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House Passes Trump Agenda Megabill. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired July 03, 2025 - 14:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[14:30:00]

JACKIE KUCINICH, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I think you're right, but I just, I don't know how much folks in the White House are sitting there, you know, biting their fingernails about that prospect.

ELI STOKOLS, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, POLITICO: Well, he's expended so much political capital on this, right? Like, all of the buttons he could press have been pressed for this particular bill. So, because, to your point, a lot of it's in here.

This is kind of a, you know, turducken of Trump priorities.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Who doesn't love a turducken? Or at least the idea of it in July.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Nice, nice turducken.

KEILAR: That sounds terrible.

KUCINICH: Stick a smuggler in it.

KEILAR: OK, that might work.

KUCINICH: Very festive.

KEILAR: Right, very festive. OK, so as we do look towards this summer, and Republicans are kind of limiting their plans for a town hall, a lot of them for town halls, which, I mean, you can understand the optics of what a town hall might look like if they go ahead with those, right?

But if they limit them, then are they also in a pickle, Jackie? Because what does that say about them, you know, if they've taken this vote, they succeed in this vote, then they go out for the summer and they're not selling this huge priority, this huge victory. What will that look like?

KUCINICH: It's a really good question, because they have been warned by the NRCC and suggested that they don't do it because they worry about people yelling at them and perhaps the optics of that. But on the flip side, you're right. Perhaps they'll ask -- they'll rely on the president to do that.

He's not exactly someone who is hesitant about going on the road. So potentially that will fall into -- the ball will fall into his court. But we'll have to wait and see. It's a great question.

SANCHEZ: Let's actually listen in to the House floor. It looks like from the applause that they've just passed and finalized this bill. Let's listen.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I wish to change a vote.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Here we go.

REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA), HOUSE SPEAKER: On this vote, the yeas are 218, the nays are 214. The motion is adopted.

(CHEERING)

CROWD CHANTING: USA, USA, USA, USA, USA, USA.

JOHNSON: Without objection, the motion to reconsider is laid on the table.

SANCHEZ: And with chants of USA, USA Republicans securing arguably the biggest legislative win of President Trump's two terms, the final vote, 218 yay, 214 nay. Republicans getting this done and sending it now to the White House. Let's actually go there with CNN's Kristen Holmes.

Kristen, I know the president was busy earlier with Edan Alexander, the American hostage that was released by Hamas earlier this year. Do you know if this has been watched closely by the White House or was it presumed that it was going to pass?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I mean, Boris, it's been watched incredibly closely. We saw this into the night last night. We know that President Trump was working in the phones after midnight.

We saw him posting on Truth Social, essentially sounding exasperated. Why can't we get this done? This is a no-brainer. Republicans need to vote on this.

They have been watching, they being the White House and President Trump himself, every single step of the way. Trump himself has been involved in this process with the speaker, with congressional leadership, but also with having conversations with House members.

And I just want to take one step back before I go into the process here. This could not be a bigger deal for President Trump and for this administration. They believe that this bill really encapsulates everything President Trump wants to do with his agenda, that his legacy is going to be sealed in some of the items that are in this bill.

And that's why it was so important to President Trump to get this across the finish line. It has been something that has been weighing on the White House as they have been negotiating, having conversations, courting House members for months. I mean, I was told two days ago that they felt like they had these long, month-long relationships with House members that they've been trying to address their problems for some time now. Now, the other problems with the bill, just to be clear.

And so, one of the other parts of this that I think might go unnoticed is how much this time, this second term for President Trump is different than the first term. They have figured out in that four years that President Trump was not in office how to work the system in their favor. That was not something we saw during the chaotic first term.

And, you know, in the last couple days we've been talking about this nonstop, this idea that, oh, is the bill on the verge of collapse? And every time I spoke to White House officials, they said they like their odds. They think that they are feeling optimistic.

[14:35:00]

And when I ask why, they just point me to what we've seen for the past six months, which was any time President Trump has wanted to get something done in Congress, even with people opposing it, almost every time he has been able to strong-arm something through the Senate, through the House, that he wanted to get done in terms of his agenda.

Now, part of that is there is a fear that President Trump, his team, will primary some of these House members. We saw that last night when he was posting online. He was kind of tapping into that fear. We also heard him directly say it when it came to Representative Thomas Massey or Senator Thom Tillis.

But then there's also what we saw them doing behind the scenes, which was arriving at these meetings, the White House, with talking points for congressional leadership, for these House members who had serious concerns about parts of the bill.

I spoke to one House member who was a no before they got to the White House. When they left the White House, they were a yes. And all the strong-arming, all the threats, all of that, in their mind, after the conversation with the White House team and going through all the aspects of the bill, they came to that conclusion on their own.

They said that they were the ones who believed in the bill, even though they had been saying publicly that they were not sure about that. It was something that was very fascinating to hear. They understood how to talk to these House members in a way that they didn't the first term.

KEILAR: It's really interesting. I mean, what you're almost saying there, Kristen, is it's sort of like the president and those around him, they're effectively the majority whip, right? They are whipping these votes and twisting arms to bring everyone home.

HOLMES: Brianna, I don't know if that was directed at me, but I did lose IFB for about two minutes. If you could repeat that question.

KEILAR: It was more an observation.

HOLMES: I was trying to slyly call back in but I wasn't --

KEILAR: Didn't even notice. You are very, very smooth there, Kristen. OK, so -- but he's effectively the majority whip, right? I mean, just how he whips these votes, calls people over, it sort of evokes that -- it sort of evoked that art that is very, you know, it's difficult, honestly, on The Hill to do. But he's really sort of mastered how to do it and to use his clout with the action of just targeting each individual member. And you see here some of them taking selfies as they are celebrating this moment.

He really has whipped these votes, Kristen.

HOLMES: Yes, and it's not just President Trump. I do think we need to be very clear here. They are using every lever that they have.

We know that Senator J.D. Vance has relationships with some of these senators. That is how the bill got through the Senate as well. He was having one-on-one meetings with Rand Paul, who, again, didn't vote for it.

But also he was the last person who met with Lisa Murkowski before her critical yes vote. He was working every relationship he had. And it wasn't just him. It was all of the administration, all of the White House, their team up there every single day.

And when it comes to the endgame here, which, of course, for some of these House members is getting reelected, for others it's getting this bill passed. It's their agenda, their legacy. I do want to read you one thing that someone told me this morning. And I wrote it down because it goes to show you where his power is.

And this was from a lawmaker who told me, Trump is in the strongest position of anyone in generations probably ever in terms of impacting primaries for Congress. So anyone coming from a hard-right district, which is most or likely most of this conference, will have to deal with that.

And he's just not going to tolerate people going against his agenda. And that was in the mind, in the back of the minds, of a lot of these members when they were casting this vote.

We saw there was this whole scramble last night, I believe it was like midnight or 11, where they were saying, OK, we're not going to vote until tomorrow. We've decided we're telling them we're not voting until tomorrow. Trump posts on Truth Social, we have the votes, we're going to vote now.

Next thing we know, it's going into a vote. I mean, it's -- he's controlling the narrative, even from just being here at the White House while they're all up on The Hill. And some of that is the way that his team has worked the system.

Others, the fact that he has this enormous amount of power over the Republican Party, something that we really haven't seen from a leader in quite some time, to have control over your whole party like that. We certainly did not see it in Trump's first term. There was a lot of factions of the Republican Party.

We didn't see it when Biden was in office either. There were factions of the Democratic Party.

He has this umbrella power over his conference right now. That is partially the reason that he was able to get this through.

SANCHEZ: Some of that may have to do with experience from his first term. Kristen, please stand by.

Let's go to Lauren Fox on Capitol Hill. Lauren, a very different approach to getting legislation passed from Trump this time around compared to his first term in office.

[14:40:00]

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, I just remember the effort to try to repeal and replace Obamacare back in 2017. And there were sort of so many iterations of it on the House side. Obviously, it ultimately failed over in the Senate. But there were so many last-minute requests that came in from the president at the 11th hour during that entire negotiation that members on Capitol Hill would get to kind of a tentative place of agreement and then all of a sudden something would change with what the administration wanted and they'd go back and forth and back and forth.

I do think one of the most interesting pieces of this is it seemed like from the beginning to the end the administration was very clear about what their objectives were. They were very clear about what they needed in this bill. And they did give a lot of latitude to both tax- writing committees in the Senate and in the House to work their will as well.

Obviously, there are pieces of this bill that Donald Trump promised on the campaign trail. Things like a temporary pause on taxes on tips for certain individuals and workers. That is just one of those examples.

But there are also pieces of this like making more of the tax cuts permanent that were really important to Senate Republicans that became part of this deal. So I think that that is very different than what we saw the first time.

I do want to note that one of the more interesting pieces of this is going to be how do Republicans sell this? Because to this point, this bill has not been very popular across the country. And I do wonder if part of that has been so much Republican infighting as they have tried to find a path forward that everyone could live with. Now that they're more unified, now that this bill has passed, do they work together more efficiently to come up with a message to sell this legislation? I think that remains to be seen.

You know, they've been arguing that this is a huge tax cut for the American people. Many of these tax cuts are essentially just a continuation of the tax cuts from 2017.

I'm going to be really interested to see whether or not Americans really feel that difference given the fact that those didn't expire and then need to come back, but the fact that this will be a seamless process. But I think that that's going to be something to keep a very close eye on.

Meanwhile, Democrats, we know exactly what their message is going to be because Hakeem Jeffries laid it out for eight and a half hours.

And I think that those two messages, now we're going to see which one is going to win out in the court of public opinion.

KEILAR: Yes, we will see. Lauren, stand by for us if you would.

Jackie, it was Nancy Pelosi who famously said, pass the bill so you can find out what's in it.

And the fact is, it's not like this kicks in tomorrow.

KUCINICH: Yes.

KEILAR: So there's been a lot -- I mean, we report on what's in the bill. We tell people there is a CBO estimate. It is an estimate about what it's going to do when it comes to health insurance, when it comes to the deficit. But it's really going to be something that takes place over time where people see, oh, this is how it's affecting my community or not. This is how it's affecting the deficit and how that affects other policy that may affect me.

I mean, how do you see this over time, people kind of registering this? And how long does that take before people maybe start forming an informed opinion rather than just basing it on the rhetoric of maybe whichever party they belong to?

KUCINICH: Well, I think that's going to be the challenge for Democrats to keep this and its impacts in front of the American people as this goes on. Because as Lauren said, now Republicans have to sell this thing. Even the name Big, Beautiful Bill is kind of a hard thing to sell because it doesn't really tell you what it does.

You had the Inflation Reduction Act. You had all of these bills, the Patriot Act, No Child Left Behind. Usually these things --

KEILAR: Affordable Care Act.

KUCINICH: Affordable Care Act. Usually these bills are named something that's packaged to sell. And that is not the case here. So they're going to need to figure out which parts that they want to emphasize because she's right, a lot of these tax cuts they're already -- they're not going to end now.

So it's like, you're welcome, you still have it, which is not really a great message when you're talking about when you have the other side saying, look what you've lost.

SANCHEZ: Yes, and notably, the president campaigned on the idea of making things more affordable for Americans. Inflation has tapered off at least from where it was a few years ago. However, you have trade deals looming with partners all around the

world just, what, six days from now. And a lot of uncertainty as to what tariffs are going to be installed, whether there's going to be a pause. All of it with potentially inflationary pressures on the economy. So it's not as though we're set sail for a smooth ride for the rest of the year.

STOKOLS: No, but I think Donald Trump gets the benefit of the doubt on the economy because of the brand that he built over years as a successful businessman.

[14:45:00]

I can go back to 2016 and recall talking to so many people on the campaign trail who said, well, I just watched The Apprentice over and over again. I saw him make good decisions. I know he's going to be successful.

I mean, there is so much to that. This is as well-defined a person that we've ever had in the Oval Office in terms of the branding and what people feel like they know about him.

But Donald Trump's not going to be on the ballot next fall. And so his ability to sell his, you know, successful stewardship of the economy may not help Republicans. It may not help in districts where people have been booted off Medicaid or where people have seen a lot of ICE roundups that they're not happy about.

KUCINICH: Or tariff impacts.

STOKOLS: Or tariff impacts. Or, you know, plants that were manufacturing solar panels get shut down because, look, there's no more tax credits. So we're going to find out.

But I think, you know, Democrats have to connect people's experiences when they are negative experiences that result from some of these policy changes. They have to make sure they recognize where they're coming from. And that's a challenge with a lot of voters because at the end of the day voters don't necessarily tune in to all these things. They're not sitting here watching hours of cable news or reading every article on something.

So we'll see how successful they are, you know, as this plays out and who can win the messaging war. But there's definitely going to be huge impacts from this bill.

And it may define very much the midterms and possibly even the 2028 election.

KEILAR: It's defining individual lawmakers' careers, right? Those that are ending. Don Bacon in the House who is someone who has been seen as someone who speaks truth to power. Thom Tillis, senator from North Carolina.

And we see this sometimes with landmark legislation. Those people who, you know, really have their arm twisted or find themselves really feeling the heat, they end up going.

That happened after Obamacare with a lot of blue dog Democrats. And we're seeing some Republicans pay the price. We'll see if some more do.

What do you see happening to the makeup of Congress and how that affects the dynamics of things because of the careers that this bill may end?

KUCINICH: Well, you were talking about the arm twisting and the members in the middle. There just aren't many anymore.

KEILAR: That's right.

KUCINICH: It's a smaller -- and it's because of gerrymandering, smaller and smaller and smaller group that we're talking about.

I mean, now there's one Republican from a blue state that is running for re-election in the Senate, and that is Susan Collins. She voted against the bill. But it is just a smaller group of people that you're talking about because of exactly what you're talking about, because they have fallen by the wayside.

Maybe the district was redrawn, and now it's more solidly Democrat or Republican. And we've just seen this happen over and over and over again, which is why they feel the weight of the world whenever these decisions are about to be made.

SANCHEZ: We should give some context to our viewers who are watching a slate of Republicans speak after the passage of this bill in the House. We are awaiting remarks from House Speaker Mike Johnson. We also got a statement from Republican Congressman Thomas Massey of Kentucky, one of just two Republicans, to vote against the so-called Big, Beautiful Bill.

He says, It looks like the big bill is going to pass, but it wasn't beautiful enough for me to vote for it.

He said this shortly after casting his no vote.

We have Roben Farzad with us, an expert on the economy and all matter of things. Roben, is this a beautiful bill as you see it in terms of the impacts to everyday America?

ROBEN FARZAD, BUSINESS JOURNALIST: It's a ginormous bill. It feels like an extra stuffed crust meat lover's pie, if you will, like, you know, whatever you want to call it. It's like BBB.

KEILAR: Jackie called it a turducken.

FARZAD: A turducken is what I feel like.

KUCINICH: Both of these are July foods.

FARZAD: You know, a layer cake or whatever it is. But I encourage everybody to look at this happening in stereo. As this massive, whatever, bolus of stimulus goes through the system, you have the White House in this unprecedented war with the Federal Reserve.

And the Federal Reserve, more than browbeating him, like saying, you need to go, you need to step down, when they're trying to arrest this inflation that visited the economy, very likely ended the Biden-Harris administration. So this is, on balance, potentially inflationary and not making the Fed's job any easier.

You have a massive stimulus going through the system. You have our debt, our borrowing costs, things that are going to far outlast the Trump presidency. But again, that's not for him to worry about right now. This is, you know, he's not even thinking past 25, 26.

KEILAR: OK, so then if you can think to the next Fed meeting where there would be the consideration of what to do with the interest rate, how do you see this passage impacting that?

FARZAD: They have to be circumspect about it. You have more than 100,000 jobs created in the latest report. You can't seem to kill this economy, right?

He comes in, he's been asking for rate cuts for the longest time, for mortgage relief for everybody. But again, inflation is a very difficult thing to kill. And we're not there yet. He hasn't found the price stability.

I mean, unemployment, he would gladly, I think, trade a little bit higher unemployment for lower inflation, which would free his hand to cut rates.

[14:50:00]

But this doesn't exactly free his hand to cut rates. When you're flooding the plane with fiscal stimulus, monetary stimulus is a lot trickier.

SANCHEZ: I'm curious about your thoughts on the Republican argument that this does not impact the deficit because these continued tax breaks are going to stimulate growth in such a way that it'll outpace the lost revenue by extending the tax cuts. And also, there will be some benefit to reducing the entitlement programs that they're cutting into.

FARZAD: Yes, Ronald Reagan was selling it to us in the early 80s. I mean, this is, you know, the song remains the same. I would say watch the credit markets, what investors tell us.

If we get punished for our profligacy by the Treasury markets, if long-term yields, which the Fed doesn't control, immediately stay up or sticky, that keeps people, their credit card rates usurious. It keeps their mortgage rates high. That keeps inflation in the system.

And something like this, it's just very hard to mop this back up from the system. You saw the overextension of fiscal and monetary stimulus during the pandemic, leaving it out there too low for too long left us with this terrible inflationary bill in 2022, 2023. We're still trying to fix that. KEILAR: So what happens -- I have a couple questions. One would be, what would have happened to the economy if the Trump tax cuts expired?

And then talk a little bit about the measures, which they're kind of a small piece of this, but they're very important campaign promises for the president, which was the tax on tips --

FARZAD: Yes.

KEILAR: -- and then this overtime. Talk a little bit about what that's going to do.

FARZAD: I give him huge rhetorical points for that. You know, the guests we had on this week, Rick Klein, you can imagine all the presidential candidates in 2016. Which GOP nominee would have suggested relaxing a tax on tips or making things easier?

He's reached across the divide, I think, to a working class. He won Nevada. I mean, you saw the blue-collar districts right now. They seem to buy his pitch, his argument. This is very much an omnibus thing. I'd say at the end of the day, it overwhelmingly still, you know, satisfies and benefits capital holders, those that have stocks, those that have real estate, those that want to pass on money to their heirs.

But he's at least pitched it in terms of this is great for the entire country. And the Democrats, frankly, have had no answer for that.

SANCHEZ: You described a moment ago sort of a degree of short- sightedness on behalf of the president, that he's thinking about 25, maybe not even 26 quite as much. What does this do to Republicans in the midterms?

FARZAD: I don't think that bothers him so much. If he really cares about his legacy, I don't know if it's J.D. Vance or another Trump past this, look at his career. Look at the companies that he's run.

Look at his relationship with Wall Street, the debt, the write-offs that he's taken off. He hasn't been great shakes as a businessman. You know, you read his thing himself. He was bankrupt several times. He would point at homeless people and say they have a better net worth than I do.

So it is amazing that it now kind of transcends on the national level, that he's able to push through a tax cut of this size and convince the country, and both with suasion and coercion, whip everybody into shape to push this through, not like we're in an economic crisis right now.

Unemployment is at 4 percent. The stock market is at a record, right? If we were in a depression, that's one thing. You can afford to do something like this. But he has still made the case through fear, through persuasion. I don't know what happened with Senator Murkowski behind the scenes but give him credit in this art of the deal.

KEILAR: Any wild cards for the effects of this bill on the economy, considering we can't predict some future pressures as well, right? And just considering his other policies right now.

FARZAD: You know, every executive out there is whispering about the threat of AI and jobs. And maybe as a leading indicator, we're seeing it with college grads and even high school grads, and the inability for the entry level, even educated worker to get a job right now. That is largely ignored in this.

I would think that the retooling, the retraining, you're taking from a lot of people, you're taking Medicaid away. I wonder how the districts are going to react to that. But this juggernaut is coming for jobs across the board.

And I worry that Washington, with a lot of, you know, technological and financial innovation, is always kind of behind the curve, is too late with this. And we're not addressing something that, you know, I think the CEO of Ford at the Aspen Ideas Festival, you talk to any Wall Street executive, you talk to any professional services, consulting executive, advertising industry, and this is all happening at a time of 4 percent unemployment. So none of this really addresses this juggernaut of disruption that is hitting the entire planet.

SANCHEZ: There was a provision in the House version that got killed in the Senate that would have made it impossible for states to enact their own AI-oriented legislation. Would that have been a plus or a con? I mean, you're describing this bill as not really touching AI in any significant fashion.

FARZAD: At least there would have been traction in it, you know? I'm tempted -- I wonder that if somebody's giving this testimony on The Hill, I wonder that some of these senators are like, can you give us that on a compact disc, that presentation?

[14:55:00]

I mean, they're not exactly aligned with this. It's very difficult to explain to people, but it's happening, and it's happening real-time.

KEILAR: We are watching right now the majority leader of the House speaking there in what is a bit of a victory lap. So, of course, Jackie, then our expectation would be that we are going to hear from Speaker Johnson next. Is that a reasonable expectation, I would think?

And what do you think the message is that we are going to be hearing from him?

KUCINICH: We did it. No, I think you heard him kind of give a preview about that on the House floor when he started really ticking off what they say are the benefits of this bill. And I think we're going to hear this in steroids in Iowa tonight, as Eli previewed, where the president has an event and is going to talk about a lot of things he wants to do for America's 250th birthday next year.

But I think I would be very surprised if it wasn't an enormous victory lap for a lot of the things in this bill.

STOKOLS: Yes, I mean, Trump may shoot himself out of a cannon to celebrate this one, but I think that what struck me about -- probably not. What struck me about what Johnson said, though, was going back to the election and talking about the coalition that supported Republican lawmakers and supported this president.

This is a bill that is not polling above water, and so there's a real sense that I picked up in those remarks on the floor, and I think will be a theme throughout a lot of these sort of victory speeches, reminding people that Republicans earned a mandate to do this, that these issues are things that they ran on, and to maybe convince people that, you know, there is broader public support for a lot of these things that they are doing, not just the tax cuts, but the immigration actions, the cuts, you know, streamlining Medicaid, as they would say.

They believe that these are things that are more popular than polls are showing, and they want to remind people, even when the polls show that these things are not popular, that, look, this is what people voted for. We are acting based on the wishes of our voters, our constituents. We are not just following the directions of one man sitting in the Oval Office.

FARZAD: But didn't they vote for price relief, ultimately? And what does this do? This kind of gets muddied in it, especially when you bring in the Fed, especially when you have the crackdown on immigration.

I mean, they're legal, barely legal people who are just not showing up for these jobs. And if you saw in the unemployment rate today, they're just checking out of the workforce. That's inflationary. That doesn't help price relief.

STOKOLS: I'm not saying the argument is coherent. I'm just saying in terms of the way they're messaging it, I think you're making great points about the impacts of this potentially and how some of this kind of gets, you know, maybe a little knotted up. But I think in terms of what they're going to say, they're going to tout the benefits, they're going to focus on the top lines, and they're going to emphasize the public support that they think is behind this.

SANCHEZ: It's notable that we're not hearing that from some Republicans, one of them, Congressman Thomas Massey of Kentucky, who voted against this bill, one of only two Republicans voting nay.

Let's go to CNN's Arlette Saenz, who's live on Capitol Hill for us, because, Arlette, you heard directly from Massey, who said that this bill, to him, is not beautiful.

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Boris, we caught up briefly with Congressman Thomas Massey of Kentucky, one of only two no Republican votes on this bill. And he said that, yes, President Trump's big bill is passing, but it was not beautiful enough for him. Of course, he had voted against this bill in the first iteration when the House voted last May, and he has already drawn the ire of President Trump, who has promised to make sure that there's a primary opponent to try to defeat him in those 2026 midterm elections.

A super PAC aligned with Trump has already started running TV ads against Massey, and that is not expected to let up going forward.

Now, there are really big questions about the other no vote on this bill, Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania. He actually represents a swings district that Vice President Kamala Harris won back in 2024, so he is certainly navigating some complicated dynamics for his swing district as he is heading into that 2026 midterms.

Now, I also caught up with another potentially vulnerable swing district congressman, and that is Derek Van Orden, and he said that he's just simply going to go out and sell the truth of this bill --

KEILAR: Arlette, sorry to interrupt you. The speaker is about to begin talking. Let's listen.

JOHNSON: This is the vote tally card. We're going to frame this one, OK? 218, 214.

Listen, I'm not going to give you a long speech. A lot has been said today, and these people are exhausted. A couple of us quite literally haven't slept in two days, so I'm a danger to myself and others right now. I'm not going to speak off the cuff.

I'll just say this. I mean, many of you have asked me this question in the hall over the last couple of days. But when it looked like that we might actually deliver this thing, particularly this morning, how did you know? I mean, what kept you going? Why did you think this was possible?

You guys made an audacious plan. You brought the most comprehensive, complicated piece of legislation probably arguably in the top two or three in the history of the Congress with the smallest margin in U.S. history, which we had for a big chunk of the first 100 days. And you put this audacious timeline.

You said you were going to pass it out of the House by Memorial Day. I mean, some of you openly laughed at me when I said that back in early February ...

END