Last night, the Republicans advanced their reconciliation bill with massive Medicaid cuts and upper income tax changes. The four GOP hold-outs who want more cuts voted PRESENT to allow the bill to go forward. The bill’s next step is a manager’s amendment that will add even more Medicaid and Inflation Reduction Act green energy cuts to the bill and then a House vote where it is likely to pass by one or two votes assuming every marginal seat Republican decides that they would prefer to lose in a general election rather than in a primary.
In February, I laid out the reconciliation process:
- House passes a budget resolution with targeted changes in revenue and spending by Committee of Jurisdiction
- Senate passes its own budget resolution with targeted changes in revenue and spending by Committee of Jurisdiction
- House votes on its budget with a simple majority vote
- Senate looks at the House bill and laughs (this is only optional but frequently occurs) and writes its own draft bill
- Senate submits its draft bill to the Senate Parliamentarian for the Parliamentarian’s advice on if the proposed bill follows reconciliation rules
- This results in what is known as the “Byrd Bath” where elements that violate the following are recommended to be struck
- Can’t touch Social Security
- Can only do things that touch revenue and expenditures
- Can’t do policy only provisions
- Scoring restrictions on deficits out of the time window
- This is a likely spot of shenanigans as the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is the traditional but not required scorekeeper
- Committee of Jurisdiction scorekeeping
- The Parliamentarian’s rulings are only advisory.
- 51 Senators can make the rule say whatever they want it to say.
- This results in what is known as the “Byrd Bath” where elements that violate the following are recommended to be struck
- The Senate votes on their bill with a simple majority (51) threshold.
- This is where Repeal and Replace failed in 2017
- House and Senate have to agree on a bill
- Either a conference committee
- Or House accepts the Senate bill without amendment (this is how the ACA passed in 2010 and Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2022)
- President signs
- 5 on the Supreme Court agree
We are mid-way through Step 3. Step 4 is basically guaranteed as the Senate has already started to laugh at the House bill. There are a lot of policies in the House bill that won’t pass the Senate bill either because the Senate won’t include them OR the Parliamentarian will knock out those provisions.
the pollyanna from hell
Curses!
Omnes Omnibus
@the pollyanna from hell: The House was always going to pass something horrible.
Kirk
@Omnes Omnibus: I had hopes the “No vote if it’s not bad enough” extremists would hold out leading to yet another CR.
sigh.
artem1s
IIRC the purpose of these Reconciliation Bills was so that Congress could act quickly outside of the regular budget process (i.e. national emergencies – Biden’s were to stimulate the economy RE: COVID – can’t recall if W (9/11) or Obama (W’s Great Recession) used it). Am I remembering that correctly? I’ve been assuming The Convicted Felon is doing this because Biden did and he wants to bragg how his big beautiful bill is better than sleepy Joe’s. And Johnson is complying because he has no spine and doesn’t want to have to face another motion to vacate from the Chaos squad.
Hope the Parliamentarian is prepared for POTUS threats and MAGAt and DOGE death threats against them and their families if they deem there is no good reason for Congress to bypass the normal budget process. In fact, I’d love it if they smacked down the House in particular for abdicating their responsibility to enforce the current appropriated budget, not being able to pass a budget last quarter, and for illegally handing over the power of the legislative branch to the Last King of Scottland, Orangemandius, and King for life and DOGE.
I can dream…
Steve LaBonne
@artem1s: Certainly there are things in the bill, like the ban on state regulation of AI, that are obviously not budgetary and shouldn’t be allowed under reconciliation. It will be interesting to see what happens in the Senate.
Jeffro
So what’s the endgame for the MAGA GOP, then?
House passes their horrible bill, Senate knocks out most of the horrible stuff, conference committee meets and they essentially pass the Senate version? House MAGAts make lots of noise decrying establishment Rs and that’s it?
WTFGhost
One thing about scorekeeping: there are shenanigans, but not in the scorekeeping; in the method of scorekeeping.
Trump’s first tax cuts had a sunset, and it’s been reached. Normally, the Senate would score as if the tax cuts had sunset on schedule. However, they *can* score on “current policy,” i.e., including the tax cuts. This isn’t supposed to happen – they’re using bad faith to argue current policy is the continuation of the tax cuts, not the ending, and, effectively, ending all sunset provisions in reconciliation bills, since they can be ignored.
rikyrah
THEY ARE GHOULS
JUST PHUCKING EVIL GHOULS
Ruckus
Money is a terrible rational for legislating – not spending it – spending it badly and not charging those that have the most rather than those that have little. IOW this is supposed to be a country for its citizens – all of them, not just for the uber wealthy to hold their wealth over the heads of everyone else. But then if we didn’t – it wouldn’t be humanity.
The question is how do we handle equality, at least making the government make life not worse for those that are not uber wealthy, you know having their own 747/777 plane and crew to fly them where ever they want to go, and not just an apartment in NYC but an entire floor in a skyscraper and the estate by the lake and, and, and….. I mean I’m sure it’s nice to be uber wealthy and all, golfing regularly, and not having a clue what a time card with your name on it is, never getting your hands dirty or knowing how to work a vacuum cleaner, spending hundreds (or more) for dinner in a restaurant that won’t let you in the door without your pompous arrogance front and center and a place in Forbes 3028 billionaires
Life is/can be better than it was 75 or more years ago. It can also seem like nothing has changed, except that a TV is no longer B&W and 2 feet thick, and your car doesn’t have to be rebuilt every 3-5 years, and medicine is more than a stethoscope and every disease is deadly.
sab
So they are running false ads in Ohio that Emilia Sykes voted to cut Medicaid. So how will it play when the Republicans do cut Medicaid and almost every old white person gets kicked out of their nursing home?
jonas
@sab: I think they’re betting most of the harshest cuts get taken out in the Senate bill — then they can have their cake and eat it too: voting the way Trump wanted them too, but don’t have to face the full consequences of doing so (or voting against and facing a full-on MAGA primary challenge). Now if a bunch of those cuts stay in the Senate bill and get signed by Trump, a LOT of people are fucked and there will be consequences. But they’re not thinking that far ahead. These aren’t very bright people for the most part.
Eolirin
@artem1s: I don’t believe Obama used reconciliation. They had 60 senators for the initial bills, and then we lost the house in the midterms.
McConnell used reconciliation in 2017 to get the initial tax cut bill through.
Absent a removal of the filibuster reconciliation will be how all budgets get passed when there’s one party control of congress.
Ruckus
@jonas:
They actually may be intelligent but they are likely being ruled by their bank accounts and pompous arrogance, rather than equality and humanity. And they may be supported by those that want to belong to their clan.
David Collier-Brown
Thanks for an explanation of this: it was super-not-clear to an alien.
lou
Alt National Park claims these provisions are in the “big beautiful bill” and they’re frightening, yet I’ve seen no reporting on them.
– Closure of the U.S. Department of Education
– 25% expansion of logging in national forests, bypassing environmental reviews and fast-tracking timber production
– Rollbacks on clean energy incentives, cutting tax credits for EVs and renewables, gutting key climate provisions
– More public lands opened up for drilling, mining, and logging, with royalty breaks for fossil fuel companies
– Withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, ending U.S. participation in global climate efforts
– Executive Order 14215, forcing independent federal agencies to follow White House legal interpretations and centralizing authority under the presidency
– Pension changes for federal workers hired before 2014, cutting take-home pay by raising required contributions, reducing future payouts, and eliminating early retirement supplements
– REINS Act-style regulation repeal, where major federal rules expire unless Congress re-approves them every 5 years allowing Trump to quietly erase protections without rewriting laws
– Expanded executive control over agency budgets, allowing the White House to move federal funds internally without explicit congressional approval
– Restoration of impoundment powers, giving Trump the ability to block or delay spending already passed by Congress reviving powers stripped after Watergate
– Creation of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), placing White House–aligned teams inside every federal agency with access to internal systems and influence over hiring and daily operations
– Sharp cuts in regulatory enforcement, with agencies like the EPA, CFPB, and Labor and Transportation Departments halting enforcement of key safety, environmental, and anti-discrimination rules
– Trump’s personal control over economic policy, strengthening his power to direct tariffs, pressure private companies, and dictate pricing with little resistance treating the U.S. economy like his own business
BretH
In a dentists office this morning when an older man shuffled in, clearly in general physical pain. I payed attention when he started good natured joking with the receptionist then heard him say his age and it was only a year older than me.
That’s when I really thought about how my software job that allowed me to play tennis at lunch and didn’t subject me to hard physical work will have given me years (knock on wood) of enjoyable retirement that so many others do not have. Their jobs use up their bodies and they are going to be the ones that social services cuts will hurt the most.
MAGA are ghouls
Ned F
What districts do the house members, (are they the Freedom Caucus), who voted present and were blocking this bill because it wasn’t mean enough in cutting services? Who are their constituants that would put these guys in office?
sab
Trump already fired the Librarian of Congress. Can he fire the Parliamentarian? Do we still have Checks and Balances?
Baud
@sab:
He’ll probably try to fire our front pagers at some point.
Ten Bears
So the four GOP hold-outs were just so much hohokum, kayfabe to distract the rubes while they slip it through in the new Friday five o’clock news dump: late night Sunday. Yawn …
rikyrah
DOGEai (@dogeai_gov) posted at 8:37 AM on Sun, May 18, 2025:
The Medicaid work requirements in the GOP megabill are a half-measure at best. Delaying enforcement until 2029 kicks accountability down the road while letting states off the hook for systemic fraud. The Energy and Commerce Committee’s $715B “savings” rely on bureaucratic red
(https://x.com/dogeai_gov/status/1924096910815637929?t=w3RuQAW-JJsmtr61RZkCaw&s=03)
David Collier-Brown
Oh, I forgot!
Happy Victoria Day, everyone! (The 24th of May is the Queen’s birth-day / Give us a holi-day or we’ll all run away (:-))
Ruckus
@Jeffro:
Money is drug to many humans. A powerful drug. And of course money does make the world go round….
But. Money is not humanity. Money may be how humanity actually works, but that can (and often does) leave out an unfair percentage of humans from having much/any concept of belonging at all. And I believe that was a not insignificant concept of this country being founded at all, because when it was most people had little of it and worked to stay alive. Today the concept that uber wealth is the concept of humanity still exists because of course some money is better than none. But money does seem to have an even stronger attachment to humanity than any other drug. For any animal, and humans are animals… some decent, some the exact opposite, living and breathing is the basic level. Most everything after that is about doing it better than everyone else. And it’s been that way since we moved out of caves. Living is a competition to many, success at it is mostly measured not in your humanity, but by the size of your bank account(s). We have gotten to a place in humanity that many more can live reasonably, rationally and still there are many for whom the top of the heap is the only goal, to stand on the lives of many/most others in one way or another, and money is a measuring stick for that which most everyone understands.
scav
@David Collier-Brown: The dead one? Is there a push for royal births to be evenly and carefully spaced so you can collect a full years worth of holidays?
Fake Irishman
@Eolirin:
Obama a used reconciliation to get a “side car” through that was amendments to the Senate version of the ACA.
In 2017 the attempt tried to repeal a lot of the ACA through a reconciliation bill but failed. The Trump tax cuts were reconciliation as well.
In 2022 the American Rescue Plan Act was passed through reconciliation. In 2022, the IRA was passed through reconciliation as well.
@Eolirin:
jonas
@Ruckus: This is the whole problem with our current system, right? They don’t represent their constituents — they represent their donors.
sab
@BretH: My husband is 73 and blue collar, and his classmates are already massively dying off from work related illnesses. Cancers and injuries.
He got a MRSA infection from back surgery. Apparently lifting hundreds of pounds of flooring material is not good for one’s back. The MRSA infection means he will probably have to have open heart surgery this fall, because a stent would attract the MRSA. Medical devices do not have immune systems, so they can cause problems later or immediately.
Fake Irishman
@lou:
Thanks for getting all this in here. All of these things are in the bill and everyone of them is horrific. Some will likely be cut out or removed by the senate, but some will make it through.
Also, don’t rely on the senate to make things better: the ACA repeal bill actually got WORSE as it moved through in 2017.
Omnes Omnibus
@David Collier-Brown: I arrived in Victoria BC on Victoria Day a few years ago. I thought it was very of you to have band welcome as I got off the ferry.
sab
@scav: Brits celebrate royal birthdays six months after (or before) so that the actual birthday is not ruined by official celebrations.
Anonymous at Work
How long do the current CR and debt ceiling last?
scav
@sab: Still, with careful birthing (and a little judicious tweeking of intervals perhaps) they could amass a year’s worth of days off. And free of bank ones at that! More seriously huh, I’d actually rather thought all the royals had the same fake birthday, rather like racehorses.
sab
@scav: Then they would only have one bank holiday. Sucks for bankers and government employees, but life would be the same for everyone else.
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: I thought it was very nice of you to have band welcome me as I got off the ferry.*
*I hope the sentence makes moe sense.
Doc Sardonics
@sab: Then Emilia Sykes needs to start calling out the liars and not doing it gently or euphemistically. Call a damn liar a damn liar.
sab
@Doc Sardonics: I am sure she will. It is a year and a half before the next election. What Democrat can afford that size of media budget?
Doc Sardonic
@sab: Don’t need a media budget. This is where social media comes into play, as well as playing the news media. Call out the group running the ad on the social media, do public event covered by the local news and publicly call out the group running the ad as liars and don’t mince words and be nice, be what my late mother called nasty nice, don’t yell use that tone that conveys an underlying, seething anger that people can feel but not exactly put their finger on. The main thing is to research the group, find out the principle people and call them out by name. These chickenshit bastards love to hide and when the hood gets ripped off they tend to run. We need to quit being nice and letting the media insist we play by a different set of rules, as LBJ said make them deny they are pig fuckers.
Redshift
@lou: I haven’t checked into it yet, but I’ve also seen researchers posting that the bill also codifies the DOGE reduction of “overhead” in research grants (the part that pays to keep labs running) to 15%. Essentially putting into law the destruction of government-funded research they have lawlessly carried out.
French Onion Soup
It doesn’t matter what the GOP does as long as the Democrats support upper middle class white professionals. They alone are worse than Trump and work in the industries that screwed the rest of the nation over. It’s not the billionaires it’s them. It always was. Till we can take them out fighting the GOP is pointless.
Baud
@French Onion Soup:
Didn’t you post that comment under a different nym previously?
Redshift
@artem1s:
I think it’s more likely they’re trying to stuff everything into one bill because Johnson and his crew are incompetent at legislating and counting votes, and have realized they’re probably incapable of passing anything else for the whole term except things like CRs that can get Dem support.
Hoodie
Aren’t the “savings” here mostly deferred so the cuts won’t hit until the GOP is out of power? In other words, a gimmick to get a favorable cbo score and justify tax cuts under reconciliation but put a future Dem administration in the position of having to reverse the cuts and/or raise taxes so we get to play the “tax and spend dems” game all over again. Republicans are never held accountable for anything. We need to understand the organizational mechanisms that enable this. I suspect it’s related to the “unaccountability machine “ described in Dan Davies’ book with the same title. It’s something analogous to “maximizing shareholder value” driving corporate governance, with the mythical “taxpayer” playing the role of the shareholder. This model fails to account for the value that rich or otherwise advantaged taxpayers receive from the structure of the state merely by virtue of being rich or connected, that these fuckers are already overcompensated for what little they contribute.
Ruckus
@BretH:
I’m an old and started working at 13 yrs old as a tool and die maker (learning – not knowing at that age….) Sure I went to school for 16 years and all but I worked at manufacturing most of my life and served in the USN during the Vietnam debacle, and retired mid 73 yrs old. My point is that much of life has changed rather significantly in so many ways – and yet it is humanity, in all it’s good and all it’s not so much. Money has had a level of control over humans that has gotten higher because there are just a tad more of us than when I was born and most of us do not and never have played more than our small part of humanity. But some of course think that their place in life is to be above everyone else – and to hold that over everyone else’s head, because of course they are NOT equal – they are better. They are not followers they are BETTER! Just ask them. I worked in professional sports, Full time for a decade, and I’ve met people who were, if not uber wealthy, would never be considered not wealthy. And some were pompous, arrogant assholes. And others were not. You don’t notice those that are not, because their egos are not their driving force. I have been invited into homes that better than 90% of humans could never afford or even think about affording and was treated as an equal, because money was not their driving force, it was a means to live, they just did money well.
My point is that we all live in the same world, it just does not project the same for each one of us.
Steve LaBonne
@Hoodie: Josh Marshall thinks Dems could and should be doing a lot more to hold Republicans accountable in the public eye, and I can’t argue with him. (Why the fuck is anyone still wasting time and energy arguing about Joe Biden running for a second term? FFS.)
Soprano2
@rikyrah: They’re trying to make sure no one actually feels any pain until FFOTUS is no longer in office by delaying all the bad cuts until 2029.
Ohio Mom
@sab: Oh yes. Ohio Dad had a pig valve put in his heart a while back, and every time he goes to the dentist, he has to take an antibiotic first.
sab
@Steve LaBonne: MSM people are all writing books, so they use their media positions to highlight other peoples books so that with reciprocity their own books will be highlighted.
Nepo authors on steroids.
Steve LaBonne
@Ohio Mom: Moi aussi (though my valve is the kind made from beef heart tissue).
Parfigliano
Those are the old rules. What are the rules under Trump?
Steve LaBonne
@sab: I expect no better from them. I do expect better than what we’re getting (with too few honorable exceptions) from Dem congresscritters.
Ohio Mom
Reading the post, I can’t tell how worried I should be about Medicaid cuts on Ohio Son’s behalf. Guess I’ll keep trying to compartmentalize it.
Hoodie
@Steve LaBonne: Yeah, but I don’t think you can hold them accountable without redefining the rhetorical space. I think this is one of the more persuasive critiques of neoliberalism, that it takes certain assumptions at face value that rhetorically advantage Republicans. For example, there are a bunch of core economic premises that have been deeply entrenched in the public mind starting at the Reagan era. Davies’ book is pretty interesting here in describing the very legitimate contemporary critiques of Friedmanesque economics by people like Galbraith or the cybernetics types like Stafford Beer that came out of WWII that are not leftist or socialist. These all ended up being memory holed because “maximize shareholder value” gave a great shortcut for corporate management (which became aligned with ownership because of changes in the way managers are compensated that were viewed as “reforms”) to evade accountability. I think is somewhat analogous to the way that faulty, ahistorical premises of current 2nd Amendment jurisprudence have been internalized by media and the public and locked us into a situation where we have limited options to control violence.
sab
@Ohio Mom: I wish we had known. Spousal unit is really stressed about the possible procedure. REALLY stressed.
Ruckus
@Ned F:
Who are their constituents that would put these guys in office?
Humans come in many sizes and types. I’ve known adults under 5 ft tall and well into 6 ft tall – or more. I’ve known pompous, arrogant ASSHOLES, and others who would give their lives for others without question – who they didn’t even know. I’ve managed to see a lot of the world, from the northern tip of Norway to standing on Antartica, and many countries in between, New Zealand from top to bottom, east to west and have traveled to 49 of the states for work in professional sports (and the military). And in all that travel, met a hell of a lot of human beings, most of whom were decent, likable, sometimes different and mostly normal. Have had switchblades pulled on me and walked away. I’ve listened to so many languages that I didn’t understand that it’s likely a record. And in all that travel I met people that amazed me, surprised me, made me laugh and yes – pissed me off. I’ve had weapons pulled on me and walked away unscathed (the switchblades!). I’ve carried a loaded weapon in the military with orders that if I have to pull it out and use it – shoot to kill. And in all that I’ve met some really amazing human beings. And a few not so amazing – except in their ability to be assholes. Once had a man offer/give 2 of us a ride in his car with his young son because he heard us speaking english, in Norway, in a post office, trying to find someone that spoke english to ask directions.
This world can be pretty cool and it can be pretty cold – and I don’t mean temperature. It can be beautiful and it can be ugly. And that’s just the humans…. My goal is to survive and to enjoy as much as possible – because that seems like it is a lot more fun. Hint – it is. Not everyone has being reasonable and decent in their portfolio.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Eolirin: that is what I remember too. The GOP also stonewalled seating Senator Al Franken with a series of absurd voter challenges coming from former Senator Norm Coleman. That GOP nonsense kept the democrats in the senate under 60 until the summer. There was no way for democrats to move fast because of those gop shenanigans and Joe Lieberman was sitting in a corner big mad at Jane at Firedoglake biding his time.
artem1s
@Doc Sardonics: You don’t have to worry about Sykes calling out a liar. But the ads aren’t going to stop. The OH GOP has no problem lying about immigrants eating cats and dogs after all. So they aren’t going balk at lying about what Dems are voting to cut in the House bill.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@lou: maybe? It would seem most of those drown in the Byrd bath, though
How can we know since we cannot read the manager’s amendment?
Remember when the GOP went truly bonkers about Obamacare and what was in it despite the fact the bill was on-line and the year-long debate happened in public? The lying did not start with this president.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@sab: no. He cannot.
this president cannot fire the Registrar of Copyrights either, but he certainly did try.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Fake Irishman: I had forgotten that tidbit.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Doc Sardonic: yes!
RevRick
@sab: Except the way they have arranged their Medicaid cuts, the real target is single women with children working part time. The GOP likes to advertise this as kicking able-bodied, non-working men off the rolls, but they are as fictional as unicorns. Their 80-hours per month work requirements will fall hardest on said single women. How do they successfully juggle childcare and those work requirements, especially given how irregular scheduling that part time job can be?
Though they won’t come out and say it, the MAGA desire is to force women into marriages from which they cannot escape. We need to look at these Medicaid cuts not only through the lens of economics, as important as that is, but also through the lens of culture, because for MAGAest of MAGA that is the crux of the matter.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@French Onion Soup: are you serious about this? Good afternoon to you, too
where is the guillotine and when do you want me to come and get my head chopped? Must all surgeons and doctors come too, or can we keep a few for that “rare” health emergency?
What about dentists? Can we keep a few accountants so we can do an audit correctly on occasion ?
Who am I kidding. I will be gone, right?
Goodbye cures.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@RevRick: yes. This bill is supposedly based on the Georgia work requirement that managed to insure a little over 4000 Georgians.
but that does not get the GOP close to their cut rate.
Don’t you think they are looking to catch dual eligibles in nursing homes? There is a lot of money there.
rikyrah
Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) posted at 1:30 PM on Mon, May 19, 2025:
Trump sent thugs to steal his medical records from his doctor.
The press didn’t give a shit.
Trump’s favorite doctor was handing out fentanyl at the White House.
The press didn’t give a shit.
Trump lies about his height and weight.
The press doesn’t give a shit.
(https://x.com/AdamParkhomenko/status/1924533087888626094?t=_6hEG_na3pQFIY3p3XKUdg&s=03)
Belafon
@HopefullyNotcassandra: Don’t you know, people who are buying the government and dismantling it aren’t nearly as bad as the people who people with money who vote for Democrats.
rikyrah
Brian Allen (@allenanalysis) posted at 1:45 PM on Mon, May 19, 2025:
BREAKING: The average 30-year mortgage rate just crossed 7%, per Mortgage News Daily.
That’s not a blip, that’s a brick wall for millions of families trying to buy a home.
The American Dream is now gated by interest.
(https://x.com/allenanalysis/status/1924536835780247902?t=atzUtcbGa1mh-_KboLdF0Q&s=03)
rikyrah
River_Tam (@RiverTamYDN) posted at 9:17 AM on Mon, May 19, 2025:
If Biden had known he had aggressive prostate cancer he would 100% have used that diagnosis as the reason to drop out. It would have played so much better than “the party’s forcing me out bc I’m old”.
(https://x.com/RiverTamYDN/status/1924469348946575561?t=IwqZrfiAMVcn7mLGjzy39Q&s=03)
Baud
@rikyrah:
Yep. Indisputable logic.
rikyrah
Rotimi Adeoye (@_rotimia) posted at 8:04 PM on Sun, May 18, 2025:
If a Democratic candidate said, “Elect me, and every dollar we send to Israel will go to Luzerne County and Appalachia instead,” I think that message would resonate with a lot of people.
(https://x.com/_rotimia/status/1924269923838157174?t=hd2Y21JtcLs0h0LVlaineQ&s=03)
Biden Defense Squad (@What46HasDone) posted at 0:32 PM on Mon, May 19, 2025:
You believe that, because quite frankly, you are naive. Joe Biden gave rural white hicks more money than anybody. But they don’t care about that. What they want for you to say is “Trans women are men,” “Mexicans are rapists,” “abortion is murder”. That’s what they care about.
(https://x.com/What46HasDone/status/1924518507586212338?t=NnqNQOjU0HVe1AckVBfStQ&s=03)
rikyrah
ProPublica (@propublica) posted at 0:28 PM on Mon, May 19, 2025:
New: Duffy is the second member of Trump’s cabinet who sold securities shortly before the president’s tariff announcements sent markets plunging. A spokesperson for Duffy said an account manager made the trades and that Duffy had no input on the timing. https://t.co/xIGqHmsbzk
(https://x.com/propublica/status/1924517634491478133?t=qL_dtm3PDMqULepBQFgpYQ&s=03)
Steve LaBonne
@rikyrah: Biden’s targeting the bulk of the benefits from his legislation to white hicks who will never vote for Democrats was ethically noble but politically, it was culpably naive. If Democrats ever again have the power to pass anything, they need to focus on the needs of the people who actually or at least potentially will vote for them. And I say that as a resident of Ohio, now a deep red state that will fully deserve to be shafted.
Baud
@Steve LaBonne:
A lot of the Dem base wants to be generous to people who will never support us. I’m not sure how that changes.
Steve LaBonne
@Baud: Maybe by taxpayers in blue donor states figuring out how much of their Federal taxes go to coddling people who want them dead.
Hoodie
@Baud: They have been locked into a distorted idea of fairness. Those voters have basically told us they don’t value those things, so it’s not unfair to ignore them. Do that and see how they scream bloody murder – or finally figure out they need to get with the program.
sab
@RevRick: So true. That is my step-daughter. If she had stayed married he would have murdered her by now.
rikyrah
@Steve LaBonne:
Maybe we can target it to the blue areas in red states
Baud
@rikyrah:
Cities.
rikyrah
@RevRick:
You have never lied.
Also the SNAP cuts.
Lowering the age to 7….
unless the child’s parents are MARRIED.
Belafon
@Hoodie: You mean the people who believe that Democrats aren’t giving them money are going to wise up when the Democrats don’t give them money?
sab
@rikyrah: I believe that (no insider trading) because the unicorn in my backyard told me it was true.
Steve LaBonne
@rikyrah: Yes. But maybe Cleveland, in a state that may never again in my lifetime vote for any Democrat for President, gets lower priority than Detroit, in a vital swing state. (I love Cleveland so it hurt me to type that.)
cain
@jonas:
What makes them think that MAGA is popular now? I mean, a lot of folks are getting their ass kicked. I think they’ll want the GOP to swing in the other direction and not be this draconian.
Belafon
@Baud: When we turn into Republicans.
Steve LaBonne
@cain: But they won’t want that badly enough to even consider voting for Democrats.
Baud
@Belafon:
At least it’s an ethos.
rikyrah
@Soprano2:
UH HUH
UH HUH
WTFGhost
@Eolirin: The house wouldn’t pass the Senate version, so a Senate reconciliation bill was used to create technical fixes, that would allow the Senate version to pass the House. It was all done via regular order, and there was nothing skeevy about it. It was infuriating to Senators and House members who thought that losing the 60th Democrat killed the ACA, but, there’s nothing wrong with annoying people, who tried to make you fail, by succeeding. In fact, it’s a virtue, of sorts.
New Deal democrat
From Paul Krugman:
“Republicans in Congress, taking their marching orders from Donald Trump, are on track to enact a hugely regressive budget — big tax giveaways to the wealthy combined with cruel cuts in programs that serve lower-income Americans.…
“…. OK, news at 11. Isn’t this what Republicans always do? But this reconciliation bill … is different in both degree and kind from what we’ve seen before: Its cruelty is exceptional even by recent right-wing standards. Furthermore, the way that cruelty will be implemented is notable for its reliance on claims we know aren’t true and policies we know won’t work ….
“…. The [2018 tax bill], like the current legislation, gave big tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans. But it also threw a few crumbs to people further down the scale. By contrast, the House Reconciliation Bill, by slashing benefits — especially Medicaid — will cause immense, almost inconceivable hardship to the bottom 40 percent of Americans, especially the poorest fifth.”
And supplies a graph showing that the House bill will slam the incomes of the lowest 20% of income earners by over 10%, and then next lowest 20% by almost 2%, while increasing incomes of the top 0.1% by about 3%.
Your GOP populism at work!
This bill, by the way, was the trigger for Moody’s lowering the US credit rating last week.
Marc
@rikyrah:
When we bought our home in the mid-90s, interest rates were also above 7%. After a while, that has the secondary effect of depressing some (but not necessarily all) segments of the local real estate market. We were looking in the Bay Area, so high-end houses were still going up in price, but low to mid range housing was dropping. We bought a smaller cheaper house than we’d budgeted, down payment we had was now 30% rather than 20%, lowering the ARM monthly payments, then converted to 30 years @5% a few years later.
Some people are going to have to realize the hard way that they don’t need an F250 to buy groceries, nor do they a need a 3500 sq ft. house to raise a few kids. I feel for them.
lowtechcyclist
@Omnes Omnibus:
It doesn’t even make larry or curly sense.
WTFGhost
@BretH: Yes – Republicans want to raise the retirement age, counting on people like you to think it’s reasonable, so people like him are less likely to have any retirement worth mentioning. Remember: Social Security only needs a 25% revenue increase, to provide full benefits, forever.
@sab: Trump can’t fire the parliamentarian, but Moscow Mitch was glad to fire the parliamentarian for grousing about parts of the Republican bill not really meeting the rules. So, yes, petty assholes have been petty assholes. Alas, remember: the Senate can ignore the parliamentarian; firing is just spitting on their metaphorical grave.
@Baud: Oh, hell, no! It would never happen, and I’m insulted, and horrified that you think such a thing would happen. You really think DJT would find the people who run this blog, by name, and try to fire them? ABSOLUTELY NOT.
He’d go down the list of the top 3-4 lefty blogs, and then say “fire the top 20,000 blogs’ front pagers, all of them!”
The very *IDEA* that he’d retain focus long enough to think of this particular blog! smh.
@Omnes Omnibus: Well, it poked me in both eyes at once, so, Moe Howard would be proud, at least.
Belafon
@Marc:
Which means they won’t be able to get a house in the DFW area very easily.
PatD
@Steve LaBonne: I think Dems should have sent more money to their own districts building factories and creating working class jobs. Had they done so they may have avoided losing vote share among minorities.
We’ve seen that working class minorities in the cities and suburbs are also susceptible to the kinds of culture war propaganda that rural whites are inundated with.
Omnes Omnibus
@French Onion Soup: You know that you are posting idiocy, right?
Right?
gene108
@Baud:
I think it is a misguided belief that these groups might change with positive reinforcement, ie rebuilding rural economies.
Obama and Biden both did this to no avail.
Now it’s time to let those parts of the country burn.
Omnes Omnibus
@HopefullyNotcassandra: Shades of the Cultural Revolution and Pol Pot. I am sure they’ll get it right this time.
gene108
@Steve LaBonne:
Unfortunately those of us in blue donor states are powerless to stop it. I wish we could, but many of those benefits like federal office locations, military bases, SNAP benefits, etc. are baked into the system.
Steve LaBonne
@gene108: Blue state voters can demand that their Democratic representatives stop rewarding the people who hate them. Primaries are a mechanism for that.
Steve LaBonne
@Omnes Omnibus: It’s what trolls do, and why they shouldn’t be fed.
Geminid
@Steve LaBonne: Yes, primaries are how these intra-party disputes are resolved. I’m looking forward to them, even though I have plenty of respect for our members and will likely root for 90+% of challenged incumbents.
People keep telling me “the Base wants this,” and “the Base wants that.” My attitude is, lets see what the Base actually wants.
Sally
@rikyrah: Martha Stewart went to jail on this – with much more flimsy “evidence”. Thanks again, James Comey.