A Big, Beautiful Bill?
I must be easily confused. If Trump unleashed Elon Musk and DOGE to ferret out waste and fraud, didn’t the ferreting also supposed to save us money? Reports are that their efforts have resulting in a savings of a paltry $160 million. All that upheaval for a few million less than what Michael Jordan paid for his yacht? I thought Trump was about decreasing spending and reducing the deficit? But his so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill” increases the deficit by $3.8 trillion over the next 10 years (that’s how they do things in Washington). Aren’t you disappointed that in a year when the media says that Trump is slashing and burning, that we end up with a bill that increases the deficit?
That bill is over 1,000 pages long. It is plagued like all budget bills with an enormous amount of minutiae. Yes there are the tax cuts which are not really tax cuts but the extension of Trump’s earlier tax cuts. But there is an increase in the SALT deduction to $40,000 as a bone to the one or two remaining republican congressmen from high tax democrat run fiefdoms in the northeast. But the teeny weeny little bits and pieces that populate the bill are mind numbing from clean energy tax credits, to changes in standard deduction, to child care credits, to estate tax exemptions. The list goes on and on – for 1,000 pages. How many folks actually have read this thing that they are voting on – Nancy Pilosi anyone? They really did include the no tax on tips and overtime but continue to ignore my suggestion about no tax on active duty military. Hey guys, that would add less than one paragraph to your 1,000 page big beautiful bill.
The bill squeaked by 215-214 after having been derailed temporarily in committee. Of course every democrat voted against the bill. I guess it did not spend enough for them while two republicans also voted against it because it spent too much. Thomas Massie was no surprise but he was joined by Warren Davidson who said that he could not vote for a bill that increased the deficit. So pardon me if I am disappointed. If this bunch cannot produce anything but the rounding error in cuts from DOGE and clawbacks, then the words of G.K. Chesterton ring true: “The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.” Who was it that said that the republicans were just like democrats but “a little bit less?? And yet we are told of all this hatred between the parties but in the end, they are both drunken sailors – and we are worse off for it.
A big, beautiful bill? Yes, one that we will be burdened with for decades.
A big beautiful bill? Only in the eye of the beholder.
haroldblackphd.com 