The Disaster That Just Passed the Senate

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Government, News

4.6 • 11K Ratings

🗓️ 2 July 2025

⏱️ 71 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” is a bad piece of legislation. It includes trillions of dollars in tax cuts that are very much tilted toward the rich, along with savage cuts to Medicaid, nutrition assistance and green energy. And on Tuesday, July 1, the Senate passed it in a 51-50 vote, with Vice President JD Vance as the tiebreaker. But bad policy only matters if people know about it, and a lot of people don’t — partly because there are an overwhelming number of provisions, and partly because the Trump administration is already flooding the zone with so many other major policy fights. So I asked Matt Yglesias, the author of the Slow Boring newsletter, back on the show to go through what is in this bill and why it has been so hard to build momentum for pushback. We spoke on Thursday, June 26. Mentioned: “A List of Nearly Everything in the Senate G.O.P. Bill, and How Much It Would Cost or Save” by Alicia Parlapiano, Margot Sanger-Katz, Aatish Bhatia and Josh Katz The System by David S. Broder and Haynes Johnson The Ten Year War by Jonathan Cohn Book recommendations: Proto by Laura Spinney Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte The Social Transformation of American Medicine by Paul Starr Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find the transcript and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.html This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Jack McCordick and Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Kelsey Kudak. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Michelle Harris, Elias Isquith, Marina King, Jan Kobal, and Kristin Lin. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The
0:07.0	The So I'm taping this introduction on Tuesday, July 1st.
0:34.7	The Senate passed Donald Trump's big, beautiful bill just moments ago. 50-50 vote,
0:39.3	Vice President J.D. Vance, the tiebreaker. This bill, it is a bad piece of legislation.
0:46.6	Trillions of dollars in tax cuts very much tilted towards a rich. Savage cuts to Medicaid,
0:52.4	to nutrition assistance, to green energy. And even with those cuts,
0:56.3	we can expect more than $3 trillion to be added to the national debt over 10 years. And I think
1:02.4	befitting policy like that, the bill is hugely unpopular. A poll from late June found nearly
1:08.1	two to one opposition to the bill. Vulnerable Republicans do not seem excited to run on the wreckage it's going to create Tom Tillis, the Republican Senator from North Carolina, a state Trump has won over and over again, just announced he's stepping down at the end of this term, in part over the Medicaid cuts.
1:25.9	But bad policy only matters if people know about it, and a lot of people don't.
1:31.8	And hearing about this bill, even those of us covering it can keep the whole package in mind.
1:36.5	The Times has a great list to nearly all the provisions.
1:39.0	I'll link it in the show description.
1:40.6	A lot of them would be major policy fights on their own.
1:43.6	But in part because of that, and because the Trump administration is flooding the zone, with so many other major policy fights, it has been hard to focus attention on what is passing and what can actually be done about it.
1:56.4	And so I asked Matt Iglesias back on the show to go through what is in this bill and why it has been so hard to generate the kind of political force on it
2:04.6	that we saw in Trump's first term when Obamacare appeal went down to defeat.
2:09.6	Matt, of course, is the author of The Soul Boring Newsletter.
2:12.3	We spoke, I should say, on Thursday, June 26.
2:15.6	As always, my email, Ezra Klein Show at NYTimes.com.
2:27.6	Madagliacius, welcome back to the show.
2:30.3	Really glad to be here.
	...

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