On this episode in each world. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act reduces taxes, reduces or increases spending for various federal government programs, increases the statutory debt limit, and addresses agencies and programs throughout the federal government. It is known as a reconciliation bill and includes legislations submitted by eleven
House committees. The Act passed the House on May twenty second, with two hundred and fifteen yea's, two hundred and fifteen o's and one member voting president, but as narrow margin as you can get. The Act is now being considered by the Senate, Andrew's receiving some criticism from Elon Musk and others. Here to talk about the bill, I am really pleased to welcome my guest, Matthew Henderson. He is
the interim Chief Government Affairs Officer at America First Policy Institute. Matthew, welcome, and thank you for joining.
Me on Newsworld. Absolutely, it's a pleasure to be here.
Would you just start by talking about the work you did would Save America Coalition to help kill the Biden Build Back Better Bill in twenty twenty one, and how that led you into the work you've done over the last three years on one big, beautiful bill.
Absolutely, I'm happy to taking a step back. If we remember what was going on in twenty twenty one, America First Policy Institute was just getting started and the Biden administration, who had just come into office, was looking at passing their agenda. And it's almost like they took their entire agenda and they put it into legislative build text. They passed one reconciliation bill rather quickly. The other bill, it was the Build Back Better Agenda. This was a monster
of a bill. This was introduced early on in the year, and as America First Policy Institute was building up as a think tank, we were attracting talent from the first Trump administration, and a lot of folks were coming together and watching this process unfold in front of us. And this bill, there's really no other way to explain it other than a big government socialism bill. This bill would have fundamentally reshaped the society that we lived in, turning
it into a socialist society. And there was tremendous momentum against this bill. And as the process moved along, I came on board with AFPI in about October and I was hired to run a conservative coalition of a number of organizations. At the time, we had about sixty organizations, conservative, bisically conscious organizations and groups that decided to come together and really make an effort to take a stand against
this bill. There were about six organizations initially that came together, and as time went on, I was tasked with the responsibility of putting together a campaign identifying some of the worst provisions that were in this bill.
And it's no.
Wonder it was such a bad bill. It couldn't get traction in Congress. It wasn't moving, and that granted us an opportunity and a window to highlight some of these horrible provisions that were in this bill. And ultimately it came down to the end of December and a lot of the work that we had done in highlighting some of these issues, issues that you've written about before, mister Speaker, and I think you can remember that time very clearly of what was going on, because it was outrageous some
of the things that were being proposed. Eventually made it to December and we're able to successfully kill that portion of the bill. It came down to what was going on with Senator Mansion in West Virginia. We were able to simply talk about how this bill would have decimated energy jobs. This bill would have raised gas prices. This bill would have outsourced jobs to China and the Communist Party of China. This bill would have essentially condoned the use of slave labor of what was going on with
the weaker population that was in China. And we just brought those issues to the voters. They spoke up and they told Center Mansion, absolutely, don't vote for this bill. And he held a press conference saying that he was not going to support the bill, and that was the epitaph of the Build Back Better Bill. So we successfully were able to stop that bill. Unfortunately, it reared its
head again. But the reality is we were able to save about four point five trillion dollars in taxpayers savings, and that's something pretty remarkable.
It seems to me that the brilliance of creating with Brooke Rollins and Linda McMahon taking the lead and thinking through and creating the America First Policy Institute and bringing together an extraordinary level of talent who had already had experience in the first Trump administration. Describe for folks the impact of America First Policy Institute and how you saw it operating and the things that was doing well.
Coming into the organization, I had spent time on campaigns, I had spent time working in the House as a staffer and then the Senate as a staffer, and people were expecting the president to have a second term, and a lot of the minds that came together that came out of that first administration, there was a lot of work that went into a second agenda and how that agenda was going to look in the president's second term and when we weren't afforded to have a second term.
A lot of work went into that agenda. And Brooke Rollins, who was our CEO and president at the time, and Linda McMahon, who's now Secretary of Education, so of course Brooke Rollins' Secretary of Agriculture, and mister Cudlow came together
as well. Really recognized that there was an opportunity to take that agenda and some of the issues that they were working on, and to still further the momentum of the movement, to keep that momentum going because there was a desire to retain staff, to keep people engaged, to keep the movement engaged. You know, the president started something and nobody knew that he was going to run again at that time. But we knew that the ideas were powerful.
We knew that the ideas needed to continue. We recognized that the ideas needed research and they needed to be built out. So as you look back and kind of see how America First first started, it was in a small room in northern Virginia where Broo Browns was head of the Domestic Policy Council in the White House. Several others who were in the West Wing went from the West Wing to a small office in Virginia just to
continue this cause and movement. And it's kind of astonishing that a handful of staffers, I want to say, maybe about ten or fifteen individuals who were in that room grew into an organization of over two hundred strong just over a few short years. And one of the things that we first published was the America First Agenda. This was a collection of about one hundred and ninety six policies that were recommendations that we took to members' offices, that we took to the Senate, and we kept those
ideas alive. We kept those ideas moving forward, and a lot of that paved the way to the policies that we're seeing now. The policies that we're seen in this One Big Beautiful Bill really originated from that agenda that the President first came up with in his first term.
I really believe that without the hard work of the American First Policy Institute, that it would have been impossible to have had the last five months moving as rapidly as they did. That you really have a clear coming together, if you will, of the ideas, the people, and also the practicality. It wasn't just a think tank in the abstract sense. These are people who had been in government, understood government, and wanted to force real change, not just
write interesting papers. Now you sort of reverse your role. You played a significant role in defeating the Biden Bill, and now you're playing a significant role in trying to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill. How does it feel to have flipped from opposition yelling no to governing majority trying to find a way to say yes.
It's a little bit of a learning curve. I remember when we first kind of started on this process and when the sequencing of issues was going on, and you look at what can be included in what can't. It's not every day that you get the opportunity under unity of governance to have an opportunity like this to pass
one big, beautiful bill. So the mindset was for so long we had these policies that we had to highlight how bad they were for the last four years to suddenly a shift and voters spoke very loud and clear last year in November, overwhelmingly rejecting a lot of those radical policy ideas. And now we're put in a position of governance, and so instead of highlighting the worst of the issues, you want to highlight really the best of
the issues. And we know that this is a hard task, it's a long road, and that members who are working on these issues in the House and the Senate need to be supported for their work. So it's a shift from really attacking to supporting. And I remember the first time I was in a leadership office and we were talking through some of these issues, and it's important to remember that this is a conservative approach and that we're not looking to attack, we're looking to support and highlight
and educate. So it's a little bit more on the education side instead of the highlighting some of the other.
Things going way up to say a fifty thousand foot level, how would you describe to an average, everyday American the difference in the future between this bill passing and this bill failing to pass.
This bill is our one shot. To put it in perspective, This bill is part of a larger plan. This bill is part of the president's strategy to accelerate economic growth. This is one pillar to that plan, and it needs to happen. Our spending is too high. Our spending needs to come down. We also need to cut taxes to accelerate growth. This bill does all of that. This bill includes more in it that will actually create American jobs, fat and middle class wallets.
That's one fundamental.
Way to think about this bill, and that's the approach we need, and we need the policies to achieve that in cutting taxes. Expanding the base is a key fundamental way of achieving that growth.
The tax side of this is pretty complicated. Can you sort of walk us through the key elements, starting, of course, with the fact that if we don't extend the twenty seventeen tax cuts, we will have a massive tax increase and virtually every American is opposed to increasing taxes.
Absolutely.
A good way to think about it, and of course it changes based on where you live, how large your family size is. But a good way to think about it is if this wasn't extended. Of course, we're talking about the President's tax cuts, the Trump tax cuts, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that was put in place and enacted in twenty seventeen. If it was not extended, if this is something that doesn't pass, that means families will lose between of a range about seven hundred to
about seventy two hundred dollars per year. Now that's based on family size and of course where they actually live, but that is a sizable amount of money. And for families living, for example, in Arizona, they could see a loss of close to four thousand dollars in take home pay. According to our own analysis at AFPI. This is something that we don't need in this economy right now. And when I speak to the economic growth side of it,
we have an economy that's growing. I don't know if you saw the latest numbers coming out of the Atlanta FED, but the number was three point eight. Now what that means is already our economy is growing twice as fast. The Q two numbers came out, and our economy is growing twice as fast. Based on everything that the President's doing on his trade agenda, and based on the anticipation
of this bill as it moves through Congress. Already we're seeing a lot of the positive effects of some of the policies that are going through right now.
I've been talking about the combination of what he's doing with tariffs to make it more desirable to manufacturing the United States, what he's doing with this bill, and what he's done just as a good marketer. I mean, in his one trip to Saudi Arabia, guitar and the UAE he picked up in four days a billion dollars in orders for American products and a trillion dollar commitment to invest in the United States economy. Now, the momentum of those kind of deals has to mean I think by
next summer we could be in a Trump boom. But the key to that is to pass this bill. And it's an extraordinarily complicated bill. Can you walk through just some of the provisions that people need to be aware of that give you a sense of the scale of effort going into this.
Yes, absolutely, and I think really the best way to describe it is Americans are going to support this bill, and we're already seeing them. More and more they learn about that, the more supportive they are because it spends less government money, it prevents one of the largest taxis in history, which is the tax savings that I was
talking about a little bit earlier. And of course, it supercharges economic growth and that means more investment coming into this country, which creates jobs, which grows jobs, and creates fatter paychecks, which is something that everybody likes to see. I think some of the important components to the one. It stops maligned foreign actors from undercutting our American workers. And what I mean by saying that is that it secures the border. We've heard about border security for years.
Voters are beginning to recognize that when the president says he's going to secure the border, he actually means it, and he has the policies that can show action on that. This bill provides extra funding so that he can finish building the wall higher than necessary to personnel to put in place to make sure that border is secure, and also invest in technology in order to keep that border secure. This helps him continue to fulfill the largest deportation effort,
which is something that the President has talked about. We keep seeing these stories about some of the hatred and some of the unrest that's going on on college campuses, which is something that's just outrageous to think about it in this beautiful country of ours. That's happening. That has to do with some of these visas that haven't been updated in such a long time, and it's maligned foreign actors who are in a lot of these places and
they're not actually Americans. Another one is this bill actually keeps more money in the pockets of every American. I've talked about the tax component, but when we see things like no tax on tips or no overtime pay, an enhanced deduction for seniors, no tax on car loan interest, and of course the ever famous no death tax, these are things that are all focused on growing the economy and keeping more money in americans paychecks. We also see some other provisions in here that are meant to empower
parents and really protect women and children. I don't think the long term play is that there will be men playing in girls' sports, but we want to make sure that we're able to restore American values, which is a key pillar for change and something that we need to get back to and something that voters spoke loud and
clearly to support. It stops taxpayer funds for child sex mutilation, which is something that's astonishing that has gone on for such a long period of time, but youre speaker, for the longest time, Medicaid dollars have actually been going to fund some of these surgeries. This bill puts a stop to that. We see some other things in here that are very good for education as well, in terms of putting parents' rights over their children's education again, we have
expanded educational options for school choice. What that means is there's going to be more support for things like homeschooling. That means there's going to be more support for things that are alternatives to public education but doesn't erode from public education. We also see certain things that just need to be restored, like DEI or radical gender ideology that has really penetrated a lot of schools. So certain funding elements are really reformed and put back to where they
should be. And we also see some very unique things like the pro life enhanced Adoption tax credit. What that means is that for families who want to adopt, that means you can get five thousand dollars off five thousand dollars refund in terms of the costs and fees that you're actually moving forward with an adoption. And as we know, adoptions can be incredibly expensive. So this is a step in the right direction towards our values. And I can
keep going on and on and on. There's actually a list I know that we've seen come out of all the latest and greatest things, but that's just a little bit of some of the great things that are in this bill.
The one thing I do want to focus on just from it as I understand it, on the tax zone, it's actually very favorable to small business and significantly help small businesses.
Does there's a number of pro business things that are in this bill, full expensing that is able to help manufacturing. This bill is pro manufacturing, it's pro startup business. It is some very unique things that the American First Policy Institute has spent a lot of time on. Are these opportunity zones. We've heard about these opportunity zones perhaps before, but what these are are certain tax zones and structures that we're up for renewal next year. These were renewed
and continue to be put in place. It's their pro growth element, so they allow for reinvestment in economically challenged areas urban areas, so it allows for reinvestment in our community, and it's a good alternative for businesses to invest in and also reinvest in our cities. There's also other pro growth tax reforms, and that key word there is pro growth. We just want to be really focused on growing the
economy in a positive way. There's a lot of pro growth reforms to boost up economic growth, like small business exemptions for manufacturing, which I've already mentioned, and just a number of provisions that actually helped that regard and push the economic pro growth side forward.
By the way, in terms of being pro growth, it seems to me that one of the great problems in passing this bill is that the Congressional Budget Office is just ridiculously left wing and refus us to score economic growth. That if you actually take what will probably happen based on the Reagan years we did when I was speaker, this bill should get us up to at least three or three and a half percent growth, And I think
they're scoring it at like one point two. So what that does for our listeners is it means all of the extra revenue that would come in because the economy gets bigger, more people go to work, more people get pay raises, more companies make a profit, All of those things help pay for the bill. And consistently, the Congressional Budget Office has refused to score the scale of change that occurs when you get the right kind of positive
pro growth policies. And it seems to me that that's one of the things Congress should fix is that the Congressional Budget Office is very left wing and is five hundred and twenty five bureaucrats who specialize in underrating how good our reforms are and really underrating how effective our tax cuts are. What's your thought on that?
I think you're absolutely right, and that's why i wanted to lead with that surprising news. I'm not going to say it's surprising because it's a realistic approach. The Atlantica Federal Reserve came out with their number for the accelerated growth based on Q two this year alone at three point eight percent, So that means our economy is already growing twice as fast and in terms of the CBO three times as fast.
I'm going to go on X and Truth Social and ask the question, what was the Congressional Budget Office score for the second quarter.
I think it was right around one point two percent or something ridiculous.
So if you just adjust how wrong they were for the entire bill, you literally pay for the bill by the scale of economic growth, which they refuse to admit exists. It's a fascinating story. Let me ask you, though, I mean the one glyphs that's come up in the last few days. We can't talk about the bill without confronting the set on. We get this writing on X by Eon Musk, who says, quote, I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork filled congressional
spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it. You know you did wrong. You know it. Now I have to tell him. My first reaction was he was off his meds, and I don't quite know what he's doing. But if you were debating him, how would you answer all those charges?
Well, it's a little confusing.
I guess I'm perplexed because this bill actually reverses the spending cursed plague. There's been a spending curse on DC. And you know this more than anybody else in this country. But DC has been on a trajectory of more and more and more and more spending. It's continuous. This bill actually delivers the largest deficit reduction in nearly thirty years,
with one point six trillion in mandatory savings. To put that in layman's terms, it's the largest single reduction in spending in Congress's history in terms of the level of mandatory spending that this bill actually cuts. So that is astonishing. And I don't think that no tax on tips, or no tax on overtime, or things like saving costs for seniors are elements that would be considered pork. You know, pork is bringing something back for enriching that wealthiest one
percent of people in this country. And that is something that the bill Back Better Bill did. That bill was riddled with special interest savings. I don't understand how this bill something like finishing the President's border wall keeping Americans safe, I don't understand how that's pork. I don't understand how this bill protects medicaid for Americans who truly need it. I don't think that that would be something that would
be considered pork. On top of saving taxpayers in some cases, I've mentioned some of those numbers before, but in some cases it's close to fourteen thousand dollars in take home pay. So it keeps going on and on and on and Plus the bill includes some recommendations that even Elon Musk
put in himself in terms of the Doze cuts. Now that has to do with a separate companion package to this, but that nine point four billion dollars in savings that Doze initially identified, that's something that's going to be a companion of this bill. So he's essentially trashing in his own work. I guess I'm a little perplexed at what's going on.
I'm curious. You have, I think, very significant bill. It has lots of pieces in it. Everybody can find some reason to be a no, but if you're going to govern, you also have to find a reason to be a yes. I'm a little surprised that some of the members who go bouncing back and forth, but it strikes me that it's really central to having the economy grow and to begin to bend the spending curve that this bill passed.
I say this from a background. When I was Speaker, we balanced the federal budget for four years in a row for the only time in the last one hundred years. So we have some sense of how to do this, and I think that this actually helps us move in the right direction. I think people need to confront this. This is one piece of a series of things that need to happen over the next three or four years.
And I think that if you do those things, you're in fact going to dramatically reduce the deficit and ultimately get to a balanced budget, which we proved in the nineties. You could actually do it. It's not a theory. Well, what's your thinking about the notion that this is step one of a series of steps that have to be taken.
That's exactly right. This is step one to a larger plan.
You know.
Step one is fat and middle class while it's passing, this bill delivers the tax cuts that we need to stimulate the economy. Step two is aggressive deregulation. That's something that the president's been doing since day one, breaking down the barriers making it easier to invest in this country
across every sector. These regulatory burdens of I need to file this form, I need to do it by this date, and I need to comply with the myriad of different agencies that are around Washington, d C. Or within state government that needs to be deregulated. It needs to be easier to invest, it needs to be easier to get things done. That deregulation is continuing to occur. Then, another important component of this plan is re establish American energy dominance.
That's another component to this plan to accelerate economic growth. And a great speech I like to point folks back to as a speech that or a conversation between Larry Cudlow and Secretary Besant at the Economic Club of New York where they were talking about what does it take to accelerate the economy, and they were laying this plan out and it really crystallizes exactly what the potential of
our country. And when we talk about some of those economic growth rates, what that means is that three percent forecasted or that three point eight percent forecasted economic growth.
We're talking about trillions of dollars here, or you know, billions of dollars here, or some of these small arguments that are being had but what that actually means is that's ten trillion dollars of economic growth that comes into our country that would be created if this plan has followed, and that really brings the affordable abundance that the President talks about that we had AFPI have talked about of a plan to bring incredible growth to this country to
realize our full potential, and we have every opportunity to do it, and this is one step in that larger process.
I've participated twice in first helping with the Reagan three year tax cut and the deregulation of the Reagan era, and then the work that we did with the Contract with America and our tax cuts and the impact of economic growth and the impact of things like reforming the welfare system. So I know this can be done. I want to ask about one last thing which I've begun to work on, and that is I was at the announcement in the White House of the Make America Healthy
Again Report on Children's Health. It is terrifying how badly the health of American children have decayed in the last twenty years. It was startling to me. If you're a fiscal conservative, you really want to help accelerate getting to a healthy America, both because it's so much better for
children to grow up healthy. If we could get back to say, the kind of health we had for young people in nineteen sixty or nineteen seventy, the amount we would save by moving from what is now a sick care system, well you only take care of you once you're sick, to a genuine health care system where we actually try to minimize the likelihood of you ever getting sick. So we're not saving money by cutting spending or by
bureaucratic controls. We're actually saving money by having people be healthier. And my guess is, when you realize that healthcare in America is about eighteen percent of the economy, yes, is we would save at least four percent of the gross domestic product by getting to make America healthy again goals. That is more than enough savings to balance the budget
and start to pay down the national debt. And I'm just curious what your reaction is to the idea that we need to approach very profound shifts from sick care to healthcare takes seriously making America healthy again, and that it has both a human component that's enormously important, but it also has a really powerful fiscal component.
What you said and what's been this Maha movement, I think is critical to not just every individual in their personal health, in the health of our families, but also the future of our country. It was President Kennedy who put in place a concept of gym class and establishing that concept, so it really comes full circle that Secretary
Kennedy is also putting something else in place. And when you look at that eighteen percent of GDP of what we spend on health healthcare, it seems like there's an issue in this country of we take those whatever is that largest percentage, and we just throw money at it. Well, we don't understand it, so we're going to throw more money at it. We need to stop that trend, and
we need to start taking responsibility for ourselves. And it starts with a choice of choosing to live healthier and making those choices available, and that's what the start of the Maha movement actually is doing and putting those things in motion.
It seems to me that when we think about the next phase after this bill, that having the right kind of steps towards making America healthy again maybe the biggest single step we can take towards balancing the federal budget.
That's absolutely correct. I couldn't set it better myself or anyone else for that matter.
Well, in that cheerful note, Matthew, I want to thank you for joining me. Our listeners can learn more about the work you're doing at America First Policy Institute by visiting your website at America Firstpolicy dot com, which we'll also have on our show page. And I really really appreciate you taking the time to talk with us.
Absolutely humbled, Thank.
You, Thank you to my guest Matthew Henderson. You can learn more about the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on our show page at newtsworld dot com. News World is produced by ginglis Stree sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guarnsey Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks
to the team at Gingershtree sixty. If you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcast and both rate us with five stars and give us a review so others can learn what it's all about. Right now, listeners of Newtsworld can sign up for my three free weekly columns at ginglerstree sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm Newt Gingrich. This is Nutsworld.