President Donald Trump defended his “Big, Beautiful, Bill” during a Fox News interview broadcast on Saturday night, claiming “it’s not going to cause death, it’s going to keep people alive” even as millions are estimated to lose health coverage under the legislation signed into law on July 4.
About 11.8 million people are at risk of losing their health insurance, according to the Congressional Budget Office, but not all at once. The legislation cuts federal health care programs over the course of a decade to remove close to $1 trillion from Medicaid, Obamacare, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
Earlier this month, the House voted 218 to 214 to pass the bill after Vice President JD Vance had to break a tie in the Senate to get it passed. The cuts to healthcare benefits were made to pay for tax cuts that mainly benefit the wealthy, an extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which were set to sunset at the end of 2025.
The CBO estimates that the bill will add $3.4 trillion to federal deficits over the next 10 years, a forecast rejected by many congressional Republicans and the White House.
Medicaid provides health care sponsored by the government to low-income and disabled Americans. The new legislation enacts work requirements for some able-bodied adults and more eligibility checks.
The president called on Republicans to “explain the bill because it’s so big and so good,” while blasting Democrats for only doing one thing well — “complain.”
“I tell Republicans, you have to speak positively about it,” the president said in an interview with his daughter-in-law, Fox News’ Lara Trump.
“The Democrats, they only do one thing good, and that’s complain, and they say it’s going to cause death, and this and that … it’s a sound bite. Somebody gave them a sound bite,” Trump added.
“It’s not going to cause death. It’s going to keep people alive, and it’s going to make our country successful,” he said.
Trump claimed that the bill has already led to major investments.
“We are getting investment because of that bill. We’re having investment made in this country that nobody’s ever believed. We’re up to close to $15 trillion,” he claimed.
“We’re having car companies come in and build their plants here, which they wouldn’t have even thought about. They would have never done it,” he added.
The president went on to call AI “the big hot thing,” claiming that trillions of dollars were being spent in the industry.
“They wouldn’t have done that without what we just did last week,” he said.
