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Unknown A
Republicans are putting together their budget proposal. We refer to this earlier. And, you know, it looks like giant tax cuts for the rich and a bunch of cuts to programs that benefit the poor and working poor. And in particular, they're taking a giant hatchet to Medicaid. So Trump, in his little, you know, dual interview with Elon sitting next to him, was asked about whether there would be cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, quote, unquote, entitlement programs. Take a listen to what he had to say.
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Unknown B
We don't need a Department of Education, okay? And what some people are trying to do is stoke fears that, oh, my gosh, my kid's not going to get the money for education or grandma's Social Security and Medicare. This was a big promise of yours on the campaign trail. So I really want to give you both an opportunity to assure the American people you will keep that money will be allocated for students, but with higher standards, for example, I would assume associated with monies given or just so much. And then Elon goes, but look, Social Security won't be touched other than fraud or something. We're going to find it's going to be strengthened but won't be touched. Medicare, Medicaid, none of that stuff is going to be touched. Nothing. I want to have to. Now, if there are illegal migrants in the system, we're going to get them out of the system and all of that fraud, but it's not going to be touched.
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Unknown A
So no cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, he says. Then the very next day, put this up on the screen. He goes out and backs the House budget proposal which dramatically cuts Medicaid, the program, as San Stein points out, Trump said last night he would not touch. Here's the truth Social that he posts. The House and center are doing a spectacular job of working together as one unified and unbeatable team in all caps. However, unlike the Lindsey Graham version of the very important legislation currently being discussed, the House resolution implements my full America first agenda. Everything, not just parts of it. We need both chambers to pass the House budget to kickstart the reconciliation process, move all our priorities to the concept of one big beautiful bill will without question make America great again. So you also, you know, I mean, Trump has built, and this is one of the Divergences of Trump 2.0 versus Trump 1.0.
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Unknown A
He really built a lot of his seniors stance in the Republican Party and a lot of his credibility with regular people off of this repeated promise. He was not going to touch Social Security and Medicare and Then in that statement, he also had originally expanded it, which on Hannity, to Medicaid. But Elon thinks all of these programs should go and makes that quite clear on a regular basis. He's always retweeting Mike Lee saying Social Security is a Ponzi scheme and it would be better if everybody was in private retirement accounts, et cetera, et cetera. He also has gone out of his way to fraudulently claim that Social Security is sending out all of these improper payments to people who are 300 years old or whatever, which is total and complete nonsense. Sagar and I talked about this earlier in the week. You can go check out that segment for the details and the receipts there.
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Unknown A
So, clearly, Elon wants to dismantle these programs and is trying to frame it as like, we're just going after the fraud. We're not actually cutting benefits. But if you're backing the House Republican bill that takes, that's cutting some, what, $800 billion from Medicaid, you are going to hit benefits for a lot of people. And also, if you're serious about, you know, Elon talks about cutting $2 trillion in discretionary spending from the federal budget. 70% of discretionary spending is Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. So these programs are very much on the chopping block. And Trump admitting here that, you know, backing the House bill and, you know, aggressively and saying it's my full agenda and it's spectacular, it's one big, beautiful bill, you know, makes it pretty plain that he's not going to stand in the way of these kind of cuts.
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Unknown C
So to play Trump's advocate here, well, not advocate, but a potential defense of what Trump is doing here. If you notice in his comment, what he says is, you know, all caps, everything, not just parts of it, is what we need. We need both chambers to pass the House budget to kickstart. And he puts that in quotes, the reconciliation process, and move all of our priorities to the concept of one big, beautiful bill. It will, without question, make America great again. So what you could believe, and this is what, you know, the people who are hopeful that Trump is actually going to stick by what he said about Medicaid, what you could believe is that he's saying the House process of doing the tax cuts and all the spending cuts in the same reconciliation bill, and reconciliation just means that you can pass it with 50 votes in the Senate, is superior to the Senate approach, which is to do separate reconciliation bills, where you're going to do the reforms here and do the budget with the Medicaid and Medicare cuts and all this, and then you're going to do the tax cuts.
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Unknown C
There are a lot of MAGA people who are arguing if you do that, you will fail. Like, we have one shot, we being maga, we have one shot to do this all at once. The beginning of the year. We got to do it immediately so that it all takes effect. Because they've seen Obama and Biden fail, because they pass all these good things and all they get is the bad press and the taxes and then the actual spending comes too late to be politically beneficial. And so these Republicans are saying, look, don't be idiots, do this now. So that by the time the midterms come around, people are feeling the benefits of all those wonderful things we did. So the argument would be Trump's only endorsing the House process of doing that.
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Unknown A
Of putting it all together, of putting.
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Unknown C
Them all together, and that he's still gonna stop fight them on Medicaid. The counter to that is good luck. You can't, the numbers don't work out.
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Unknown A
Exactly.
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Unknown C
So you're going to have to. But the way that Trump could ultimately make the numbers work out is just blow the deficit up much further.
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Unknown A
Right?
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Unknown C
Okay. We're going to do the tax cuts and we're going to preserve Medicaid and Medicare and Social Security, which is what I think they will actually end up doing. And then when we're like, hey, you said you cared about the deficit, they'd be like, well, we didn't. And neither do you.
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Unknown A
Do you think that there are. Because the other thing they have to deal with is they have a, what, three vote margin in the House. So they have to get every Republican, unless there are a few Democrats that might vote along with them, which, you know, it's possible. These are very weak people who are some of them desperate to appear like, oh, we're bipartisan, blah, blah, blah. And you know, some of them have positioned themselves as these sort of like austerity, deficit Hawkins, Tea Party types, the Chip Roys of the world and whatever. And so that is the reason why they're desperate. They're definitely going to have in there their $4 trillion extension of tax cuts for the rich. That's the Tax Cuts and Jobs act that he originally passed and now it has to be extended. That's a huge price tag, $4 trillion over what, 10 year period.
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Unknown A
And so if you're going to even fudge the numbers to make it look like you're not adding to the deficit, which they're already saying like we're going to fudge the numbers. We're going to pretend like we're going to get this growth that isn't really. Maybe they will, but it's unlikely. It's not the way they normally do scoring. But whatever. They're already saying, okay, we're going to fund the numbers in this particular way. It still was going to require a lot of cuts from somewhere. And especially if you're going to add on top of that any of the tax related promises that Trump made to working class people, let alone the whole salt tax situation, which also would be a very expensive add on. So how are you going to, you know, how are you going to compensate for all of that on the other side?
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Unknown A
And as if you're digging into these numbers on Doge, you're quickly learning there are just a few buckets in the federal budget that really make up the bulk of the spending. It's the military and it is the, and it is health care, Medicare and Medicaid and it is Social Security. And if you aren't cutting those things like you are nibbling around the edges, that's just the reality right now. You can put this next piece up on the screen because this also gets to the same dynamic. So the House Republican budget also calls for an increase in defense spending, small $100 billion increase in defense spending. This is the plan again that Trump just endorsed, as Prem Thakar is pointing out here at the very same time that he has asked the Pentagon for a plan to, to implement sweeping budget cuts slashing 8% from the defense budget in each of the next five years per amendment that was obtained by the Washington Post.
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Unknown A
Apparently, Pete Hegseth has directed the agency to, you know, go out and look for how they would accomplish these cuts, et cetera, et cetera. So again, you have Trump endorsing an increase of $100 billion in the defense budget at the same time that he's signaling an interest in another direction.
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Unknown C
Yeah. So when you listen to a lot of the House Republicans and Senate Republicans talk about Doge and talk about Trump's talking about Trump rolling back the empire and doing spending cuts, they very quickly get uncomfortable as soon as the Pentagon comes up.
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Unknown A
That's right.
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Unknown C
It's wild. The number of people within the MAGA coalition at the top willing to take on the Pentagon is minuscule.
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Unknown A
Well, and there's a reason why the.
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Unknown C
Base they're there ish for it as long as it goes after the, I think they're willing to go after the weapons makers, the military Industrial complex. A huge portion of our spending is, you know, Veterans affairs and salaries of active duty enlisted people and who are already struggling on food stamps and like, you know, so that gets interesting too. You cut the military budget too far. You're. Now you're coming out getting into bad humans.
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Unknown A
Yeah. Well, and actually, if you look at the polling, you know, if you ask people where you would most want things cut, it is the military.
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Unknown C
Right.
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Unknown A
You know, they don't, they don't want the base closed. People like the idea. Like if you ask, okay, should federal government spending be cut? Of course they, you know, yes, we should be more efficient. We should have, you know, cut out the fat, blah, blah, blah. If you ask them, okay, well, should we cut programs for poor people? No. Should we cut education? No. Should we cut Social Security? Absolutely not. Should we cut Medicare? Absolutely not. Should we cut defense spending? Yes, yes, we should.
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Unknown C
But you know this from where you live.
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Unknown A
That's right.
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Unknown C
If you ask anybody there if they should close the base.
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Unknown A
Oh, that's. That would.
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Unknown C
Do they want to close the base.
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Unknown A
That would be devastating, would be a death blow for the particular town that I live in. And that is part of why you're.
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Unknown C
Not at all alone.
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Unknown A
That's exactly right.
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Unknown C
A quarter of the people watching this program right now live in an area that would be hurt very badly by that.
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Unknown A
And that is part of why. So I mean, part of why the military budget always escalates is because you have these defense manufactured military industrial complex that spends a lot of money in Congress and makes sure they get their fat subsidies and their budgets and their boot and doggle weapons systems that have massive cost overruns and are totally unaccountable and unaudited and all that stuff. Right. That is a big. That is a significant chunk of it. But also, these military expenditures go into almost every district, congressional district in the.
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Unknown C
Not by any.
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Unknown A
Probably everyone actually in the entire country.
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Unknown C
Yeah, on purpose.
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Unknown A
That is on purpose. It is a sort of jobs program. And so once you start to actually threaten that, then you get a lot of members on both parties. I mean, this is part of what creates that uniparty consensus who start to get very upset about the, you know, the bases or the manufacturers or whatever it is in their district that is important to the economy and the people there.
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Unknown C
Yeah. There was even that wild moment where Bernie was like, you sure we want to cut this f. Whatever. Like there was some like, I forget exactly what weapon system they were making in Vermont, but Bernie's like, is that really where we need to Cut. They know what they're doing when they built this system.
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Unknown A
Suddenly it hits a little different when it's your state or your treasured priority. So, so we'll see how all of that shakes out. But very interesting stuff. Some significant court developments that we wanted to go through for you. So one of the big questions is, okay, so some of these temporary restraining orders, injections are coming down against the Trump administration and some of the efforts under Doge, are they going to listen or are they going to do what J.D. vance and others have suggested of just saying, hey, like you and what army are going to enforce this court injunction? And we have another troubling indication in terms of the approach that the Trump administration is going to take. It's going go ahead and put this up on the screen from Reuters. So nonprofits have now asked a judge to hold US Officials in contempt for defying an order with regard to specifically usaid.
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Unknown A
So the way this all pause on.
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Unknown C
This just for one throwback. One of the nonprofits here is the AIDS vaccine program. The other one is the Journalism Development Network, which is the business name of the occrp, which we wrote about.
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Unknown A
That's the one you, that's the USAID.
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Unknown C
Funded news organization that was just, you can go read our story and look.
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Unknown A
At it doing like US Propaganda, basically deep state propaganda.
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Unknown C
They very strongly will say that there is no influence from the US of their funding. But it was funded. A lot of their funding comes through countering Russian disinformation.
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Unknown A
This was involved in the Romania situation.
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Unknown C
Yes. There's involvement with the Romanian situation. So yeah, it's US Funding for overseas journalism. That is, that is controversial because taking government money directly to fund journalism is just in the journalism world, extremely controversial.
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Unknown A
Yes.
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Unknown C
Like we wouldn't do it, for instance.
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Unknown A
Yes, exactly. Right, exactly.
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Unknown C
So that's what that they coincidentally, they happen to be one of one of.
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Unknown A
The groups that's suing here.
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Unknown C
Yeah.
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Unknown A
So the way this went down is you guys will recall there was this, there were a couple of executive orders that were, well, some were executive orders, some of them were just memorandums that were issued by the Office of Management and Budget. But in any case, some said directly, you have to we're freezing all foreign aid spending. We're freezing anything that has to do with, you know, DEI or quote, unquote, Green New Deal led to this huge amount of confusion. Medicaid portals were shut down for a while. And you know, it still has been the case that some things have continued to be frozen. Well, a judge looked at this and said, you have to unfreeze the funds. And that has led to this sort of court battle with the Trump administration arguing that while the funds you're telling us to unfreeze, like that doesn't really apply to some of these other executive orders that we issued.
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Unknown A
And USAID is really at the center of it. But in this dispute, the judge came back and said, no, when I said unfreeze the funds, I meant unfreeze all the funds, including funds at usaid. Trump administration has continued to resist that order and put in a court filing offering some new sort of convoluted rationale for why those funds don't apply. When the judge, I mean, I read the order was quite clear, like, no, no, no, I meant all the funds have to be here unfrozen. So these nonprofits that are suing, they said the court should not brook such brazen defiance of the express terms of its order. And they are asking specifically for Secretary of State Marco Rubio and USAID Deputy Administrator Pete Morocco and the OMB director Russ Vogt, who is one of the real ideological architects behind this whole thing, to, to be held in civil contempt.
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Unknown A
I could put this next piece up on the screen. This is just the court filing here. Kyle Cheney, who is a good follow, just in terms of, just like the legal, you know, all the back and forth legal pieces that are many and varied at this point, breaking USAID contractors, aid recipients say Rubio and USAID leader should be held in civil contempt for violating a court order to lift spending freeze. So you can see that there on the side. So we still have not. I think Ryan reached the point where they're just saying, no, we're just not going to listen.
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Unknown C
Right.
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Unknown A
They're still cloaking it in. We have some convoluted legal rationale for why this isn't directly in defiance of your court order, but we are inching closer to that level of just like you told us to unfreeze the funds and we're just not going to do that.
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Unknown C
Yeah. And to put Trump's argument, legal argument here in its best light, what he's, what they're saying is, okay, you're right, the freeze that we did, that was, that was wrong. You've told us to lift the freeze. Boom, we have lifted the freeze. However, we still have discretion on a case by case basis to not pay out these particular grants because within the grants, each contract has language that if the US Decides it is no longer in the interest of the US to continue with this grant, that the US can stop the grant, and the president is deciding that it's not in his interest and we're not. And so therefore, we're not saying that we're never going to spend the congressionally mandated appropriations, so we're not impounding the money. We're just pausing this particular contract because we feel like this particular contract is not in our national interest and not in accordance with the executive order at this moment, which I think actually would be a completely fair argument if not for everything else they're saying, which goes to a broader read, which is they are actually freezing everything, have no intention of spending it.
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Unknown A
Right.
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Unknown C
And are trying to impound it, but just not say yet that they're impounding. That's what they're doing because they're gearing up toward that fight, but they're not having it yet. But this particular argument. Yeah, of course, like, on an individual level, if the USAID or State Department says, actually, we don't like the way that they handled this Romania situation, so we're cutting their contract, you can do that. Sure. But so the question is, is that really what they're doing?
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Unknown A
Yes. Yeah. And I mean, this kind of relates what you're describing here to they made a court filing saying Elon is not actually the head of Doge. Like, he's just some guy. Like, he's kind of like Anita Dunn. You know, he works in the White House, he works with Trump, he's an advisor, but he's not in charge of Doge. He doesn't have anything really directly to do with Doge. Even as Trump is out there being like, Elon's in charge of Doge, he's doing a great job.
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Unknown C
Even as Elon is saying, yeah, of course.
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Unknown A
I mean, this is obvious. Right. And they haven't hit it whatsoever. But because it creates some legal complexities for them. In particular, one of the lawsuits is about the Appointments Clause of the Constitution, where if you're going to have, I don't know what the legal language is, but if you're going to have this significant role, you have to have a Senate confirmation. And so they want to downplay, in the context of that lawsuit, Elon's involvement. So they're denying what is, like, plainly obvious and what they admit to. And the way they talk about Elon and his relationship to Doge all the time. And by the way, if you ask Trump, okay, well, if Elon isn't in charge of Doge, who is? He has no answer because Elon is obviously in charge of Doge so this kind of ties into that. Denying the reality that is in front of us with some sort of convoluted legal argument ties into that whole thing.
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Unknown A
There have been a few other developments here that I think are worth just running through quickly. So there was another executive order that was signed by Trump that does a variety of things, but in particular is really trying to undercut the independence of some key agencies, namely the ftc, the FCC and the sec, which is the securities Exchange Commission, which they were upset that the securities Exchange Commission was actually doing its job somewhat under Biden and especially with regard to crypto. So they're trying to get them under control over there. But really extraordinary. Also legal positioning and framing here that really ties into Trump's comments about how you can't violate the law if you are saving the state, state and some of the other more dictatorial positions that he has taken, which is that, listen, only the President and the Attorney General can speak for, quote, what the law is.
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Unknown A
Let's take a listen to that.
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Unknown C
Lastly, we have another executive order that President Trump signed relating to independent agencies. This executive order would establish important oversight functions in the Office of Management and Budget and its subsidiary office oira, supervising independent agencies and many of their actions. And also re establishes the long standing norm that only the president or the Attorney General can speak for the United States when stating an opinion as to what the law is.
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Unknown A
So this fits with also the way that Elon has been describing the workings of our government, which is basically like Trump is the only true representative of the people. So if you're standing in the way of what Trump wants to do, then you are anti democratic. You are trying to thwart the will of the people. And as you pointed out many times, Ryan, that is not the way that our system works. In fact, the House of Representatives is specifically set up to be a more representative body and to reflect the individual proclivities, regional proclivities, of all the different districts and varied constituencies within the country. We don't have a system where the president is basically like Kagan, gets to wipe the slate clean and implement his entire agenda. But that is the way that they're trying to position and explain their philosophy about all of this.
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Unknown C
And if he's restricting when he says the US if he just means the executive, because sometimes that's what, that's how you refer to the executive. You know, the US if you go to civil court or criminal court, it's the US versus, you know, whoever, if that's what you mean. I could I could. There's an argument to be made that the President wins. He should be able to tell the SEC what its priorities should be. And if the SEC is not abiding by those priorities, he should be able to, you know, change out, you know, who the leaders of the SEC are or the CFPB or FTC or any of these other agencies like you do. You have an election, you run on saying you're going to do something through the ftc. It would be messed up if Trump wanted to do anti monopoly stuff. And he's got Wall street guys over at M and A guys over at ftc and they're like, no, we're not doing that.
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Unknown C
But what you can't do is just dismantle them like he's doing with cfpb.
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Unknown A
Right.
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Unknown C
Because I'm actually okay with a president within the laws created by Congress having a direction direct, you know, having direction over these agencies. I think that's fine. But you can't just get rid of them, right? Which he's, which with several of them. He's just saying like, oh, this doesn't exist anymore. We're putting, putting it in, either in the wood chipper or RIP copb. Like you have to. Congress has to be involved in that. Like that's our system.
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Unknown A
Yeah, very well said. All right, let's go ahead and move on to this congestion pricing piece which kind of fits into the whole like Trump acting like a dictator or Elon acting like a dictator, et cetera.
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Unknown C
Hey, if you like that video, hit the like button or leave a comment below. It really helps get the show to more people.
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Unknown A
And if you'd like to get the full show ad free and in your inbox every morning, you can sign up@breakingpoints.com.
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Unknown C
That'S right, get the full show. Help support the future of independent media@breakingpoints.com.