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.
Kerry will win by three. Now feel free to rest. 🙂
Well, you can try some of the meta-analysis sites out there. These analyze a bunch of polls through various means and try to estimate the outcome. I think you’ll be pleased with the results:
http://synapse.princeton.edu/~sam/pollcalc.html
http://binomial.csuhayward.edu/WeeklyStatus.html
http://arrowheadengineering.com/
http://www.econ.umn.edu/~amoro/Research/presprobs.html
based on all the polls and interperetations of the polls and increase in voter reg and GOTV efforts and %blacks for kerry and % cuban americans for bush….i was just wondering when someone will tell me how much kerry will win by.
frankly i am exhasuted and would like to take a long rest….any convincing predictions out there?
This is their online poll, and it should be noted that this results differs markedly from the telephone poll released just a few days ago. In the poll, using the same definition of likely voters, Bush was up 8 points. (With the less stringest definition, Bush was up 2 points). This is a big swing of 9 points, but one was telephone, one was internet.
Personally, I have more faith in their Internet polls.
chris matthews said today kerry had the wind at his back and if the wind is still blowing in kerry’s direction tomorow(thursday) kerry will win.
chris matthew called the election for bush exactly 7 days ago.
larry o’donnel spent 10 solid minutes calling swift boat john o’neil a “liar” on scarbourgh 2 nights ago.
not “misleading’ …he called him a “lair” about 37 times , and very loudly. hats off to o’donnel.
You wonder whether Bush in fact has superfluous solid red support, and whether the non-solid-red polls, which really matter, might show 2% more for Kerry.
Isn’t this LV definition the same one that gave Bush a 51-43 edge in the October 14-17 Harris Poll?
Whether this reflects a real shift or just the LV definition working better closer to the election is another question.
I think the BUSH trend is “YOU”RE FIRED.” I was out cnvassing for MOVE ON last night. I called in TEN strong Kerry Edwards voters for ten stops. These were all voters that were not likely to be sampled by any major polling system. There is a vast undercurrent of anger towards the current administration which I think is starting to head towards a crest.
With such a robust sample, you can see that Bush’s MoE puts his ceiling at 49%. His ceiling, mind you.
It does seem that Kerry is breaking a hair ahead in national horse races.
The Harris Poll is the most encouraging poll yet. Last week they ran the poll and offered two different LV scenarios – one with those who will definitely vote AND voted in 2000, and the other with those who will definitely vote but did NOT vote in 2000 (and were old enough). In the second scenario, without 2000 voters, Kerry trailed Bush by 2 (48-46). In the first scenario that excludes new voters Kerry trailed by 8 (51-43). However, in the Harris Poll just released, the LV model resembles the first scenario of the last poll. In other words, Kerry didn’t just increase from -2 to +1, he moved from -8 to +1! That is incredible, if it is true, and shows a huge closing among undecideds for Kerry. I can only imagine what the number is for the second scenario voters now.
Notice how the WSJ headline writers just can’t bring themselves to say that it’s Kerry who is ahead in the latest Harris poll. You have to read to the end of the second paragraph to get that info. Compare that with some recent headlines characterizing Bush’s 1-pt leads as “surges” or “grabs”. I know, it’s no called the SCLM for nothing.
Harris seems to be something that slips under the radar, but from what I’ve heard they’re pretty good.
a trend seems to be emerging, and it’s not good news for George Bush.
Harris is underrepresenting new voters. Their likely voter screen:
“Likely Voters are defined as adults who are registered to vote and say they are “absolutely certain” to vote and, if they were old enough, voted in 2000.”
So if you didn’t vote in 2000 (unregistered, unmotivated) you don’t get counted. I think this poll is even better for Kerry than it seems on the surface.
Is it wishful thinking, or am I detecting a trend here? Kerry is up in the following: Democracy Corps 2 pts, LA Times up 1 pt, Harris 1 pt, and ABC News/Washingto Post 2 pts. Gallop has Bush ahead by only 4 which, if their internals have the same problems, is probably a dead heat. I suspect (and hope) that Kerry is doing his famous closing, and I think the 380 tonnes of missing explosives will galvanize the fence-sitter into KE direction.