Tag: trump budget
How House 'Opponents' Of Big Ugly Budget Bill Rolled Over For Trump

How House 'Opponents' Of Big Ugly Budget Bill Rolled Over For Trump

Early Thursday morning, July 3 — as House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) was laying out one reason after another why he considers President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill" a terrible piece of legislation — MSNBC reported that the megabill would soon be coming up for a full House vote and that Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) had secured enough votes to get it passed.

After the bill narrowly passed in the U.S. Senate, 51-50, Trump did everything he could to pressure House Republicans into voting "yes" as well. And according to Mychael Schnell and Mike Lillis, reporters for The Hill, that included a phone conversation in the wee hours with GOP lawmakers who were holdouts.

Schnell and Lillis report, "The phone call — which took place around 1 a.m. as holdouts huddled in a room off the House floor — came as a key procedural vote for the megabill remained open for almost four hours, with hardline conservatives and one moderate Republican hampering the legislation from moving forward. As of 2 a.m. on Thursday, the vote was 207 to 217, with five Republicans having voted 'no' and eight withholding their support. The combination has threatened to tank the rule, since Democrats are united against it, and a vote on the final package can't proceed without that rule."The GOP holdouts in the House, according to Schnell and Lillis, included Kentucky's Thomas Massie, Indiana's Victoria Spartz, and Indiana's Tim Burchett.

"During the conversation," the reporters explain, "Massie — who has been at odds with Trump over the megabill for weeks — suggested he was ready to drop his opposition and support the rule if Trump stops attacking him, The Hill has learned…. Trump and those in his orbit have gone after Massie in recent months after the Kentucky Republican voted against the House version of the megabill in May, and said the president's strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities were 'not constitutional.'"

The journalists add, "A Trump-aligned super PAC, led by the president’s 2024 co-campaign manager, has rolled out ads bashing Massie as those in Trump World vow a primary challenger."

As the House vote was drawing closer on Thursday morning, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a centrist Democrat, appeared on MSNBC and said of the bill, "This is a huge betrayal…. A lot of jobs are going to be lost."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Raging Musk Now Threatens Members Of Congress Who Support Trump Budget

Raging Musk Now Threatens Members Of Congress Who Support Trump Budget

Billionaire Elon Musk is threatening to target members of Congress for defeat if they support President Donald Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill” after campaigning on promises to cut government spending. Although Musk did not specifically name a party, no Democrat is expected to back the budget measure.

“Every member of Congress who campaigned on reducing government spending and then immediately voted for the biggest debt increase in history should hang their head in shame!” Musk wrote late Monday afternoon, as the Senate began voting on the legislation. “And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth.”

Musk’s threat comes after his numerous attacks on the bill—which is critical to Trump’s agenda—based largely on its massive increases to the federal debt.

“It is obvious with the insane spending of this bill, which increases the debt ceiling by a record FIVE TRILLION DOLLARS that we live in a one-party country – the PORKY PIG PARTY!!” Musk declared one hour earlier. “Time for a new political party that actually cares about the people.”

New York magazine’s Intelligencer reported on Monday that Musk is “not done” fighting Trump.

“How can you call yourself the Freedom Caucus if you vote for a DEBT SLAVERY bill with the biggest debt ceiling increase in history?” Musk also wrote, lashing out at the far-right caucus, and mentioning two Members by name: Reps. Andy Harris of Maryland, the group’s chairman, and Chip Roy of Texas.

On Saturday, Musk had warned, “The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country! Utterly insane and destructive. It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future.”

“Polls show that this bill is political suicide for the Republican Party,” he also warned.

New York noted that “Trump, presumably, isn’t thrilled about Musk’s last-minute attempt to sink his signature legislative package. But so far he’s refrained from hitting back.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Fox Hacks Push Trump Budget Hard (While Hiding What's Really In It)

Fox Hacks Push Trump Budget Hard (While Hiding What's Really In It)

Fox News’ propagandists aren’t terribly interested in the contents of the Republican tax and spending bill the Senate will vote on on Monday, or on the devastating impacts it might have on their viewers. But they know that President Donald Trump wants it to pass, and so they’re greasing the skids with their viewers to help it over the finish line.

An exchange between two of the co-hosts of Fox & Friends — the morning show beloved by the president — exemplifies how the network, and the broader MAGAspere, has treated the legislation, which agglomerates much of Trump’s domestic agenda in a single bill.

“It’s not perfect, but it does need to pass if we want this tax cut,” Ainsley Earhart told viewers.

She then offered up some pablum about the bill’s contents: “It’s the largest tax cut in history. And also no tax on tips or overtime, which is great for the working class, and that’s what Donald Trump ran on. … It funds border security and deportations, it funds our military, it begins to reform Medicaid.”

That sort of surface-level support for the legislation is commonplace on Fox and its counterparts — the president’s propagandists tend to back whatever version of the bill is under discussion without much consideration for its impacts.

MAGA media revolves around Trump and his desires, but its personalities tend to be more invested in waging the culture war than in the nitty-gritty of policymaking. Views on economic issues like tariffs or national security ones like the U.S. military strikes on Iran can shift rapidly to align with whatever it is the president supports at any moment. Fox hosts like Earhardt likewise tend to be supportive of the bill but haven’t dwelled on it.

Why is there so much urgency to pass this bill right now? Earhardt doesn’t say. But the reason is that Trump has imposed a deadline for the final legislation to pass both houses of Congress and come to his desk by July 4 as “a wonderful Celebration for our Country.” Congressional Republicans could be working to improve a bill that Earhardt acknowledges is imperfect, but the party and its propagandists are prioritizing Trump’s desire to get a win on schedule.

By passing the bill quickly, Republicans hope to minimize the grueling political damage caused by enacting legislation that is wildly unpopular — and likely to become more so as the public finds out what is in it.

Fox’s job is to ensure that viewers remain placid about the impact of the bill before it passes. The messaging dilemma for Trump supporters like Earhardt is that bumper-sticker claims of the bill being “great for the working class” and working to “reform Medicaid” won’t hold up to scrutiny. Here’s who benefits from the bill’s tax cuts, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

And here’s how The Associated Press sums up the latest score of the Senate bill from the Congressional Budget Office, including its impact on Medicaid:

The CBO estimates the Senate bill would increase the deficit by nearly $3.3 trillion from 2025 to 2034, a nearly $1 trillion increase over the House-passed bill, which CBO has projected would add $2.4 to the debt over a decade.

The analysis also found that 11.8 million more Americans would become uninsured by 2034 if the bill became law, an increase over the scoring for the House-passed version of the bill, which predicts 10.9 million more people would be without health coverage.

So the Senate bill blows an even bigger hole in the deficit than the House version does, and its cuts to Medicaid would knock more people off the health insurance rolls, all while providing tax cuts weighted toward the wealthiest Americans.

Earhardt’s co-host Brian Kilmeade offered a hand wave of a response to these deep flaws in his reply. In the program’s sole reference to the Senate bill’s CBO score, he followed the GOP strategy of attacking the agency.

“Democrats are holding on to the CBO — their report says it adds $3.3 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years,” Kilmeade said. “But they look at growth at 1.7%. … Under the bill, what they want to do, growth is going to be a lot higher than that. And you gotta think if interest rates go down, that’s why … Republicans say, through dynamic scoring, they’re going to have a more accurate account. They say, once again, the CBO will be wrong."

This amounts to an admission that all he has as a rebuttal to the CBO’s devastating score is “nuh-uh.” In reality, it is the Republican growth estimate that is out of step with the consensus.

The brand of tap-dancing seen on Fox & Friends can get the hosts through the show without criticizing Trump’s priority — and perhaps help the bill to final passage. But people will notice if they suddenly lose health insurance, or their local hospital closes. They will notice if the funds they use to feed their kids disappear, or their electricity bills soar.

And if the bill passes, the goal of MAGA media will pivot from telling viewers that the legislation needed to pass to hiding its role in those crushing impacts.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Top GOP Pollster: Trump Budget Will Hurt 'A Great Many' Of His Voters

Top GOP Pollster: Trump Budget Will Hurt 'A Great Many' Of His Voters

The impact of President Donald Trump's so-called "Big Beautiful Bill Act" will be felt acutely in areas that voted overwhelmingly for Trump, according to one Republican pollster.

Politico reported on Monday that the administration is now embracing a "stark messaging shift" as it attempts to shepherd the massive legislative package through the U.S. Senate. While the White House has insisted that the hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to Medicaid (which provides health insurance to low-income and disabled Americans) would only be for "waste, fraud and abuse," administration officials are now notably pivoting to saying that the bill will be focused on "kicking illegal immigrants off of the program and implementing commonsense work requirements."

Even though the Senate has a 53-47 Republican majority, Politico observed that even talk of cutting Medicaid funding is "politically delicate." This has resulted in the administration hoping to re-define "cuts" to voters – rather than outright cutting benefits, the administration aims to impose different forms of austerity like increased eligibility redeterminations and additional work requirements that stipulate Medicaid recipients have to jump through additional hoops to get health insurance.

Some senators like Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AL) have expressed hesitancy about the additional bureaucratic roadblocks that the proposed enhanced work requirements would create, while others like Josh Hawley (R-MO) have spoken out specifically against cutting Medicaid due to the high number of constituents who depend on it.

Aside from the difficulties the administration faces in getting 51 votes out of 53 senators (or 50 votes with Vice President JD Vance as the tie-breaker), Politico reported that there could also be backlash among Republican voters depending on the scope of the cuts in the final bill. Republican pollster Whit Ayres told the outlet that he doubted voters would be able to distinguish "reforms" from "cuts," especially if they're directly affected.

“The fact remains that a great many Trump voters are on Medicaid, particularly in rural areas,” Ayres said. “If no one loses coverage, how are you going to cut $500 billion?”

Even strident conservatives among the Senate Republican Conference have pledged to oppose the bill in its current form. Sens. Ron Johnson (R-WI ) and Rand Paul (R-KY) have been sounding the alarm about the bill's projected cost ballooning the federal deficit by more than $2 trillion over the next 10 years.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

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