Well the House is supposedly going to vote again on the financial train wreck that is the Trump budget. The House Freedom Caucus is apparently the last obstacle to it passing the House, although it may be fascinating if tonight’s vote fails, to see what kind of pressure builds on house members about the Inflation Reduction Act Clean Energy cuts that will absolutely hammer red states. Only Thomas Massie of Kentucky can truly be counted on to oppose the bill on principle, that principle being increasing the federal debt. The rest of the Freedom Caucus pretend to care about the debt, but really just want to use that as an excuse to devastate the social safety net.
Let’s recap the basics of this bill. The primary driver was to extend the 2017 Trump tax cuts that expire without legislation. Then we incorporated various other Trump tax cut promises made on the campaign trail last year like taxes on tips, overtime pay, etc. The real beneficiaries of this side of the bill are of course the top 1% of the taxpayers, along with corporate America. The top 10 richest people in America increased their wealth by $365 billion in the last year, so obviously they are in need of a tax cut. Oh I forgot, we need to help the people that insist in living in the highest property tax locations in the country by raising the State and Local Tax deduction.
How do we pay for it? Screw the poor, the sick, the weakest people in the country. Pretend like there is enormous fraud in Medicaid, so make incredibly onerous documentation requirements for people receiving it to prove they are working, not because millions of them aren’t, but because if you make it too difficult to do, then people drop out and you save money. After all, having millions of people without health insurance is a good thing right? It doesn’t cost us a thing to have them consuming Emergency Room time without any way to pay for it, driving up the cost of health care for everyone. By the way, several states have already tried this, just ask Georgia. Do you increase employment? No, you just cause people to lose health care coverage. All the while saying you’re not “touching” Medicaid with a straight face. Cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps) so more people in America, especially children can be food insufficient (or maybe just starve).
Will this increase the debt? Of course it will, it’s only a question of how many trillions it turns out to be. To make the debt increase less glaringly obvious, be sure to throw in the standard (since Reagan) ridiculously optimistic economic assumptions that the economy will sustain 4-5% growth per year. Did this happen the first time Trump did these tax cuts in 2017? No. We’ve reached 5% or greater 3 times in the last 45 years, the most recent of which was 2021 coming out of the complete shutdown from the pandemic. For the last 25 years we’ve been sitting around 2-3% per year despite whatever tax cuts, government stimulus, etc have been implemented. But never mind, a miracle will occur, especially since everyone is SO optimistic about the economy under the stupid tariff cloud.
But let’s get to the REAL problem. We’re doing this not when the economy is in a recession (although the year is still young!); we are increasing the debt while the bond market continues to signal that maybe U.S. debt isn’t the best or even safest investment anymore. Meanwhile the train wreck that is social security being unable to pay full benefits is at last count 10 years out and we are going in the WRONG direction. Does Trump care? Of course not, he won’t be there, nothing is ever his fault and hell he could be deceased by then. Why worry when you can pad all the billionaire accounts now?
Feed the rich. Screw the poor, the sick, the old, hungry the less fortunate. MAGA!
June 4 Update
Well the bill now resides in the Senate, with that body making all the typical we’re not going to accept this and we’re going to change that noises. Yeah right. Just like the die hard Freedom Caucus who wasn’t going to sign any bills in the House that increase the deficit/debt limit. Republicans are the all time deficit hawk disappearing act. They don’t really care one iota about deficits or running up the debt, what is important is keeping billionaires gaining ground and hurting social safety nets. Numerous examples have now popped up about House members not even reading the bill (after all that is their ONLY job), only to now discover all the “secret” provisions in it to prevent states from enacting any AI restrictions or rules (wonder what industry lobbied for that, and wake up Marge that was your job to read it) and even better allow the government to harass all kinds of tax exempt organizations solely on the basis of political ideology. So Freedom of the Press or Speech doesn’t matter either. Several incredibly inane proposals to name things after the Bronzed Blowhard have also been suggested, obviously picking up on the most critical needs of constituents. But the most two most damaging aspects of this bill remain shredding the social safety net (taking away food from children that are food insecure is a nice touch) and setting U.S. energy policy back to the 1950’s while China blows right by us in EV’s, battery technology, solar energy, etc. As the old saying goes, you just can’t fix stupid.