Having followed the ups and downs and twists and turns of House passage of Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, I offered some thoughts at New York of where things stand for Republicans and for Democrats:
Republicans are in a state of euphoric self-congratulation over House passage of what’s known as the Big Beautiful Bill.
Politico Playbook, the Beltway’s daily bread, referred to the GOP Speaker of the House as “Magic Johnson” for his last-minute deal-making and cat-herding in securing its passage by a single vote, which happened before a Memorial Day deadline that many had thought unrealistic. He’s sharing credit, of course, with The Boss, Donald Trump, who wheedled and threatened and thundered in the presence of BBB holdouts at several key moments. In the end, for all the interminable talk of “rebellious” GOP factions unwilling to support the gigantic bill as either too vicious or not vicious enough, the price of collective failure was just too high for nearly all of them.
But now, of course, we are about to be reminded that Congress is a bicameral institution, and despite Republican control of both chambers, there are enough issues in the Senate with the carefully balanced Jenga tower the House built to endanger the edifice anew. And when the Senate does produce its version of BBB (the informal but very real deadline is July 4), the two bills will have to be reconciled, and the final product passed by both Houses and sent to Trump for his signature. This needs to happen before the arrival of the so-called X Date — likely in August — when the Treasury finally breaches the statutory debt limit, which is increased in the BBB.
As a former Senate employee, I can assure you that members and staff of that body have enormous institutional self-regard, regardless of party, and will not accept take-it-or-leave-it demands from the petty little pissants of the House. Beyond that, it’s important to understand that what makes “reconciliation” bills like BBB possible is the ability to avoid a Senate filibuster, and there are arcane but very real rules, policed by the non-partisan Senate parliamentarian, about what can and cannot be included in a budget reconciliation bill. So some changes may become absolutely necessary.
More importantly, the very divisions that came close to derailing the bill in the House exist in the Senate as well, with some special twists.
One of the most powerful House factions was the SALT caucus, a sizable group of Republicans from high-tax blue states determined to lift or abolish the cap on SALT (state and local tax) deductions imposed by the 2017 tax cut bill. They were able to secure an increase in the cap from $10,000 to $40,000 (with an inflation adjustment over the next ten years), a juicy treat for upper-middle-income tax itemizers with big property-tax bills, costing an estimated $320 billion. There are no Republican senators from the big SALT states, but there are a lot who deeply resent what they regard as a subsidy for free-spending Democrats in the states most affected. Maybe they’ll care enough about GOP control of the House to throw a lifeline to vulnerable members like Mike Lawler of New York or Young Kim of California, who have made SALT a big personal campaign-trail issue. But there are limits to empathy in Washington.
Another red-hot issue in the House was the size and nature of Medicaid cuts, with the BBB winding up with big cuts mostly accomplished via new “work requirements” that will cost millions of low-income people their health insurance. Senators are divided on Medicaid as well, notes Politico:
“GOP Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine have all warned they have red lines they will not cross on Medicaid and that they believe the House bill goes beyond ‘waste, fraud and abuse.’ The alignment between Hawley, a staunch conservative, with moderates like Murkowski and Collins, underscores how skittishness over changes to the health safety-net program is resonating across the ideological spectrum.”
There are similar problems with the SNAP (food stamp) cuts that shift many billions of dollars of costs to the states. And the way BBB structure the SNAP cuts the cost-shift will be particularly egregious for states with high “error rates” for SNAP paperwork and benefit determinations. Three states with two Republican senators each, Alaska, South Carolina and Tennessee, could really get hammered. They won’t be happy about it.
But at the same time, the HFC hard-liners, who were the very last faction to cave in to Trump’s pressure on the BBB, have counterparts in the Senate with their own complaints about the roughly $3 trillion the BBB adds to the national debt, notes Politico:
“Sen. Ron Johnson … is pushing for a return to pre-pandemic spending levels — a roughly $6 trillion cut. The Wisconsin Republican said in an interview he knows he won’t get that level of savings in the megabill but wants to tackle a chunk under the budget reconciliation process and then set up a bicameral commission to go ‘line by line’ to find the rest.
“Johnson also believes he has the votes to block a bill that doesn’t take deficit reduction seriously, pointing to Republican Sens. Mike Lee of Utah, Rick Scott of Florida and Rand Paul of Kentucky as senators sharing his concerns.”
If Mike Johnson is “magic,” Ron Johnson is “poison.”
On top of everything else, the budget resolution the Senate passed to set up its version of BBB includes an accounting trick that basically means the two chambers are operating from very different baseline numbers. The Senate’s insistence on “current policy scoring” means $3.8 trillion worth of expiring tax cuts that will be resurrected are deemed as “revenue neutral,” a fancy term for “free.” Perhaps the Senate parliamentarian will blow up that scam, but if not, it will cause problems in the House.
These are just the most obvious BBB problems; others will emerge as senators use their leverage to shape the bill to reflect their own political needs and the grubbier desires of the wealthy interests Republicans tend to represent. And for all the talk of the House being the body in which Republicans have no margin for error or division (two voted no and one voted “present”), the same number of GOP senators, four, could blow up the BBB. It’s going to be a long, wild ride, and the only people in Washington who know exactly what to say about the BBB are Democrats. No matter what tweaks Republicans make, the final product is still going to “cut safety net programs to give the wealthy tax cuts” while borrowing money to do so. That’s just baked into the cake.
I cannot find Ray’s past article(s) regarding LVs and RVs. Can someone help me?
Abramowitz should have his own blog or at least contribute regularly to Rising Donkey.
Great stuff.
Two new polls are out. Fox shows Bush up 47-43% in the thre way, with Kerry ahead in the battlegrounds, 46-44. Bush carries 94% of Republicans, Kerry 80% of Democrats. Kerry has a nonsignificant lead of 42-40 among independents. They report a “marginal” bounce for Bush, but an essential tie in the race, leading in with a 47-45% Bush lead in a two-way race. They use likely voters and don’t report registered voters.
In the CBS poll, Bush is given a 4 point bounce, with a 49-42 lead among registered voters. Bush gets 91% of Republicans, Kerry 81% of Democrats, and Bush has a lead of 48-39% among independents. Given the sample size of the subgroup, I don’t know if that lead among independents is statistically significant. The sample included 1058, 909 of them registered voters. 368 were Republicans, 336 Democrats, so they seem to have had a bias to finding Republicans. They weighted to have 340 Republicans and 354 Democrats.
Ruy will have a lot more interesting of a take on this. I’m amused that the Fox report has been one of the more negative ones. It’s not clear to me what else is up.
Clearly those 11% Bush lead reports were silly and mistaken, as has been argued long and hard. The Fox 4% among likely voters I find modestly encouraging, particularly given the battleground info. The CBS 7% among registered voters was a bit depressing as it stands in such contrast to the Gallup 1% among registered.
I’d seen a report from talkingpointsmemo that both parties reported about a 4% Bush lead. That seems a reasonable interpretation of the varied data to me, but what do I know?
Gallup didn’t seem to mention another Apple-Orange distinction between this poll and all prior ones. The recent poll was taken in the immediate aftermath of one candidate’s convention. This probably does more to invalidate the comparison than the RV-LV disparity.
I dunno, Ruy. Another way to look at the gap between RV’s and LV’s in Gallup’s sample is to examine closely those voters who they predict won’t vote, but are registered. In a presidential year, we’re only talking about 14-15% of registered voters who don’t show up. (It may be lower this year, but clearly Gallup is going by past performance.) If those voters, by virtue of not showing up, produce a 3 point swing in Bush’s favor, then a little math shows that they must favor Kerry by about 60-40. Thinking for a minute about who these people are — likely low income, poorly educated, heavily minority — I don’t think this is surprising or wrong at all. If Gallup’s sample had more R’s than D’s and this is still the result, I think we’re looking pretty good. Because, in fact, I expect the registered non-voter pool this year to be closer to 10%, AND I expect (as always) more D’s than R’s to show up.
Their LV screen is (as they themselves admit) just an educated guess that amounts to mathematical masturbation. It’s meaningless, as your peerless posts frequently remind us.
(And BTW, before anyone takes me on with numbers: I know the turnout rate is only 55%, but that’s 55% of all OVER-18 ADULTS, including non-registered people and non-citizens. The turnout rate of registered voters is around 85%. A lot of people misunderstand that.)
People are always interested in dirt.
These talking heads don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.
If you can’t say something nice about someone, let’s hear it. That’s the reality.
This week, the story is Bush has skeletons in his closet, looky what we found here!
Meanwhile, back at the campaign: WRONG for AMERICA.
All I can say to fellow Democrats is VOTE!
won’t help BUSH
Vanya T,
You are correct. It’s 50-46 Kerry.
As you state, probably Bush’s high water mark.
This won’t help:
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“These documents represent strong evidence that Lieutenant Bush didn’t perform after April 1972, regardless of whether he received a paycheck,” said retired Brig. Gen. David L. McGinnis, who was a top aide to the assistant secretary of defense for reserve affairs.
Lawrence J. Korb, an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration and now a national security specialist at a liberal think tank, said after reviewing the CBS documents that if Killian and Lt. Col. William D. Harris Jr. had written a truthful evaluation report on Bush, “he would have been called to involuntary active duty.”
Added Korb: “For the commanding officer to suggest that his (Bush’s) evaluation be sugar-coated is a clear indication of the political influence Bush had. Korb said the alleged suggestion by Staudt was also a “violation of military ethics.”
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Well, looking at demographics, 35% of the population identifies as Republicans, 38-39% as Democrats, with the balance showing another (or no) affiliation.
Currently the unaffiliated voters are breaking 49%-46% for Senator Kerry.
Applying the math here:
Amongst the 35% who are Republicans, 90% support Mr. Bush, 7% support Sen. Kerry. Translating back to percentages: Bush 31.5%, Kerry 2.45%.
Amongst the 38% (using the low end of the range here) who are Democrats, the same is true. Those figures translate to 2.66% for Mr. Bush, 34.2% for Sen. Kerry.
The remaining 27% split 46% for Mr. Bush, 49% for Sen. Kerry- or 12.42% for Bush, 13.23% for Kerry.
Adding these up, we have Bush at 46.33% to 49.88% for Kerry, with the balance of 3.79 undecided.
So- the margin in the race (using web-available demographics, and the Gallup polling numbers) looks like it favours Sen. Kerry by about 3.5%. This means absolutely nothing on an electoral college basis, of course, but the numbers amongst voters who aren’t either Democratic or Republican core presently tilt somewhat against the incumbent- and conventional wisdom shows that undecideds tend to break against a sitting president anyway.
This should be the Bush high-water mark, barring an October Surprise- without something drastic, it’s hard to picture Bush’s numbers rising significantly, especially with the mounting Iraq death toll, no significant developments in the pursuit of al Qaeda, and a still-sluggish economy and job market.
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I want to plant a seed here. Monday a new issue emerges. Monday, the assault weapon ban enacted 10 years ago will expire, thanks to the Republican controlled Congress.
Lead sentence from the NYT:
“Despite widespread popular support, the federal law banning the sale of 19 kinds of semiautomatic assault weapons is almost certain to expire on Monday, the result of intense lobbying by the National Rifle Association and the complicated election-year politics of Washington.”
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Discussion points for this issue:
*Mothers, fathers, is this what you want?
*Does this does make you safer?
*Columbine
*Bowling for Columbine
*John Muhammed sniper
*Stories about purchases on local TV
*We respect the 2nd Amendment, but we don’t need Sadr-like militias here
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Every eledtion is about getting our voters identified, motivated, registered, and to the polls.
This time we have numbers in our favor across the board. We are registering in record numbers, we are motivated, and we are going to vote in records numbers Nov. 2nd.
I agree, though, turnout is the nuts of every election.
This election is all about turnout.
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These two comments bear repeating from the original topic:
“The smallest gap was in 1992 (1 point), the election with the highest overall turnout. Assuming that 2004 will be another relatively high turnout election, we should probably expect a relatively small turnout gap, similar to 1992.”
“If you apply Gallup’s trial heat results among Democrats, independents, and Republicans to the VNS 2000 electorate, Kerry comes out with with a four point lead: 50.3 percent to Bush’s 46.4 percent.”
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Gallup has missed the last four presidential elections by 3-4 million per election, on average, never getting closer than 2 million.
They aren’t paid because they’re right, because they aren’t. They’re hired because they have a NAME with a rep that has long since passed justification.
Gallup hasn’t been close to right since 1984.
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Nate,
I don’t think you’re misunderstanding anything. The TV media just passes these poll results along with no underlying analysis of the fundamentals behind them. It’s all surface news and headlines. Reading this and several other websites regarding polls/politics is a literal godsend in terms of actually learning what’s behind the numbers.
By the way, kudos to Jeff for pointing out the same issue at 4:54 this afternoon (in the previous item) and for publishing the same restated poll numbers as Professor Abramowitz. Something certainly does seem a bit off in these polls with the population that is being sampled and with the likely voter screens.
BTW, some of the shills in the corporate media are doing it again in terms of the Bush AWOL scandal. Mathews tonight was basically shrugging his shoulders and asking what the big deal was about Bush’s service. What’s the point: “One guy went, one guy didn’t.”
Perhaps the point is the lying and deceiving by Bush and his minions about whether he fulfilled his actual service 30 years ago. (The document written “for the record” at the time, 1973, by Bush’s immediate supervisor is pretty damning.) Perhaps the point is that the little episode about how strings were pulled for Bush to get him into the TANG and how he avoided accountability for his absences are metaphors for all that’s wrong with this administration, its policies, its coziness with the rich and powerful in this country.
For somebody who crowed about the power of the second half of the F-911 movie in terms of how the working and lower classes are fighting this war in Iraq, Mathews can be pretty dense at times.
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Ruy, the analyses you and the good professor have done are absolutely essential to our side.
1. It sets the record straight.
2. It reassures the troops and arms them.
3. It impacts the dialogue and momentum.
When I hear the question “why are they doing this?” I am reminded of something an old lawyer screamed at me when I was a baby lawyer. I had some case I’d found and was convinced I knew why the judge had ruled against us.
He stopped me in mid-sentence.
“The reason he ruled against us isn’t in any law book. He ruled against us because he wanted the other side to win.”
Wow. There went my Judd for the Defense, Owen Marshall, Perry Mason cherry.
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Let’s assume that Gallup has kept the same methodology over the past few months (namely, 89% of Bush supporters and 79% of Kerry supporters will actually vote, and that the sample of voters is weighted more towards Republicans than the VNS 2000 electorate.
How does it change the results of the previous polls? E.g., does Kerry get a bounce after the Dem. convention? etc.
If I had the numbers handy, I’d do the arithmetic, but….
Question.
In the Democratic primaries, it was pounded into our heads that Dean was absolutely ahead of Kerry. By margins of over 10% in most polls. Then Kerry wins the first primary by a landslide.
Does the wrong polling analysis that happened during the Democratic primaries apply here in this election?
This post seems to help understand how a 7 point lead with skewed voter affiliation will become a four point victory on election day for Kerry.
PS: I know it ain’t over and there is a long way to go and anything can happen etc. etc. etc.
My question to Ruy Teixeira (and other knowledgable readers) is why it would be that Gallup would adopt a methodology which would be biased towards the Republicans?
Is is simply a mistake? Is there some alterior motive?
My impression until now had been that the professional pollsters were exactly that –professional– but that the press often is not so professional/critical in how they report the results of polls. Now I am beginning to wonder. Or am I simply misunderstanding the significance of Prof. Abramowitz’s comments?
The pollsters themselves say Bush is up 3 or 4 points.
That’s a lot better than double digits, but it’s still 3 or 4 points.