“You are tearing me apart, Congress.” This episode was produced by Devan Schwartz with help from Hady Mawajdeh, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Andrea Kristinsdottir and Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Seam Rameswaram. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast. President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson ahead of a House Republican meeting at the U.S. Capitol. Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images. Help us plan for the future of Today, Explained by filling out a brief survey: voxmedia.com/survey. Thank you! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the purpose of Trump's new bill?
The time has finally come for President Trump to work with Congress. And he's trying to make it count by cramming everything he can into one bill.
One of the most important elements in this package will be extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts.
I'm calling for no tax on tips, no tax on overtime.
You shouldn't be having people on Medicaid getting more than Medicare. You shouldn't be having the people who should work, can work, getting benefits without working.
This should include full funding for a record increase in border security personnel and retention bonuses for ICE and Border Patrol.
It will increase the child tax credit to $2,500 per child, establish optional savings account for newborn babies with a $1,000 credit added, and strengthen paid family leave.
Trump's calling this package, we call it the one big beautiful bill. But if it's so beautiful, why is he having trouble convincing some of his fellow Republicans to vote for it?
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Chapter 2: What are the key elements of the proposed tax cuts?
This isn't the first time we've seen Congress try to pass a BBB for my Build Back Better initiative. We asked Semaphores Congressional Bureau Chief Burgess Everett if the acronyms were the similarities end.
No, I actually don't think so, because I think the reason both of these bills have have experienced some turbulence is is they just get too big. And it's hard to kind of give an underlying theory of the case of why you're doing it right. Ostensibly, this time, Republicans want to prevent tax rates from increasing at the end of the year.
And I think there's a very low chance that those tax rates will increase no matter what happens with this bill. And so I do think a lot of other Republicans recognize that. And and so when you're now talking about Medicaid cuts, when you're now talking about food stamps and snap aid, when you're talking about defense spending.
All of these new things, it's gotten tied up in what was kind of a singular priority. You also have Trump's tax cuts that he talked about on the campaign that have become wrapped up in this as well. And so I think you can make an argument that putting all those things together works. offers sweeteners to people and more opportunities to get their votes.
But I also think at some point the bill can become so big that each change to one part of the bill affects your folks on another side of the conference. And so we're seeing that play out in real time. And we're seeing Trump's Tuesday visit to the Hill.
Who do you work for? Nerds. Who? Nerds. I don't even know what the hell that is.
As an attempt to sort of say, hey, forget all that. Just pass something now so that the Senate can take this up and we can work together with them to pass a law. And we'll see if that works. It's really a policy disagreement versus political sheer force of will that we're seeing from the president. America is back.
That's won out a lot in the past, but I don't think there's a guarantee that it wins out this time.
Medicaid is one of the biggest sticking points. Is that not right?
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Chapter 3: How does Medicaid factor into the new legislation?
Yeah, I think I think it's the biggest one. I mean, I also think I think there's two. And you hear a lot about salt, the state and local tax deduction. It's really a house blue state Republican issue. These folks want basically tax relief for their constituents who already pay high taxes.
Well, we're actually going to spend a bunch of time talking about salt in the second half of the show. So why don't you tell us now a bit more about this fight and the drama around Medicaid?
So you don't have the biggest changes that conservatives wanted to put in here. That was basically cutting the federal share of the Medicaid expansion or capping it in some way. That was construed by a bunch of Senate Republicans as benefit cuts because it would probably lead to states providing less Medicaid expansion to their beneficiaries. So those are off the table.
What you've ended up with is these co-pays on some Medicaid expansion folks. There's going to be end to the provider tax, which is basically just a way that states use to get more federal funding. There's also work requirements for Medicaid expansion, and you need to prove citizenship for the most part, although there may be some exceptions to that to get Medicaid benefits.
So those are kind of like the core four things. I think there's pretty broad agreement on the work requirements. and the citizenship requirements. The other two issues have... I was just talking to some senators about this just now.
The other two issues could be problematic, and I'm not sure Trump quite understands exactly what they would do, but plenty of Republicans think they would eventually amount to benefit cuts.
And even his Republican colleagues in the Senate are not entirely happy about this.
Correct. So the loudest person you're going to hear on this is Josh Hawley.
It is wrong to cut healthcare for the working poor. And that's what we're talking about.
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Chapter 4: What challenges does Trump face in convincing Republicans?
So you could always bring that out of this big, beautiful bill and pass it on its own. But as long as it's lumped in there, it does give you a little bit of a ticking time bomb of when this needs to pass.
You mentioned that this could take until December to figure out. This is our first time talking about the BBB on this program. I really hope we're not talking about it until December. But if we are, how frustrated will... our president be?
I think very frustrated because I think the reason he's here this week, the reason he's taking time out of his schedule to come to Congress, not I mean, Joe Biden did it, but it's not something that happens every day.
The reason he's doing that is he's impatient and he wants them to stop basically the circular firing squad to stop spinning their wheels, move forward, because ultimately it's not a great referendum on him if his signature piece of legislation is struggling to get through Congress. And so I think he wants a shot in the arm momentum wise from this getting through the House.
I would think they've learned their lesson from the Affordable Care Act repeal and won't hold a big party at the White House after they pass the first version of this through the House because the Senate ultimately killed that bill. But I do think like this is a president who wants a legislative shot in the arm.
There's only been a handful of new laws signed this Congress, I believe is one of the least productive initial spurts for a new president in a long time. And so I think he wants to turn that around and he's doing it by lumping so many things into one bill. But if that one bill stalls, it doesn't look like there's much of a path for anything else to get through.
Burgess Everett will be covering whatever comes next for the big beautiful bill at semaphore.com. Pass the salt next on Today Explained.
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In Sensory Overload, a new documentary produced as part of Sensodyne's Sensory Inclusion Initiative, we follow individuals navigating a world not built for them, where bright lights, loud sounds, and unexpected touches can turn routine moments into overwhelming challenges. Burnett Grant, for example, has spent their life masking discomfort in workplaces that don't accommodate neurodivergence.
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Chapter 5: Why is the bill referred to as 'big and beautiful'?
Well done. Well done.
What's going on? What's at the heart of this divide between the Republicans over this big, beautiful bill? We've heard it essentially comes down to Medicaid and salt. We talked about Medicaid. We want to talk to you about salt. Why salt?
So here's the salt part. This is the longtime write-off for state and local taxes that people could do on their federal taxes. Now, Trump's 2017 tax bill, which expires at the end of this year, got rid of the SALT deduction.
And so this is something that is really problematic for folks in high-income states, typically blue states, where they got people who are paying exorbitant amounts of money in local taxes, property taxes, state taxes. So where it gets much more sensitive, delicate, raw, is the kind of class and regional divide here within the Republican Party. This is an intra-party fight.
So the Republican Party has become a rural, heavily red state, heavily working class party. That's its coalition. But it has a narrow house majority. And the folks that come from a lot of the most marginal districts, kind of purple seats, tend to be from high-income places like Jersey, New York, and California. And yes, those are the folks that care the most about this issue.
You're talking about giving back a tax deduction that the red moocher states took away. So my feeling is, why are we giving all these benefits to these red moocher states who take, take, take, and expect the Northeast and states like mine, New Jersey, to pay for them? And that's part of what's always been my issue.
Why are you doubly taxing people in Jersey to pay for these moocher states that take so much from the federal government and barely pay anything in?
Because the suburbs, exurbs, and even some rural areas of Blue America, Jersey, California, New York, most significantly, do have a handful of Republican lawmakers. Now, the last Trump midterm, 2018, was really brutal for that kind of suburban Republicans. There's not a ton out there. But the last two elections, 20 and 22, some folks have won back seats in places like
Westchester County, New York, Orange County, California, and the Republicans who are right of center and whose voters give them a hell of a hard time every weekend about cost of living and taxes.
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