According to WaPo, Trump’s big ugly bill narrowly passed in the House a little while ago and is now headed to the Senate. Here’s the summary from the linked article:
Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, as the measure is formally known, extends trillions of dollars in tax cuts from his first term along with new campaign promises — including no taxes on tips and overtime wages — and hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending.
But the legislation, carries a hefty price tag. The latest projection from Congressional Budget Office, lawmakers’ nonpartisan bookkeeper, showed it will add $2.4 trillion over 10 years to the national debt, which already exceeds $36 trillion.
To offset the cost, the measure would slash spending on social safety net programs by more than $1 trillion over 10 years. Even then, the mammoth legislation could also force nearly $500 billion in cuts to Medicare over the next decade to keep the national deficit within legal limits, unless Congress later adjusts the limits. The legislation could strip Medicaid coverage from 8.7 million people and lead to 7.6 million more uninsured people over 10 years, CBO projected.
To sum up, billionaires like Trump, Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, etc., get to keep NOT paying their fair share of taxes, and ordinary citizens who depend on Medicare, Medicaid and other programs get screwed. Same as it ever was when Repubs hold power, only worse because Trump makes everything worse.
The retiree ceremonial head of state took a brief break from golf and crypto grifting yesterday to lean on House Repubs to get the bill passed. But elected Repubs interpreted Trump’s incoherent and uniformed comments on the bill in ways that confirm their priors.
In the meeting, the president scolded blue-state Republicans seeking a higher cap on state and local tax deductions (SALT), and he chided GOP hard-liners not to “f— around with Medicaid” benefits. A consensus, lawmakers said, appeared in the offing.
But lawmakers raced to put their own spin on Trump’s words. To some, the president’s comments about SALT meant refusing to raise the tax deduction, and to others, he meant accepting moderates’ demands.
To one group, his remarks about Medicaid meant searching for only egregious abuses, while another handful thought it meant finding “waste” within the program’s DNA.
A similar dynamic will probably take hold in the Senate, where a modified version of a bill that screws working people in favor of billionaires will almost certainly pass. At the policy level, right-wing “populism” is indistinguishable from the plutocratic agenda, as it was in Trump’s first term.
When millions lose healthcare, when rural hospitals close and nursing homes nationwide are shuttered, when seniors can’t access the benefits they’ve paid into for decades, etc., Trump will either ignore the situation or claim ignorance. Pretending not to know what’s happening under their own watch is a hallmark of the Trump cabinet, and it comes from the top.
I’ll contact my shitty Republican senators today to register my objections, but it feels entirely pointless. Because it is. The only thing we can do is ride this nightmare out and try to shift the balance of power through the next elections. Depressing!
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I played hooky yesterday to attend the Tampa Bay Rays baseball game. They beat the Houston Astros 8 to 4, so the curse is lifted! (The curse was that the Rays lost every game my sister and I attended.)
Last year’s hurricanes shredded the dome at Tropicana Field in St. Pete, so this year, the team is playing at the New York Yankee’s spring training facility in Tampa, a much smaller and open air venue.
Lord, it was HOT! I’m not used to watching baseball outdoors since the Rays have played in a dome since their inception. I applied sunblock copiously and wore a hat, but I still got fried. Our plastic stadium chairs were so hot we had to pour water on them to avoid scorching our butts.
We entertained ourselves during lulls in the baseball action by watching unwary fans arrive late, sit down in their blazing hot seats and then leap up fanning their flaming hot tushes. We agreed that for the rest of the season, we’ll consider attending night games only.
Open thread!