The Insanity of Trump's Big Beautiful Bill

Plus: Trump's E.U. trade deadline, masked ICE agents, and Elon Musk's third party

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The Insanity of Trump's Big Beautiful Bill

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This week, editors Peter Suderman, Katherine Mangu-Ward, and Nick Gillespie and Reason reporter Eric Boehm unpack the passage of President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill, focusing on its tax carve-outs, its special-interest subsidies, and what happens when key provisions expire in 2028. They also examine the potential fallout from Trump's looming trade deadline with the European Union, answer a listener question about the legality of masked federal law enforcement, and discuss the viability of Elon Musk launching a new political party.

0:00—America is still the greatest country on earth

6:18—The One Big Beautiful Bill becomes law

12:39—Medicaid cuts and what they mean

20:51—Sunset clauses will cause more instability

33:33—Listener question on masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents

42:16—Elon Musk announces new third party

49:47—Weekly cultural recommendations

Mentioned in This Podcast

"The Secret Police Are Here," by Mike Brock

"Errol Morris and Jacob Soboroff: Trump's Immigration Policies Are Indefensible," by Nick Gillespie

Upcoming Reason Events

The Reason Roundtable Live in NYC! July 15

The Soho Forum Debate: Jacob Hacker vs. David Goldhill, July 16

 

Today's Sponsors:

Future of Freedom: If you're tired of cable news debates and Twitter shouting matches, and you're looking for serious, good-faith conversations between people who actually care about liberty then it's time to check out the Future of Freedom podcast. Each episode dives deep into a single topic—tariffs, campus speech, the Department of Government Efficiency—and brings together two guests who disagree on the best path forward. But here's the twist: This isn't a debate show. No interrupting. No dunking. If you believe the future of freedom depends on more than just winning arguments and you're ready for something deeper than the usual echo chambers, check out the Future of Freedom podcast. Real disagreement. Real ideas. Real conversations. Subscribe to Future of Freedom wherever you get your podcasts.

What are we consuming this week?

Katherine Mangu-Ward

• Pontius Pilate by Anne Wroe

Peter Suderman

• Stop All the Clocks by Noah Kumin

Nick Gillespie

• How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter's Memoir by Molly Jong-Fast

Eric Boehm

• Gdansk Poland and the Solidarity Museum

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Comments

[Uncle Jay]

"The Insanity of Trump's Big Beautiful Bill."

Yeah, I keep forgetting how sane Bush I, Bush II, Clinton's, Obama's and Biden's budgets were.

[sarcasmic]

"Previous presidents did it first and you didn't complain you hypocrite. That makes whatever Trump does ok."

[Don't look at me! ( Is the war over yet?)]

Poor sarc. He’s got nothing.

[JesseAz (Prime Meanster of Sarcasia)]

He has less than when he was homeless.

[SCOTUS gave JeffSarc a big sad]

‘Was’? Are we counting his refrigerator box in that piss soaked alley as a residence?

[JesseAz (Prime Meanster of Sarcasia)]

He saved up so many popov labels they ended up letting him have a room in the factory.

[MollyGodiva]

Yup, you did forget.

Clinton, in cooperation with Republicans, produce a balanced budget. Dubya blew that up with tax cuts and increased spending.

[XM]

Nah, he benefited mostly from a bubble economy. He was more economically sensible than today’s democrats. He lowered taxes on dividends and repealed goes stegeal.

He never had a surplus. The myth will just never die.

[JesseAz (Prime Meanster of Sarcasia)]

He also deported illegals without due process based on dr retards standards.

[SCOTUS gave JeffSarc a big sad]

I thought Tony was Dr, Retard?

[MollyGodiva]

Dr. Idiot.

[InsaneTrollLogic (Muting Sarc like he mutes us)]

Nah, you're more of a short bus retard.

[Fat Rush Limpcock (King of the Conservatives)]

Bullshit. Clinton ran surpluses in FY 1999 and 2000. His Omnibus of 1993 cut spending and raised the top rate from 31% to 39.6% and led to a booming economy. The bill got zero Republican votes.

You liars get called out when I’m here.

[InsaneTrollLogic (Muting Sarc like he mutes us)]

Clinton only ran surpluses due to having a Republican House. Thanks, Newt!

[JesseAz (Prime Meanster of Sarcasia)]

Clinton never ran a surplus. Us debt increased every year. Deficits got near zero from a bubble and climbed again after the bubble crashed.

[Neutral not Neutered]

That and some magical math shifting around SS funds that eventually caught up under Bush Jr.

Modern Monetary Theory sucks

[DesigNate]

Congratulations shrike, you’re still the reigning champ in the retard poster Olympics.

If you had half an ounce of shame you’d fuck off.

[Fat Rush Limpcock (King of the Conservatives)]

There was a Time Magazine article in 2000 asking what will the country do with all the surpluses forecast in 2000 on?

Then the Bushpigs happened.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/clinton-us-could-be-debt-free-by-2010/

[InsaneTrollLogic (Muting Sarc like he mutes us)]

Bushpigs like you, Pluggo?

[Don't look at me! ( Is the war over yet?)]

“Forecast “

[Ben of Houston]

A balanced budget on paper that never actually happened. The debt went up every year during Clinton's reign.

[LIBtranslator]

Anonymous socks never lie and are always right!

[LIBtranslator]

Waffen-Bush also instituted faith-based asset-forfeiture looting. By 2007 looting lawmen actually outpaced burglars nationwide, but it was for God, Jesus, Dare Kids and Just-Say-NYET! Who'd a thunk that confiscating thousands of grow houses in California and elsewhere could cause major defaults breaking mortgage-backed derivatives markets and bringing another Herbert Hoover prohibitionist Crash and Depression?

[JesseAz (Prime Meanster of Sarcasia)]

Not a budget bill. Tax extension and modifications to mandatory programs. I feel reason is intentionally ignoring this at this point.

[Roberta]

Yeah, HyR is so slanted now, I'm afraid I have to take their criticisms on this subject as concern trolling.

[MoreFreedom]

The problem with the BBB is that Congress is dominated by big spenders: all the Democrats and the RINOs which are a majority of the GOP. Trump can only do so much with the congress we've collectively voted for.

[Dillinger]

the insanity is the whistling past the graveyard.

[Rick James]

Suderman in 5 years: You can't repeal it without replacing it with something!

[MasterThief]

Glad people remember his retarded takes on Obamacare and efforts to repeal it.

[sarcasmic]

The Republican motto at the time was repeal and replace, dipshit. You trying to attack the author for being one of you? Oh, sorry. I forgot. Trumpians are not Republicans. They're 80s Democrats, like their anointed ruler. Trumpians hate Republicans.

[InsaneTrollLogic (Muting Sarc like he mutes us)]

Your motto is "Fuck Those People".

[JesseAz (Prime Meanster of Sarcasia)]

It was the motto of your favored neocons sure.

[LIBtranslator]

Good.

[XM]

The insanity of BBB is no new major spending on the level of ACA and Biden BBB but lower taxes leading to deficits. OK

Thank god libertarians don’t run government, whose policy seem to be that tax cuts cannot happen without corresponding spending cuts. Spending cuts won’t happen as long as the Democrat party exists, so no tax cut could ever occur. Ever.

“No tax cuts and forever immigration” LP 2028

[SCOTUS gave JeffSarc a big sad]

The obvious solution is to dispose of the democrat party, and to eliminate the hardcore Marxists.

[Fat Rush Limpcock (King of the Conservatives)]

STFU you goose-stepping redneck.

[InsaneTrollLogic (Muting Sarc like he mutes us)]

Project much, Pluggo? By the way, did you manage to get your Sarah Palin's Buttplug account banned again?

[SCOTUS gave JeffSarc a big sad]

With the paywall he can’t just make a new account without paying. And he’s probably broke, like the other leftist indigents here.

[SCOTUS gave JeffSarc a big sad]

Your party are outright terrorists now. There is an easy moral and legal justification to get rid of you people. If you want a civil war, which you will lose horribly, you are well down that road.

I hope you do. You need to go. And I don’t really care if you choose to choke our rivers with your dead in the process.

[Neutral not Neutered]

Get more fiscal conservatives elected

[LIBtranslator]

Enslave them uppity bitches!

[I, Woodchipper]

The key is to understand that the overspending, the debt, the rush toward insolvency, is going to happen to no matter what. You cannot stop it.

The main question is did you prefer to spend eleventy billion on transgender re-education forced on you by childless harpies waving black lives matter flags... or do you want to control the border and get rid of disparate impact lawsuits?

You can't have both. You have to pick one apparently.

[MollyGodiva]

"The main question is did you prefer to spend eleventy billion on transgender re-education forced on you by childless harpies waving black lives matter flags."

This.

[SCOTUS gave JeffSarc a big sad]

Yes, we know what you want Tony.

[Vernon Depner]

the overspending, the debt, the rush toward insolvency, is going to happen to no matter what. You cannot stop it.

I've been saying that here for several years. This can't be fixed. It's too late. We're Thelma and Louise headed for the cliff. Enjoy our fake prosperity as long as our military can make it last. The rest of the world is tiring of our bullying and will soon dump us. I'm glad I'm not young.

[Uomo Del Ghiaccio]

The Big Beautiful Bill might be the very best that we can expect to be passed out of Washington DC, which is a very depressing thought. It does not seem that they even tried very hard.

It's starting to feel like someone has real dirt on Trump and not the phony bs that the democrats keep trotting out. I say this with his recent actions such as bombing Iran, his cabinet minions claiming that Jeffrey Epstein didn't have a client list and there is nothing suspicious about his death.

Full disclosure that I have never voted for Trump, don't really like Trump, am very suspicious of Trump, and despise the Republicans and abhor the Democrats. Believe that effectively we have a uni-party with two warring deep-state factions, that our government is corrupt to the hilt.

[JesseAz (Prime Meanster of Sarcasia)]

And yet Trump has done more to destroy the deep state with usaid and other cuts than any president ever. Such a weird comment to blame Trump for the squish GOPe.

[Social Justice is neither]

How long did that war with Iran go, or would you prefer nuclear terrorists?

As for Epstein, my bet is the blackmail and cause of the disappearance is the scale of damage revelation would cause. Given the longstanding nature of the honeytrap operation you could easily see a large portion of Fortune 500 and Wall Street execs suddenly under fire with the associated stock hits and who wants to be responsible for wiping out half of everyone's savings? Doesn't excuse the cover up but could explain it without direct threats or blackmail.

[AT]

The Insanity of Trump's [Insert Trump-Related Whatever].

FTFY.

[ruffsoft]

The original and authentic libertarians were socialists, and in 1971, the corporate stooges hijacked the name forming the Libertarian Party, on the premise that property rights, which reflect the privilege of the power elites, were primary, with human rights lagging behind. Current "Libertarians" don't like to hear this but it's true.

Stripped of its RAndian dogmas, current anti-socialist libertarianism is about enhancing the power of the private powers such as corporations, by shrinking the one power that can both stop private seizure of wealth or simply taking it over in what is rightfully called corporate fascism. In the final tally , the fight against libertarian socialism, is a fight on behalf of the tyranny of the minority, the plutocracy which runs things. Where do "libertarians" stand on the genocide in Gaza? NOt a peep. Instead, the great threat is a democratic socialists who wants free buses, as tho school buses should be free! This wild, radical, and dangerous dystopian fantasy threatens not only taxi drivers but also the vast fleets of private buses that take our kids to school.

[AT]

The original and authentic libertarians were socialists

Put on the nose.

[LIBtranslator]

An officious anonymous commie sock tells us how it rilly was without ever having read the platform. How typical.

[minus the clever name]

So, Is this guy with the bad taste in clothes and hair going to be around when we see the outcome. Naaah, he'll be reviewing the remake of Car 54. Just like the politicians he criticizes, he makes a big whale spout over something and by the time he is shown wrong, he's in the Horse Latitudes.