As Senate Republicans hold its fate in their hands, PBS’s Amanpour and Company thought it was a good idea to welcome former Clinton Treasury Secretary and Obama economic advisor Lawrence Summers to double and triple down on his previous claim that Republicans’ Big Beautiful Bill will kill over 100,000 people.
Anchor Walter Isaacson reduced himself to simply putting the ball on the tee, “You know, you wrote last week after President Trump signed what he called the Big Beautiful Bill on July 4th, you said, ‘I don't remember any past July 4th being so ashamed of any action my country had taken.’ That was in a New York Times op-ed. What do you mean by that?
Summers decried, “I mean that this was a shocking thing in its brutality. We've had budgets all the time. We've had changes in policy. The United States has never cut back its social safety net nearly as much in any action, not in Ronald Reagan's cuts in 1981, not in the budget—in the welfare reform bill that was passed in the mid-1990s, not in the aftermath of the financial crisis, never have we had as large a cutback in the social safety net measured relative to the size of the economy as we did here.”
That makes no sense. Summers appears to be arguing that the number of people who will die is proportional to the severity of the reforms, so under his own logic he was responsible for people dying in the 90s. More importantly, Medicaid spending will still go up next year despite the work requirements and other reforms. When Summers and his media colleagues talk about “cuts,” they are talking about reductions in the rate of increase.
Precise wording aside, Summers rolled on, “And the academic evidence, the studies of what happens when people are kicked off of Medicaid, is very clear: they become a bit more likely to die. And over 10 years, this is likely to kill more than 100,000 people. So, there's a kind of casual brutality about this that's not even being widely discussed that is just on a different scale than anything our country has done before in all the various budgets that we've had.”
Later, alluding to an appearance Summers had on ABC’s This Week, Isaacson again put the ball on the tee, “You just said that the Medicaid cut would cause 100,000 deaths over the next decade, and you said that long ago on a TV show, ‘That's 2,000 days of death like we've seen in Texas this weekend.’ You are referring to the Texas Floods. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said your comments turned a human tragedy into a political cudgel, looked deeply offensive, and he called on you to apologize. What are you saying?”
Summers replied by essentially telling Bessent to shut up, “Secretary Bessent can be offended by whatever he wants to be offended. I think what's callous, what's a political cudgel, is the policies that he and his administration are legislating that will, according to objective experts in both parties, kill people.
He then conflated criticism with censorship and admitted he had no idea if budget cuts had anything to do with the Texas floods but insisted that a proper administration would spend more time in self-reflection than attacking him:
And I don't apologize for making vivid that large a number by pointing out how he dwarfs the terrible, terrible tragedy that took place in Texas. I think Secretary Bessent, rather than attacking ex-officials who are using their free speech rights to make comments, would be better off asking the question whether perhaps it was such a great idea to slash the budget of the Weather Bureau, whether it was such a great idea to be in strong opposition to FEMA in light of what happened. I don't have any basis for knowing. I really don't.
But after a tragedy of unprecedented scale that has taken place in the immediate aftermath of efforts to cut the protective mechanisms, that seems to me to be the question that a thoughtful, conscientious government would engage in.
A proper show, public or private, would’ve had Bessent or some other competent opposing voice to argue with Summers’s inflammatory assertions. Instead, Isaacson summarized some tweets and then asked Summers to repeat himself.
Here is a transcript for the July 15 show:
PBS Amanpour and Company
7/15/2025
WALTER ISAACSON: You know, you wrote last week after President Trump signed what he called the Big Beautiful Bill on July 4th, you said, “I don't remember any past July 4th being so ashamed of any action my country had taken.” That was in a New York Times op-ed. What do you mean by that?
LAWRENCE SUMMERS: I mean that this was a shocking thing in its brutality. We've had budgets all the time. We've had changes in policy. The United States has never cut back its social safety net nearly as much in any action, not in Ronald Reagan's cuts in 1981, not in the budget — in the welfare reform bill that was passed in the mid-1990s, not in the aftermath of the financial crisis, never have we had as large a cutback in the social safety net measured relative to the size of the economy as we did here.
And the academic evidence, the studies of what happens when people are kicked off of Medicaid, is very clear: they become a bit more likely to die. And over 10 years, this is likely to kill more than 100,000 people. So, there's a kind of casual brutality about this that's not even being widely discussed that is just on a different scale than anything our country has done before in all the various budgets that we've had.
And then you ask, we're doing this to save money, and for what? So, that people who now can tax exempt past $30 million to their kids will be able to tax exempt past $32 million to their kids, so that corporations will be able to continue to have tax rates that are lower than the ones they asked for at the time of the original Trump legislation? I just think this is our country getting its values altogether wrong.
…
ISAACSON: You just said that the Medicaid cut would cause 100,000 deaths over the next decade, and you said that long ago on a TV show, “That's 2,000 days of death like we've seen in Texas this weekend.” You are referring to the Texas Floods. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said your comments turned a human tragedy into a political cudgel, looked deeply offensive and he called on you to apologize. What are you saying?
SUMMERS: Secretary Bessent can be offended by whatever he wants to be offended. I think what's callous, what's a political cudgel is the policies that he and his administration are legislating, that will, according to objective experts in both parties, kill people.
And I don't apologize for making vivid that large a number by pointing out how he dwarfs the terrible, terrible tragedy that took place in Texas. I think Secretary Bessent, rather than attacking ex-officials who are using their free speech rights to make comments, would be better off asking the question whether perhaps it was such a great idea to slash the budget of the Weather Bureau, whether it was such a great idea to be in strong opposition to FEMA in light of what happened. I don't have any basis for knowing. I really don't.
But after a tragedy of unprecedented scale that has taken place in the immediate aftermath of efforts to cut the protective mechanisms, that seems to me to be the question that a thoughtful, conscientious government would engage in.