough to do the thing they're trying
Speaker 2: to do. Like, it's just not right. There's three hundred
Speaker 2: million people in this country, like threefty million people in scody,
Speaker 2: Like ten thousand more iations can't do this, right, and
Speaker 2: they especially can't do this if they're being resisted at
Speaker 2: every turn. And you can look at what they've been
Speaker 2: forced to do in la and how they've been forced
Speaker 2: to change tactics as a sign of this, right, where
Speaker 2: like at the very beginning, they were rolling up with
Speaker 2: like these giant like fucking convoys and like everyone's in
Speaker 2: fucking like but like a bunch of guys carrying rifles,
Speaker 2: and they were doing these giant raids and they had
Speaker 2: to stop because when they were assembling on mass in places,
Speaker 2: people would just fucking show up and throw shit at them.
Speaker 2: And so they had to stop doing that because it
Speaker 2: was it was it was hindering their ability to do
Speaker 2: this shit. And this is a mirror, interestingly, of what's
Speaker 2: of what's been happening to protesters right where like protesters
Speaker 2: also have been in in LA have not been just
Speaker 2: gathering in one spot because then like the force of
Speaker 2: the police can just come down and hammer you. We've
Speaker 2: done the same thing to Ice, Like they can't do
Speaker 2: these like giant gatherings in one place because like the
Speaker 2: community will descend on them. So what they've been forced
Speaker 2: to do is, like you know, they've become incredibly mobile.
Speaker 2: Theyir deployed and just like a parking lot for a
Speaker 2: small amount of time, doing hidden run strikes on civilians.
Speaker 2: And this is also partially why they're not in uniform,
Speaker 2: because if they show up in uniform, like everyone can
Speaker 2: just immediately fucking show up and fight them. Right. And
Speaker 2: so this is something that I don't think is understood
Speaker 2: very well, which is that their tactics have been forced
Speaker 2: to evolve based on what we're doing to them, and
Speaker 2: even the increases in budget they're doing. Yeah, the attention
Speaker 2: facility stuff is extremely bad. Even with ten thousand more agents,
Speaker 2: they don't have enough people to like fundamentally change the
Speaker 2: numbers game here. Right, this is all very bad. It
Speaker 2: is just straight up evil. It is like hideously destructive
Speaker 2: and painful. That is the point of this is to
Speaker 2: be hideously destructive and painful. But every single day, every
Speaker 2: single day, in places like Los Angeles, there are a
Speaker 2: bunch of ordinary people who every time fucking eye shows up,
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of like messages go out and people
Speaker 2: start putting up fucking wheat posts of shit on telephone poles,
Speaker 2: and suddenly a bunch of people show up to try
Speaker 2: to resist these people. And if we keep doing that,
Speaker 2: and if we intensify that, that none of the worst
Speaker 2: case scenario shit from this budget has to happen. I
Speaker 2: want to make that very clear before we go to break.
Speaker 2: I want to get through a little bit more of
Speaker 2: the just like straight cruelty stuff, because there's just stuff
Speaker 2: in here that's just like they just hate immigrants, like
Speaker 2: they want everyone to suffer, and they also want you
Speaker 2: to just suffer in bureaucratic hell. So one of the
Speaker 2: things that they're doing is they're setting a cap. This
Speaker 2: this bill sets a cap on the number of immigration
Speaker 2: judges in the country at eight hundred, So there's only
Speaker 2: seven hundred right now. Right seven hundred immigration judges is
Speaker 2: not enough immigration judges to process everyone. They want people
Speaker 2: to go on process, and they want to be able
Speaker 2: to just fucking grab those people and kick them out.
Speaker 2: They want people stuck in this process forever. They are
Speaker 2: trying to create a backlog. They are also massively increasing
Speaker 2: the application fees for every single stage of the immigration process.
Speaker 2: AIC calculates it would quote result in at least fifteen
Speaker 2: hundred dollars in filing fees during the five year weight
Speaker 2: And like, these people have no fucking money, right, Like,
Speaker 2: that's why they're coming here. And we talked about this,
Speaker 2: James talked about the Nadarian series. Most of these people
Speaker 2: have used all of their money just getting to the
Speaker 2: US because it's incredibly expensive and dangerous, and these policies
Speaker 2: don't generate a significant amount of revenue. It's just inflicting
Speaker 2: hardship and suffering on people who want to live in
Speaker 2: this place. Yeah, do you know who else wants to
Speaker 2: live in this place?
Speaker 3: I don't like that.
Speaker 2: I couldn't come up with the transition there. It's too bleak.
Speaker 2: I don't know products and services go. We are back
Speaker 2: speaking of things being terrible. Let's talk Medicaid. So Medicaid
Speaker 2: is getting a trillion dollars of cuts over the next
Speaker 2: ten years. They are imposing an eighty hour a month
Speaker 2: work requirement from Medicaid in food stamps. This is going
Speaker 2: to kick off unbelievable numbers of people. The Congressional Budget
Speaker 2: Office estimates in the next nine years it will kick
Speaker 2: off eighteen point three million people. This is particularly devastating
Speaker 2: to people with disabilities because again there are lots of
Speaker 2: people who can't work that number of hours, and again
Speaker 2: it's devastating people who can't find jobs is a fucking horrific,
Speaker 2: horrific thing. This is also particularly bad for trans people
Speaker 2: because that work requirement is also now applied to food stamps.
Speaker 2: So like, if you just fucking can't find a job,
Speaker 2: like fucking eat shit, they're kicking you off of Medicaid
Speaker 2: and food stamps. They're estimating about three million people get
Speaker 2: kicked off of SNAP. And again, trans people use Medicaid
Speaker 2: and SNAP at enormous rates, significantly higher form the general
Speaker 2: population because our poverty rates are much much higher. And
Speaker 2: this is something we talked about in the last executive disorder.
Speaker 2: But like, this is going to just destroy vast swaths
Speaker 2: of the Royal hospital system because again, one in four
Speaker 2: people in rural areas get their healthcare paid for by Medicaid.
Speaker 2: Kaiser Family Foundation is estimating that it's going to be
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty five billion dollars decrease in rural
Speaker 2: regions over the next decade. These hospitals have already been closing.
Speaker 2: My estimates on this is I think it's actually the
Speaker 2: actual damage to healthcare in these communities is going to
Speaker 2: be significantly worse than what's being projected right now because
Speaker 2: hospital margins are absolutely terrible and they're just built to
Speaker 2: be increasingly more profit extractive. You know, this is creating
Speaker 2: a system where if you are rich and in urban areas,
Speaker 2: you can get health care, but if you're fucking poor
Speaker 2: in urban areas, eat shit. And if you're in rural
Speaker 2: areas and you don't have the money to like fucking
Speaker 2: take a private jet or some shit, or you can't
Speaker 2: pay for like verys private medical care, they're leaving you
Speaker 2: to die. This is going to just absolutely devastate the
Speaker 2: rural economy. And also that's not even the only sort
Speaker 2: of like devastation healthcare thing. Center for American Progress wrote
Speaker 2: a good article about this. This bill also is very
Speaker 2: very laser targeted at defunding Planned Parenthood. It has a
Speaker 2: ban on using Medicaid at any clinic that provides abortions,
Speaker 2: so that money already can't go to abortions, right, that's
Speaker 2: the High Amendment. It fucking sucks, we hate it. It's terrible.
Speaker 2: But this is just a ban on any clinic that
Speaker 2: provides abortions taking Medicaid, which is just like, you know,
Speaker 2: just annihilates Planned Parenthood. It makes it really really fucking
Speaker 2: hard to do abortions. Planned Parenthood is estimating that they're
Speaker 2: going to have to close two hundred clinics, largely in
Speaker 2: blue states, in urban areas there are a lot of people.
Speaker 2: And this is also again trans people who get their
Speaker 2: coverage from Plant Parenthood. It's really really, really fucking bad.
Speaker 2: And it's yeah, I mean that Plant Parenthood is calling
Speaker 2: it like a crypto abortion ban, which it kind of
Speaker 2: is in a lot of ways, because they're just going
Speaker 2: after the ability to actually like fund.
Speaker 3: Clinics, runa function in clinic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is again, you know, like the strategies
Speaker 2: they use against trans healthcare, the strategies they use against
Speaker 2: abortion care. Yeah, and so you know, we're seeing all
Speaker 2: of these things combined together as like this budget bill
Speaker 2: and like a lot of what this budget bill is.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's obviously always policy shit in budget bills,
Speaker 2: but this is a budget bill full of just shit
Speaker 2: that like could never get passed normally, like would just
Speaker 2: impossible to pass through Congress. But they're just sort of
Speaker 2: like ramming through these a bunch of like hideously unpopular
Speaker 2: procedures like in this in this fucking bill, because it's reconciliation.
Speaker 2: You can't fill a buster it. They're just like putting
Speaker 2: all of this shit in. They've also eliminated programs that
Speaker 2: made it easier to enroll in medicaid because they want
Speaker 2: you to be stuck in bureaucracy forever, both on just
Speaker 2: the level of like if you're stuck in bureaucracy forever,
Speaker 2: you can't actually access medicaid, and then also the more
Speaker 2: stuck in bureaucracy you are, the easier it is to
Speaker 2: sell these like conservative like anti bureaucracy budget cut things.
Speaker 2: So it's this like spiraling thing of like everyone in
Speaker 2: the world is increasingly trapped in these bureaucratic hellholes trying
Speaker 2: to get literally anything out of the state, which is
Speaker 2: that and the only critique of this is from the right,
Speaker 2: And because the only critique of this is from the right,
Speaker 2: they use it to build their power while making everyone
Speaker 2: else's fucking lives miserable. There's also a provision in this
Speaker 2: that says that if you make the federal poverty line
Speaker 2: to one hundred and thirty eight percent of the federal
Speaker 2: poverty line, so that's like fifteen thousand, six hundred a
Speaker 2: year of fifteen thousand and six fifty a year to
Speaker 2: like eighteen thousands for a single person, there's like a
Speaker 2: mandatory copay increase for each time you'd like visit a doctor,
Speaker 2: like up to thirty five dollars, which is fucking hideous
Speaker 2: because like again, the people on Medicaid, like in a
Speaker 2: lot of places, it's been possible to use Medicaid without
Speaker 2: paying any money for a visit, right, and that makes
Speaker 2: people go to the doctor. But if you have to
Speaker 2: pay any money, because the people who are this fucking poor,
Speaker 2: like you don't have thirty five dollars like fucking laying
Speaker 2: around to go to the hospital, you fucking defer, and
Speaker 2: you defer, you defer, and you defer in your healthcare
Speaker 2: until it becomes until you hit something that either kills
Speaker 2: you or is so devastating you have to go to
Speaker 2: the hospital. And that's the situation that the GOP wants here, Like,
Speaker 2: these cuts are not about saving money, they're about just
Speaker 2: inflicting incredible cruelty on people. And yeah, this is just
Speaker 2: another absolutely devastating sort of outcome of this bill. So
Speaker 2: there's also a whole bunch of rollbacks of like all
Speaker 2: of the existing climate policy we've had, which has never
Speaker 2: been like super good but was like something. But they've
Speaker 2: eliminated the tax credit for electric cars. There's now tax
Speaker 2: credits for like auto loans and shit in very like
Speaker 2: you can like write off auto loans in very weird ways.
Speaker 2: Wait are you serious to some extent, Yeah, it's fucking weird.
Speaker 3: Finally, finally I'm gonna get that Mazda Miata. It's finally happening. Oh,
Speaker 3: thank goodness, thank you, thank you Trump, Sorry Elon, thank
Speaker 3: you you Trump.
Speaker 2: It's interesting because there's like one or two things that
Speaker 2: are like kind of okay, like okay, But my favorite
Speaker 2: one is one of the things they gets a lot
Speaker 2: of press is is like, oh, there's no taxes on tips,
Speaker 2: but that's only a temporary.
Speaker 3: Thing that goes for like the next what four years.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, but then it just expires. Yeah, so it's
Speaker 2: just like literally a payoff.
Speaker 3: You know based Actually, I think tips should be tax
Speaker 3: low key.
Speaker 2: Yeah wow wow petit bourgeois garrison.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So one of the provisions of this is that
Speaker 2: like the Medicaid cuts like only go into effect in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty seven.
Speaker 3: Which is very curious because if you think about it,
Speaker 3: so much of this bill is just trying to like
Speaker 3: midterms proof the GOP m hm. So as soon as
Speaker 3: the midterms happen, and they expect the Democrats to do
Speaker 3: very well despite the broken state of the Democratic Party currently,
Speaker 3: but that's that's probably still what they're forecasting. But this
Speaker 3: bill is built so that the Medicaid cuts only go
Speaker 3: into effect after the mid yep, yep, yep. They're trying
Speaker 3: to make sure it won't hurt them during mid terms.
Speaker 3: But also if Democrats do take power, then they can
Speaker 3: use the fact that medicaid is doing really bad to
Speaker 3: help Republicans in the next general which is insane because
Speaker 3: they're the ones that ruined Medicaid. So there's a lot
Speaker 3: of stuff like that in the bill where they're trying
Speaker 3: to make certain things go into effect specifically to help
Speaker 3: them in future elections and hurt Democrats in future elections,
Speaker 3: including the tax on tips thing. Yep. I will say
Speaker 3: it does give us a little bit of room to maneuver. Yeah,
Speaker 3: because this entire bill is a threat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and they have to actualize it.
Speaker 3: And unless they follow through on the threat, then that's
Speaker 3: all it is. So people have to keep challenging them
Speaker 3: on this and defaying their ability to implement this. And
Speaker 3: we do have a year and a half to nullify
Speaker 3: at least some of the worst aspects of this bill,
Speaker 3: and that includes strengthening local healthcare systems, food stamps, but
Speaker 3: also continuing to mobilize popular resistance to ice and border patrol.
Speaker 3: We cannot afford to surrender here.
Speaker 2: No, no, And you know, back at the beginning of
Speaker 2: the administration, the phrase I was using could talk about
Speaker 2: what this is going to do. I think we were
Speaker 2: all sort of using this was like the state is
Speaker 2: going to retreat and become more hostile, and this is
Speaker 2: like the ten times mega like acceleration of this. Right, Yeah, yes,
Speaker 2: like the state is becoming a thing withoud that it
Speaker 2: exists only to like kill you. Right. But the thing is,
Speaker 2: it is also worth noting these programs are not just
Speaker 2: there because like they're good for people. They were there
Speaker 2: to buy people off, right, Like the carrot and the
Speaker 2: stick are both parts of maintaining each other. Right. The
Speaker 2: reason you can have the stick is because you have
Speaker 2: the carrot to pacify enough people to be able to
Speaker 2: deploy the stick. They seem to believe that they can
Speaker 2: only fucking use the stick now, and they can give
Speaker 2: you the tiniest fucking carrots that have ever existed. And
Speaker 2: we are going to get to see whether they can
Speaker 2: do that and whether our ability to like fucking produce
Speaker 2: our own carrots allows us to generate a situation where
Speaker 2: they fucking can't keep controlling you more.
Speaker 3: The other thing that they demonstrated the past few months
Speaker 3: is the unilateral ability to shut down government agency.
Speaker 2: Oh, we'll get to that. We'll get to that.
Speaker 3: And this is something that a smart future candidate could
Speaker 3: weaponize because Ice is younger than most people listening to
Speaker 3: this podcast, It's younger than me.
Speaker 2: Abolishing ICE is now the conservative position. If you are
Speaker 2: a moderate conservative, you are you now must be in
Speaker 2: favor of abolishing ice like that's that's that's simply where
Speaker 2: we are now.
Speaker 3: I was at this somewhat cursed Fourth of July party,
Speaker 3: I guess full of some of MEA's old Twitter enemies.
Speaker 3: Oh no, I will not name names, but multiple, multiple
Speaker 3: people apologize to me for making fun of ice must
Speaker 3: be destroyed in the past.
Speaker 2: I'm so fucking vindicated.
Speaker 3: I am the most vindicated of all time. They wanted
Speaker 3: me to pass off the message to you that they
Speaker 3: are sorry and that you were right the whole time.
Speaker 2: I was fucking right. So I'm realizing there's a lot
Speaker 2: of people who actually don't know this. I am the
Speaker 2: person who, until I deleted my Twitter account last year,
Speaker 2: ended every post with moreover, ice must be destroyed. I
Speaker 2: also do this on Blue Sky now, and I want
Speaker 2: to specifically, if you want to apologize to me, specifically
Speaker 2: send that apology in the form of money to the
Speaker 2: Trans Income Project. We will link the Trans Income Project's
Speaker 2: fundraiser below below. Here they give money directly the trans people.
Speaker 2: They do a whole bunch of unbelievably cool shit. It rules.
Speaker 2: We're going to have episodes talking about them at some
Speaker 2: point in the next couple of months. They are fucking awesome.
Speaker 2: So direct direct, direct your apologies to the Trans Income Project.
Speaker 2: Give trans people money.
Speaker 3: I will inform the people at the next cursed for
Speaker 3: the time.
Speaker 2: All right, you know who else wants your money?
Speaker 3: These products and services that support this podcast.
Speaker 2: Yep, we are back. So there's another part of this
Speaker 2: bill that has been getting very very little coverage that
Speaker 2: it really sucks shit, which is a national voucher tax
Speaker 2: credit program for private schools. So the way this works
Speaker 2: is really convoluted. You can get tax credits by giving
Speaker 2: money to organizations that supports private and religious schools and
Speaker 2: give out school vouchers. So the reason it's set up
Speaker 2: like this is this is a way to get around
Speaker 2: the ban on like giving money to religious schools. Why
Speaker 2: just giving money to organizations that give money to religious schools.
Speaker 2: But what this does, right, So these vouchers let you
Speaker 2: pull your kid out of public school and send them
Speaker 2: to a private school. And what this does it allows
Speaker 2: you to spend seventeen hundred dollars like to these organizations
Speaker 2: and get a one one hundred percent tax credit. Literally,
Speaker 2: nothing works like this. Charitable donations don't work like this.
Speaker 2: Nothing else like that we have ever had works on
Speaker 2: a one hundred percent tax credit like this, Like no
Speaker 2: donation fucking happens at all. This is a massive tax
Speaker 2: cut for money that goes to fucking rich family whose
Speaker 2: kids are ready go to private schools. It is a
Speaker 2: massive attack on the public education system. These voucher programs
Speaker 2: are hideously unpopular, fucking they keep failing in red states.
Speaker 2: Everyone hates them. They fail in blue states. There is
Speaker 2: literally zero chance they could ever get this pass through
Speaker 2: Congress normally, but they stuck it into the budget bill
Speaker 2: and forced everyone to vote for it. Now, it's worth
Speaker 2: noting that this is again, this is a fulfillment of
Speaker 2: like the ancient dream of the right, which is to
Speaker 2: destroy the public education system and replace it with private
Speaker 2: a private education system that is resegregated. They have been
Speaker 2: trying to do this for as long as the like
Speaker 2: the modern right, has been around. This has been their thing.
Speaker 2: You know, we have talked endlessly on the show about
Speaker 2: the ways in which the ways in which the modern
Speaker 2: right is built, specifically on the opposition to desegregation, and
Speaker 2: how this has been their plan, So this also starts
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty seven. It is important to note the
Speaker 2: states have to opt into this program, so they can
Speaker 2: still be killed in most places on the state level.
Speaker 2: But it fucking sucks. It is an attempt to destroy
Speaker 2: the public education system and a maxim tax cut to
Speaker 2: rich assholes. There's also, and this is fun, potentially increases
Speaker 2: the student loan payments. So SAVE was the Biden administration's
Speaker 2: like loan repayment plan. Lots of this stuff never took
Speaker 2: an effect because it was held up by the courts.
Speaker 2: But this gets rid of SAVE and other like a
Speaker 2: lot of other like loan repayment programs and combines them
Speaker 2: into this thing that's called the Repayment Assistance Plan. And
Speaker 2: this quote from MSN would set borrowers' payments to one
Speaker 2: to ten percent of their income, depending on their income level,
Speaker 2: with a monthly minimum payment of ten dollars. Unpaid interest
Speaker 2: is waived under this plan, and any remaining balance is
Speaker 2: forgiven of for thirty years. So this is like compared
Speaker 2: to say, this is a pretty massive increase in how
Speaker 2: much you would have to pay for your student loans.
Speaker 2: You also can't defer payments if you're unemployed or dealing
Speaker 2: with economic problems, which is a complete shit show. It's
Speaker 2: also it also is worth noting that like mass non
Speaker 2: payments of student loans is already pretty normal. If you
Speaker 2: go back to like the Occupy era and you read
Speaker 2: stuff from the Debt Collective, there's a lot of talk
Speaker 2: then about organizing student loan debt strikes, and then they
Speaker 2: just found out that like huge numbers of people already
Speaker 2: weren't paying, So you know, there's there's potential for resistance here.
Speaker 2: There's been a lot of work done on this front
Speaker 2: over the past fifteen years. It also gets rid of
Speaker 2: the Graduate Plus program for people without kids, so there's
Speaker 2: just like a bunch of fucking horrible shit happening. There's
Speaker 2: also in this in this thing, one hundred million dollars
Speaker 2: for the Office of Management and Budget to do more
Speaker 2: dode shit. And again, OMB right now is as as
Speaker 2: centertor America Park is points out literally ran by the
Speaker 2: director and author and co author of Project twenty twenty five,
Speaker 2: and they're giving him one hundred and twenty five million
Speaker 2: dollars to figure out how to cut more government agencies.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, one hundred million, sorry, hundred million dollars sea.
Speaker 3: Oh that that twenty five will make such a big difference. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I have some ideas for some futures if we want
Speaker 3: to save approximately forty billion dollars a year. Just at
Speaker 3: Democrats on on on Twitter and blue Sky and and threads,
Speaker 3: let me know. I can give you some ideas.
Speaker 2: Ice Border Patrol.
Speaker 3: It's possibly billions of dollars in savings.
Speaker 2: Department of Homeland Security.
Speaker 3: So let me know at at DNC on all platforms
Speaker 3: I can. I can advise for a very very fair
Speaker 3: pay rate review.
Speaker 2: Of all DoD military contracts.
Speaker 3: Competitive consulting rate. I can let you know what things
Speaker 3: you too can doge in the future. Postal cops. It's
Speaker 3: about time ACAB includes the post Office.
Speaker 2: Both beliefs it does. It's motherfucker suck ass right. There's
Speaker 2: also four point five trillion dollars and cuts tax cuts
Speaker 2: mostly for rich people. There's a bunch of extremely stupid
Speaker 2: shit in here. This just it's just a giant wealth
Speaker 2: transfer from poor people to rich people, which is very bad.
Speaker 2: It's also notable that it puts, like over the next decade,
Speaker 2: like another a three trillion dollar hole in the deficit.
Speaker 2: And this is worth noting because this has pissed off
Speaker 2: a lot of Silicon Valley fascists. Because a lot of
Speaker 2: the Silicon Valley people, and this is something I've talked
Speaker 2: about this before, but it's very important to understand a
Speaker 2: lot of these people are completely obsessed with the deficit,
Speaker 2: right because they want the government to run like a business.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, but there's a second thing going on here too,
Speaker 2: which is like they think that like that US deficit
Speaker 2: payments are going to like basically overwhelm the US budget
Speaker 2: and they're just become increasingly large percentage GDP, which will
Speaker 2: cause the US to just like be destroyed. And those
Speaker 2: people are genuinely very pissed at this about this budget.
Speaker 2: And Elon Musk is kind of like one of the
Speaker 2: avatars of this, right me, I.
Speaker 3: Think, I think, I think you mean elongated muskrat God.
Speaker 3: I should call him by his real.
Speaker 2: Name, fucking god.
Speaker 3: Ah.
Speaker 2: But yeah, you know, he is the kind of like
Speaker 2: rallying point of the people who are genuine only ideologically
Speaker 2: committed to just like doing all of these budget cuts
Speaker 2: because they're like weird, actual like true leaver deficit hawks,
Speaker 2: unlike the people who want to do it because they
Speaker 2: also want to do it because they hate poor people,
Speaker 2: but like.
Speaker 3: They hate poor people differently, they have a different type
Speaker 3: of hate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they have different Yeah. Well, and it's also like
Speaker 2: the question basically is are you willing to like massively
Speaker 2: increase the deficit to give corporations spending cuts or do
Speaker 2: you think that if you do that, you also need
Speaker 2: to do even more cuts. And that's that's the cant
Speaker 2: that Elon's in. It's worth noting before we get to
Speaker 2: the Elon angle of this, I'm just going to read
Speaker 2: this from The New Republic. A survey by The Washington
Speaker 2: Post found that forty two percent of Americans opposed the bill,
Speaker 2: while only twenty three percent supported it, leaving the legislation
Speaker 2: with a net favorable rating of minus nineteen. And that
Speaker 2: was the most positive that the results got. A Pure
Speaker 2: Research Center poll found the bill had a net favorability
Speaker 2: rating of minus twenty. Fox News found a net favorability
Speaker 2: rating of minus twenty one. I mean, quinit pack found
Speaker 2: a net favorability of minus twenty six and KFF found
Speaker 2: ability rating of minus twenty nine.
Speaker 3: Those do sound low, but on the other hand, that's
Speaker 3: a very high number for Matt Gates. So for the GOP.
Speaker 3: You know, it's it's not that low.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, nineteen is like the top of his range.
Speaker 3: Thank you for that cutting edge, Matt Gates pedophile joke
Speaker 3: right right right on the right, on the cusp of culture.
Speaker 3: We're just really writing the zeitgeist.
Speaker 2: So everyone fucking hates this bill is the thing. Right,
Speaker 2: And in this kind of climate, Elon Musk has decided
Speaker 2: to create a new political party called the America Party
Speaker 2: to run against the GOP.
Speaker 3: Many such cases, many such cases times just time as
Speaker 3: a flat circle. Once again, this is like.
Speaker 2: The farsest farce version of the Reform Party, Like who
Speaker 2: fucking knows what this is going to do in the end,
Speaker 2: Like we just don't know. Probably nothing, nothing, Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: actually going to do nothing. Maybe slightly put a tiny
Speaker 2: dent in the GOP. But yeah, I mean, I will
Speaker 2: say I will say this. The actual important thing about
Speaker 2: Elon opposing Trump is that it it gives a wedge
Speaker 2: to pry away different sections of Trump's base, like of
Speaker 2: Trump's elite base from him. Like again, like as you
Speaker 2: talked about, like the one moment where it's ever been
Speaker 2: possible to talk about like the Trump Epstein shit was
Speaker 2: when that happened. So I don't know. I think there's
Speaker 2: potential for the future where like stuff can you know,
Speaker 2: it's possible for there to be larger riffs in that
Speaker 2: sort ofly collision and that can possibly be exploited. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's also just like a bunch of unhindshit that I think,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if people understand didn't get in the bill.
Speaker 2: All of the like government land transfer stuff got cut.
Speaker 2: That they wanted to put a proposal in to make
Speaker 2: it so that you had to like pay a bond
Speaker 2: if you sued the governments, and that didn't make it in.
Speaker 2: Thankfully we stopped them from doing the trans medicaids of
Speaker 2: bullshit for episode forthcoming. But yeah, this bill really fucking sucks.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of just unbelievably terrible provisions in it.
Speaker 2: But Comma, everyone hates it and it can be stopped.
Speaker 2: And that's all I got on Genocide Bill. It could happen.
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