ICYMI: Rep. Bera Previews House Iran Briefing, Slams Trump’s “Big Ugly Bill” in CNN Interview
WASHINGTON, D.C. –– Today, Representative Ami Bera, M.D. (CA-06) joined CNN News Central ahead of a classified House briefing on U.S. strikes in Iran. Representative Bera also discussed his opposition to President Trump’s “Big Ugly Bill” and urged his Republican colleagues to oppose the legislation.
You can watch the full interview HERE and read the transcript below:
CNN’s SARA SIDNER: Joining us now is Democratic Congressman Ami Bera of California. Thank you so much. I know it is early there. Thank you for getting up early for us… I want to talk to you about this really quickly. After reports the White House may limit intelligence sharing because of the intelligence leak that he now blames on Democrats, do you think that you will get all the information you need to make your own conclusions?
REP. AMI BERA: You know, I don't think we'll learn a whole lot in this classified briefing to the entire Congress. Hopefully it's a chance for us to ask questions. I am on the Intelligence Committee so I've seen all of the information and can't go into all of that, but for those of us on the Intelligence Committee, we have seen a lot of information.
SIDNER: Can you give me some sense of what you learned, what you can say, and whether you think that indeed this was a mission that was worth it, regardless of just how damaged Iran's nuclear facilities are?
REP. BERA: Yeah so what I can say, and it has been pretty widely reported, this was probably a tactical success that our military took the mission that was in front of them, executed that mission with precision. So, tactically we can be proud of what our military did. Two things can be true at the same time. It is really difficult to assess how far the setback was to the nuclear program. We already know that a lot of the scientists were eliminated by the Israelis. We do know there’s damage at these nuclear sites. It’s hard to assess at this juncture, is there other enriched uranium? Was it still there at the site? Was it moved? I mean that's going to take our analysts a while to go and I would urge the President to, you know, not use some of these declarative statements. He's not, obviously, listening to me but let’s be measured in our approach. And then what I would hope is if this was successful in getting the Iranians to the table, negotiating a ceasefire, what that looks like – this is going to be difficult. You know, then this probably was worth it. On the other hand if this escalates into another war in the Middle East, nobody has any interest in putting troops back in the Middle East, getting involved in another long-term conflict in the Middle East, so then we would assess it from that direction.
SIDNER: So I am curious to get your thoughts on some new reporting that we have and what White House spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt said. She made a comparison between how Trump handled Iran and how Obama handled Iran. Take a listen:
*Video played on air*
WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY KAROLINE LEAVITT: The contrast in leadership cannot be more clear. Barack Obama and Joe Biden sent palettes of cash, American taxpayer dollars, in a failed attempt to buy the Iranian regime's compliance with a weak and ineffective deal. President Trump sent a fleet of American war planes to destroy Iran’s ability to produce a nuclear weapon. The United States and the entire world are safer because of this president's decisiveness.
SIDNER: So, following that, we have new reporting that there are secret talks and hours-long meetings between U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Gulf partners at the White House last Friday. And here are some of the things our sources said were discussed: possibly helping Iran access as much as $30 billion to build a civilian energy producing nuclear program, easing sanctions on Iran, freeing up billions of dollars in restricted Iranian funds. You heard what Karoline Leavitt said, Trump killed that Obama-negotiated Iran deal, and now it’s being criticized once again by the White House. Do the details you just heard though, that the Trump Administration is considering, sound anything like the Obama deal?
REP. BERA: Sounds a lot like the Iran nuclear deal that I voted for and supported a decade ago. Now, Obama took a different approach. It was a negotiated deal. It wasn’t perfect, but it was the best that you could do, and it would’ve set back the Iran nuclear program, allowed inspectors into Iran, and so forth. I’m supportive of the Trump administration entering into negotiations. I would hope he works with Congress on this. We’ll get a better deal if both branches of government are on the same page, work with the Foreign Affairs committee, which I’m a member of, and let’s see if there’s a context where we can move this forward. The one difference between when President Obama was president and right now is the Iranian regime is extremely vulnerable based on the attacks by the Israelis, and we just demonstrated how precise we could be as well. If this is about the regime trying to stay in power, their vulnerability is pretty exposed and that may be a different negotiating lever that we have at this particular moment in time.
SIDNER: Yeah. Iran is sort of between, as we just heard from Sabrina Singh, a rock and a hard place at this point in time. I want to move to some domestic issues now. This bill that Donald Trump has dubbed the “Big Beautiful Bill” that Democrats have called “the Big Ugly Bill,” what is your biggest issue with Trump's mega bill and considering the infighting and the policy differences with some of the Republicans, do you think it even has a chance to pass before July 4th?
REP. BERA: You know, my biggest concern here is I’m a doctor and we’ve done a wonderful job extending health care to so many working Americans, getting Medicaid expansion to a lot of Americans. This bill will take, you know, health care away from anywhere from 10 million to 16 million Americans, and that’s a step in the wrong direction. And what is it doing? It’s actually taking health care away from folks to give tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans. I don’t think it’s a good idea. it also doesn’t do anything to address the budget deficit, our debt, it actually adds trillions of dollars to the debt. So again, I think it is a “Big Ugly Bill.” I don't support it. That said, I hear Republicans say all the right things. I think they are more afraid of Donald Trump than they are of hurting their own constituents, and you know, I would urge my Republican colleagues to say, see if this is going to help the people that you represent. It’s probably going to hurt a lot of them. It’s going to hurt rural hospitals, it’s going to take food benefits away from millions of Americans. It’s not a step in the right direction. This is a bad bill. And I would hope that enough of my colleagues on the Republican side stand up and vote no.
SIDNER: Alright Congressman Ami Bera, thank you so much for your comments today on many different subjects, really appreciate it.