New York representative on ‘big, beautiful bill’ and Zohran Mamdani winning the Democratic nomination for NYC mayor

(CBS, KYMA/KECY) - Representative Tom Suozzi (D-NY) spoke with Weijia Jiang on Face the Nation Sunday about the One Big, Beautiful Bill.

President Donald Trump brought pomp and circumstance to his signing of the "big, beautiful bill" on Friday, with an Independence Day ceremony at the White House which included a B-2 bomber flyover.

Some Republican members of Congress who voted to pass the legislation attended the event in which the president put his signature on his sweeping domestic policy bill. They stood around President Trump with their thumbs up as he signed the bill.

The final bill hasn't appeased all Republicans, but the president and Congress managed to pass it ahead of their self-imposed July 4 deadline.

"What we've done is put everything into one bill," Trump said. "I liked it because we had so much in there that no matter who you are, there was something in that bill that would make your congressman or your senator or your congresswoman, much more importantly, raise their hand and support it."

When asked how he would described the bill, Representative Suozzi, who sits on the Ways and Means Committee, says:

"I describe it as the big, ugly bill, not the 'big, beautiful bill.' It's going to do a lot of things that are going to hurt a lot of people in our country. The biggest one, which you talked about with Mr. Hassett, is increase the deficit enormously in the country. And what that does, is that creates inflation, that keeps interest rates high, that makes it hard for people to buy homes, makes it hard for them to borrow money, to do the things that they want to do. In addition, it's going to knock a bunch of people off of health care. We know the Republicans have tried for a decade to undo the Affordable Care Act...Obamacare, and this is kind of a backdoor way to take health insurance away from people that really need it the most here in our nation. And it's going to cause health insurance costs to go up for a lot of people. One of the President's biggest issues he campaigned on was reducing prices rapidly on day one, we're going to cut the costs. Well, costs are not going down, inflation is going to be affected by this deficit. Interest rates are going to stay high, and this is going to have a negative impact on health insurance costs for many people in our country."

Jiang followed up by asking Suozzi what he would say to "some Americans who might wonder, 'Well, why should the able bodied not have to work in order to access Medicaid,'" to which he says:

"You have to understand that 92% of the people that are able to work are currently working, and the 8% that are not are often people that are taking care of disabled children. Remember that two thirds of the people in nursing homes are on Medicaid. One-tenth of all the veterans in the United States of America are on Medicaid. Medicaid is a lifeline for so many people that are facing such difficult circumstances that we can't even possibly imagine. And why would we be taking health insurance and food benefits away from some of the most needy Americans while we're providing what I believe is an unnecessary tax break for some of the wealthiest Americans. It just doesn't make sense that you're reducing taxes for some of the wealthiest people, hurting some of the lowest income people, while blowing the biggest deficit in the budget that we've had in the history of the country. Those things just don't add up."

During the interview, Jiang and Suozzi talked about the New York City mayor election results.

Zohran Mamdani has officially won the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York City, certifying a stunning primary victory and setting up a competitive race to run America's largest city.

The New York City Board of Elections released the latest election results showing Mamdani with 56% of the vote.

The 33-year-old Democratic socialist assemblyman from Queens, who is already being attacked by Trump, will face incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa and former Governor Andrew Cuomo, who opted to keep his name on the ballot as an independent, in the November general election.

This prompted Jiang to ask Suozzi what lesson the Democratic Party should learn from Mamdani's campaign, to which Suozzi said:

"I disagree with Mr. Mamdani. I have to make that very clear that, you know, I'm a Democratic capitalist. I'm not a Democratic socialist...but you have to recognize that he tapped into something. He tapped into the same thing that Donald Trump tapped into, which is that people are concerned that the economy is not working for them. Affordability and the economy is the number one issue in the country. And too often, Democrats are not perceived as being focused on affordability and the economy and the middle class, and people aspiring to the middle class and their economic concerns. They see Democrats as being primarily focused on reproductive rights and on LGBT protections, which are important issues, but they're not the issues that people think about every night when they're lying in bed thinking about paying their bills or when they're talking about how they're going to send their kids to school. So Democrats have got to do a better job learning from both Trump and Mamdani not with their solutions, which I think are wrong, but with the diagnosis of the problem that we're frustrated, we're concerned. Everybody in America, whether you're a right wing conservative or a left wing progressive, should believe that in return for working hard, you make enough money so you can live a good life. You can buy a home, you can educate your children, you can pay for your health insurance, you can retire one day without being scared. People don't feel that currently, and we have to do a better job of communicating that."

To watch more of Jiang's interview with Suozzi, click here.