The Senate passed a budget resolution last night:
- $175 in new spending on border security.
- $150 billion in new defense spending.
- $15 billion in new energy production.
- No framework for extending 2017 tax cut.
And now for a look at the House budget proposal:
- $4.5 trillion to extend 2017 tax cuts.
- $880 billion in spending cuts on Medicaid.
- $330 billion in spending cuts on education.
- $230 billion in spending cuts on SNAP and agriculture.
- $562 billion in miscellaneous spending cuts, possibly as much as $1 trillion.
- $190 billion in new spending on border security.
- $100 billion in new defense spending.
Summary:
- Senate: $340 billion in net spending increases.
- House: ~$2 trillion in net spending cuts and $4.5 trillion in tax cuts.
The House budget is especially hard to make sense of. In any case, as usual these numbers are over ten years, which means the Senate bill costs roughly +$40 billion per year while the House bill saves about -$650 billion per year. That's a considerable difference of opinion.
Also worth noting for context that the budget-cutting-by-dynamite being employed by the incel dogebags so far amounts to a savings of: $8 billion.
An amount the government spent today in about 10 hours.
Even if you took their debunked figure of $55 billion (with its basic arithmetic errors and miscounting an $8M savings as $8B), we’re talking about savings about 2.5 days of costs annually.
DOGGSHIT. Department of Government Grifting Shit Heads In Training. Musk has quite a group of snot nosed and impressionable weirdos under his tutelage.
Beyond that, you can't claim savings without balancing it out with the costs. For example. layong off a bunch of workers will results in more demand for unemployment, reduced consumer spending, etc.
Not to mention replacing those services they were doing, or the damages of not doing it.
Evidently the House bill is inscrutable, because on the numbers you cite, it would save nothing, but cost ~$250B/year.
Yeah, that's what I clicked to post.
Unbelievable. Thank you for posting these facts clearly and concisely and speaking reality to fantasy.
Kevin is feeling well enough to see how idiotic GOP budget proposals are. This makes me very happy.
Great to see you back!
Thanks. If I tried looking at this it would make my head explode.
Now will the Republicans go with the "dynamic scoring" charade or just spout nonsense?
So far, I'm leaning towards the Senate side. Particularly in the $175.00 for "border security" ...
Either way it looks like a big deficit but on the other hand it doesn’t count the money that will be “pouring in” from other countries based on the tariffs Trump will impose. I think this will also pay for free child care.
Remember one of the promises of the “father of IVF” was free IVF.
2 trillion in cuts on the backs of the working class, many of which are MAGA idiots. When you vote based on what or who you hate instead of what's in your own interests you deserve what you get, fuktards. Unfortunately people who didn't vote based on hate have to suffer alongside the assholes who did.
But wait a minute. The tariffs are going to bring in enough money to do away with all income tax, as well as pay for child care. At least that's what the Trumper I know told me.
I know this is OT, but what do we do when convicted felon Donald Trump decides to help out his buddy Vlad and starts bombing Ukraine? I think there is at least a 50% chance this happens.
Especially if Zelensky starts ramping up his rightful and just criticism of the convicted felon. To be honest, I think he's been very constrained in his responce to Trumps obvious and blatant betrayal of Ukraine in favor of the Russian oligarch. Trump is a such a chump.
Well, neither incorporates the convicted felon's demands for an 8% defense spending cuts, so, clearly they're not on-board with all of his priorities. And of course the House is 110% in sync with the cruelty of direct transfers from the poor to the rich.
BTW, the across the board replacement tariff rate to eliminate the personal income tax is ~60% at the start. I'm thinking those House MAGA folks are just not smart enough to do the calculation, but when they are, they'll search for ways to rig the math.
But neither chamber has bothered to ask: Why are we doing any of this when he's just going to spend the money the way he wants to, regardless of what we write into law, and we're too cowardly to reclaim our constitutional power?
If they were honest with themselves, they'd just write a single page bill: We authorize POTUS to spend whatever money he wants however he wants.
The second 1-page bill: We authorize POTUS to do whatever he wants, however he wants.
All they need to do is pass an enabling law, like Germany in 1933! Who needs three co-equal branches of government anyway! Democracy* is overrated.
*as in our democratically elected constitutional republic.
Exactly. Right on!!!
Glad to see Kevin back as well. Also, I misread the '-' for a '~' (eyesight ain't what it used to be) which I also translate as "roughly" so I thought Kevin lost the ability to do basic arithmetic. Glad to be wrong!
This isn't a difference of opinion in substance, its a difference of opinion in procedure.
The Senate is of the opinion that these giant reconciliation packages take an enormously long time and an awful lot of horse-trading, bad feeling, backstabbing, and generally gross legislative sausage-making. They are also of the opinion that the immensely slim House majority makes it nearly impossible to pass Trump's "big beautiful bill" in a timely fashion.
Therefore, they want to pass a bill NOW with their wins in it, so they can have those banked, and then go back and do all the hard, controversial stuff later. They do not object to the hard, controversial stuff, at least not yet; every single Senate Republican so far is going "oh no, we're going to cut to the bone, but that's going to take awhile, this we can do RIGHT NOW."
That's what this is.
So they want to cut off the hand and work on the arm over time. How thoughtful. lol. If they're lucky they won't finish amputating the arms of the working class till after the 2028 elections.
The House border security spending proposal is absolutely insane. If we build the full 2000 mile long border fence, at $1M/mile, it would cost $2B. If we put machine gun towers ever 10 miles with full time staff of say 10 guards at each station and they get $250K each in compensation, that is 200*10*250k/year that's another $500m/year. Heck, toss in a new fleet of Coast Guard cutters at $1B/each plus crew and it is hard to see how you can spend that much. It seems ripe for waste and fraud to me, maybe DOGE should get on that.
See, the Boring Co is going to dig tunnels across the 2000 mile borders so that border agents can take Teslas to their posts. Bam. Border security. Add in SpaceX providing SDI defense against any intercontinental ballistic immigrants.
"If we build the full 2000 mile long border fence, at $1M/mile, it would cost $2B."
I doubt you could build a 2000 mile long backyard fence for $1M/mile. A border barrier would be much more expensive.
And that's even before you consider you'd have to build roads and housing to bring the materials and construction crews to much of the border which is, after all, wilderness.
The maintenance on that fence would probably be $1 million per mile.
I note that both chambers want to increase defense spending, something both Trump and Hegseth have said they plan to cut.
Trump says a lot of things. 99.9% of which is utter bullshit and lies. Besides Hegseth isn't proposing any cuts any, he's reappropriating some of the spending.
Americans had 10+ years to watch these clowns promise one thing and do another. They decisively chose the comfortable lie.
Between the massive tariffs to be announced, the $ trillions of savings Herr Musk is providing, and the reparation payments from Ukraine (for starting the war), and the massive fee reduction from the Panama Canal, Mango Mussolini will be able to shut down the IRS and eliminate the Federal tax!
Now quite eliminate altogether- remember GOP will always want a big military and border patrol. Of course corporate America and CEOs will pay no taxes so the rest of us will have to pick up the tab. But even so, it will still be a nice tax cut, leaving us finally free at last- to fund all of our own health care and social security.
Starve the Beast
I'm not sure we should celebrate this. Yes, the old saw about not getting in the way when your enemy is blundering is good. But what we may be watching is Mikie's House ranting its way into the first-ever United States Government default.
IMHO, the Democrats in Congress should not provide any help at all to keep the government funded and the debt paid unless they receive benefits from the legislation they are asked to help pass.
MAGA controls all three branches of government and it should not be too hard to pin any government shut down on them. They have the votes to pass any reconciliation bill they agree on and don't need any votes from Democrats to do so. They also need actual words on the page, not promises from those MAGA lying sacks of shit.
If I were in the Senate I would object to literally everything. The fact that this is not happening shows that the Democratic party is still bring a limp noodle to a machine gun fight.
What do you mean by "object"? There's no such procedure in the Senate rules and, for the most part (looking at you, Fetterman) they are verbally disagreeing, which is about the only power they have over anything that can't be filibustered.
Rest assured both houses are still laser focused on the GOP’s agenda unchanged since the New Deal- Starve the Beast with tax cuts.
His followers just haven’t figured out the “Beast” includes social security and Medicare. Gonna be great for Haves and Have Mores. For the rest of us? No worries, we can blame our misery on poor people and immigrants.
I think at one point their misery will far exceed their hatred of the "other".* How bad it'll have to be before that happens is the question.
*I would think their tolerance has a limit. Maybe it doesn't. It's hard to predict how people who believe a man like Trump will react.
How else could
Cleavon LittleBarack Obama have gotten elected? There are no Republicans in foxholes, and these oh-so-tough-talking people wouldn't last ten minutes -- make that five -- if their streaming was cut off, let alone sewer, gas, electric, or water.Kevin, you are amazing! That's all I have to say......
Thanks for this post. Deciphering these bills is complicated and your clear assessments are great.
What? No "Presidential Guard"?
It's nice to know this, but I think that right now, the legislative branch is roughly equivalent to the Roman Senate under Caracalla.