00:00Welcome back to State of the Union. Democrats are promising a fight over President Trump's agenda.
00:05What will that actually look like? Here with me now is Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut.
00:10Thank you for being here, sir. You just heard my conversation with the White House Budget Director, Russ Vogt,
00:15about the President's tax and spending bill in front of the Senate, which is something you're going to be dealing with this coming week.
00:22What is your response?
00:23What is your response?
00:53I assume that that's not true. It's just unreal the amount of gaslighting this administration is doing.
00:59I mean, it is a fact. The difference between passing this bill and not passing this bill is the addition of $3 trillion to the national debt.
01:09And that's not me saying that. That's the credit rating agencies that impact our entire economy.
01:15Moody's just downgraded the United States credit. They didn't do that under Joe Biden.
01:19They did that under Donald Trump because they look at this bill.
01:22They look at the attack on the middle class and the diminution in spending power that will come with it for the middle class and the deficits.
01:29And they say that, if implemented, this bill is going to make the American economy much weaker.
01:34So this bill is what it is.
01:36It is just an attempt to enrich Donald Trump's billionaire class, all his Mar-a-Lago friends, his corporate friends, at the expense of ordinary Americans.
01:44And they should just tell the truth about it.
01:46You mentioned Moody's because you mentioned that.
01:47I do want to ask you, my understanding is that the downgrade of the credit rating is about long-term debt.
01:55Democrats and Republicans have contributed to that.
02:01Well, but they're making that determination now because they are looking at Donald Trump's plan to add this massive new amount onto the debt.
02:09And let's also be clear that, you know, during the Biden administration, his big legislative achievements outside of the context of COVID relief actually declined the deficit,
02:21whether it was the Inflation Reduction Act or the infrastructure bill, which had significant new revenue in it as well.
02:29Overall, those bills reduced, not added to the debt.
02:32So Moody's made this determination now, rather than during the Biden administration, because they see this coming bill as one of the biggest additions to debt
02:42and one of the biggest attacks on the sort of middle-class consumer power in this country in recent memory.
02:50Senator, the your colleague from Iowa, Joni Ernst, told voters at a town hall, quote, we are all going to die.
02:59That was in response to concerns from constituents about some of what you're talking about, about these cuts to Medicaid.
03:06Then she has kind of doubled down.
03:08She had a bit of a sarcastic apology.
03:11Watch this.
03:14I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that, yes, we are all going to perish from this earth.
03:27So I apologize.
03:31And I'm really, really glad that I did not have to bring up the subject of the tooth fairy as well.
03:39What's your response?
03:42Yeah, I mean, Joni's a colleague, somebody I've worked with, but it does tell you a lot about this bill.
03:48I think everybody in that audience knows that they're going to die.
03:53They would just rather die in old age at 85 or 90 instead of dying at 40.
03:59And the reality is that when you lose your health care, you are much more at risk of early death.
04:06And when rural hospitals close because of this bill, when drug treatment clinics close in Iowa and rural America because of this bill,
04:14more people will die at a younger age.
04:16So the reality is this bill is about life and death.
04:20And for what?
04:22I mean, I guess that's the problem here for many of us is that they're cutting Medicaid,
04:26throwing 15 million people off their health care in order to fund a tax cut for the super wealthy and for corporations.
04:35That is just fundamentally immoral.
04:38It's immoral.
04:38It's unethical.
04:39I don't understand why they're doing it, except that Donald Trump only really knows billionaires.
04:46He only knows corporate CEOs.
04:48And so his instructions to Republicans are reward them, help them and no one else.
04:53I wish Joni and others saw the immorality of what they're doing.
04:57I do want to ask on a different topic about the president and the fact that he hosted a private dinner for top investors of his cryptocurrency last month.
05:07I know you've been very outspoken about the president's use of his meme coin, calling it corruption on steroids and more.
05:15But I want to talk about the consequence of Congress, really, not legislating regulations about this crypto and so many other issues.
05:27Is there some I'm not saying that Congress is culpable for what the president is doing, but on issues like this, does there need to be regulation?
05:41Absolutely.
05:41Absolutely. And we have a chance right now in the United States Senate to stop the president's corruption.
05:48Not coincidentally, we are debating in the Senate a bill to regulate cryptocurrency.
05:54In fact, one of the very cryptocurrencies that Donald Trump is issuing as part of his corruption scheme.
06:00The problem is the existing version of that bill exempts the president from the ethics requirements.
06:06It says that it's unethical for me to issue or market a stable coin, but it's OK for the president to do it.
06:13That's not something any Democrat should vote for.
06:16We have a chance to demand to amend that bill before final passage to make sure that the president is treated just like every other member of Congress,
06:25just like every other member of his administration.
06:26So, yes, if Congress passes a bill in the next few weeks that exempts the president of the United States from the ethics requirements around the issuance of cryptocurrency,
06:39then, yes, we will have no one to blame but ourselves for this, at least this specific kind of corruption.
06:46So, we have a chance to get this right in the United States Senate this coming week,
06:52and I hope the Democrats and Republicans can stand up and say it's just not right for the president to essentially be asking for people,
07:01including foreigners, to put money in his pocket in order to get them access to the White House.
07:06That is not OK for a member of Congress, for a mayor.
