This Is a Shameful Way to Make Law
Senate Republicans hope to pass their mega-trillion-dollar spending law this morning. They just have to finish writing it first.
No time for throat-clearing fripperies! The Senate is probably going to do something insane that renders our analysis obsolete five minutes after we send this! Hurry up and read it! Happy Tuesday.
Time’s Up, Pencils Down
by Andrew Egger
A 9 a.m. newsletter is, apparently, a poor fit for the ungodly timetables of today’s Congress. As of this writing, we don’t know whether Senate Republicans will manage to squeeze through their Frankenstein’s monster of a big beautiful bill. What we do know is that this has been one of the most ridiculous and embarrassing spectacles of “legislating” we’ve ever had the displeasure of witnessing.
There have been three driving forces behind this bill. The first has been the “pass something or everyone’s taxes go up” pressure created by the soon-to-expire 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The second has been President Donald Trump, who took a shine to the simplicity of slamming together a bunch of things he wanted done into a single package and who has imposed an artificial deadline of July 4.1 And the third is the Senate’s utterly dysfunctional procedures surrounding the filibuster, which make it basically impossible for majorities to pass new laws unless they get significant minority buy-in or glue them together into a “budget reconciliation” package that doesn’t need 60 votes.
What we’re left with is a bill that’s bigger than big and anything but beautiful. Although maybe it overstates it to even say we have a bill. As the Senate barrels to a vote (we think) they’re still crafting the actual text of the legislation. There will be no hearings, no comprehensive analysis, and certainly not enough time to read the thing. Whether it will pass now depends on whether Senate leaders can find a sweetener good enough to woo one of the four remaining Republican holdouts. Would any other institution operate in this way?
Yes, it’s common, in our sclerotic era of idiotic megabills, for such packages’ opponents to complain about “the process.” But the BBB has taken that situation to new heights.
It’s Trump’s bill, but even he doesn’t seem to be staying up to speed on what’s in it. He keeps posting that the bill will deliver “NO TAX ON SOCIAL SECURITY FOR OUR SENIORS,” a provision that hasn’t been in the legislation for weeks.2
Massive policy amendments keep getting papier-mâchéd onto the package or peeled off by the Senate parliamentarian. One particularly egregious example is a new tax on wind and solar projects that threatens to bankrupt the entire fledgling renewables sector, which suddenly appeared in the bill during this week’s marathon cram session. Not only were a number of senators taken aback by the provision, many didn’t even know how it made it into the bill.
“I don’t know where it came from,” Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told NBC News yesterday evening.
“It wasn’t part of any consideration,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), one of the holdouts whose consent the bill will likely need to pass. “It’s like, surprise! It’s Saturday night.”
Surprise! We’re just gonna cripple an industry and not tell you who did it!
Whether that provision will remain in the bill remains to be seen, as several amendments have been proposed to blunt it. My personal favorite is from Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah), who would leave the new tax in place but give the treasury secretary broad discretion to suspend it. Just what we need, more policy levers for the White House to pull to inflict or relieve pain on private companies at its discretion! What could go wrong?
Other tentpoles of the bill have remained more or less the same. It still contains a staggering increase in federal immigration enforcement, with only a pittance of new funding for immigration courts—a congressional blessing of the White House’s agenda of arresting every migrant we can now, and figuring out how to get around the courts to deport them later. It still blows a massive new hole in federal deficits: $3.3 trillion over the next 10 years, according to a weekend Congressional Budget Office report. And it will still slash Medicaid funding by nearly $1 trillion, knocking nearly 12 million people off their insurance despite Trump’s own continual promises not to cut the program. (But hey, no tax on tips!)
This last provision has been one of the most interesting to watch play out among Republicans online. As many have noted, the bill’s changes to Medicaid will hit many of Trump’s own supporters, who tend to be poorer and more rural, the hardest. But there’s been no grassroots groundswell against the package. Instead, many Trump supporters seem to be operating on the assumption—this is becoming a theme—that it’s other people whom the cuts will hit. Point out online that Trump’s own base stands to hurt from the provision and you’ll be swamped by a wave of MAGA derision: We see through these media lies! We know they’re only taking Medicaid away from fraudsters and illegals!
If this monstrosity of a bill ever becomes law, it will be interesting to see the unstoppable force of this delusion meet the immovable object of people actually losing their coverage en masse. For the sake of the country, we hope we never get to see it. That would be a mess far bigger than the process of putting this bill together.
Sixty Percent of the Time, It Works Every Time.
by William Kristol
It’s admirable that Andrew has been so diligently following the ins and outs of the Republican reconciliation bill on Capitol Hill. It occurred to me that I might do the same. But then the news came flashing across the Internet at 6:27 p.m. yesterday: “Trump Fragrances are here.” If you have a nose for news, how could you not turn your attention to this?
After all, reconciliation bills come along every year. How often do we get a new presidential fragrance?
Actually, it turns out we get them pretty often. Trump Fragrances have been here before. Over twenty years ago, in 2004, Trump unveiled “Donald Trump, The Fragrance.” Then in 2015 Trump followed up with the scent, “Empire by Trump.” (This was apparently in Trump’s neocon phase—the scent, undoubtedly, was a touch invasive). And even the allegedly new colognes and perfumes unveiled yesterday seem in fact to have been around for about a year in the world of Trump merch.
But every good marketer knows you can never have too many relaunches. So we got the exciting news straight from the horse’s mouth. Here he is, Donald J. Trump on Truth Social:
Well, naturally, when we saw the announcement, we got right to work. We know that you expect us in this newsletter, dear reader, to call balls and strikes on all the important matters, whether they be Medicaid, war, or bodily scents. Should you shell out $199 for a bottle of the “FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT” perfume or cologne? Or should you splurge on the “Victory 47” fragrances at $249 a bottle? At about $60 or $75 dollars a fluid ounce, the Trump perfumes are only a tad more expensive than Chanel No. 5 Eau de Parfum. Is it worth dipping a little deeper into the wallet?
Alas! I’m distressed to report that I can offer no guidance. It turns out that the sellers of these fine products don’t provide free samples to the media to review. And—can you believe it?—the suits in the Bulwark front office wouldn’t authorize the purchase of these products on the company’s credit card.
So what are the fragrances like? I don’t know.
I do know that the website says that the and colognes and perfumes can all be described as “a rallying cry in a bottle.” I do know that the website assures us that “the products embody themes of resilience, victory, power and confidence,” and that they are made for “patriots who never back down.”
Sounds great. And maybe they are great. Surely we Never Trumpers shouldn’t be put off merely by the Trump name. After all, as Juliet sweetly reminds us, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
On the other hand, the Trump name does introduce some doubts. Perhaps the fragrance is more like what Falstaff describes after being tossed in the dirty laundry bin in The Merry Wives of Windsor: the scent of “foul shirts and smocks, socks, foul stockings, [and] greasy napkins”; in sum, “the rankest compound of villainous smell that ever offended nostril.”
Or is making that assumption a case of Trump Fragrance Derangement Syndrome?
I dunno. What I do know is I have failed in my important journalistic task. And so I will slink back to following that reconciliation bill—a bill so malodorous that, as Lady Macbeth puts it, “all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten” it. Nor will all the fragrances of Donald J. Trump.
AROUND THE BULWARK
I’ve Seen People Misuse Intelligence Before. It Never Ends Well. The intelligence “customer” has a responsibility to speak and act with humility, writes GEN. MARK HERTLING.
Why Nothing Works and What to Do About It… On The Mona Charen Show, MARC DUNKELMAN joins MONA CHAREN to discuss his new book, Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress―and How to Bring It Back. Dunkelman contrasts past centralized efficiency with today’s slow, decentralized system, which is full of procedural roadblocks. What sorts of reforms are possible? Tune in for some options.
Elon Threatens To Take Down Republicans Who Vote for BBB… Guess what? The Elon–Trump feud is back on. On Bulwark+ Takes, SAM STEIN and TIM MILLER take on the question of whether Musk is serious, just grandstanding, or completely clueless about GOP politics.
Quick Hits
THE ‘CURRENT POLICY’ FANTASIA BECOMES REALITY: We’ve written repeatedly this year about the ridiculous budget gimmick at the heart of the Senate’s Big Beautiful Bill. Rather than count the 2017 Trump tax cuts as lapsing (as they are set to do), Republicans have proceeded as though they would continue indefinitely. They’re doing this because operating with “current policy” as a baseline significantly reduces the on-paper cost of their bill since they don’t have to account for the loss of revenue that comes with lowering people’s taxes if they pretend those expiring tax cuts were never going to expire. It’s an unprecedented move that the chamber reaffirmed by vote Monday morning. And it is now prompting warnings from Democrats that, once they return to power, they will do the same.
Imagine this: Congressional Democrats pass a piece of legislation expanding Medicare eligibility to those 60 years and older. The bill comes in with a price tag of $155 billion over six years. But instead of doing it that way, they pass a one year bill at a cost of $26 billion. And then, the next year, they introduce a bill extending it for 25 years at a cost of . . . zero, since, after all, the current policy of the United States is to extend Medicare to those 60 and older.
Think this is far-fetched? Maybe. But the only restraint now is how much political will Dems can muster. And Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), the ranking member of the House Budget Committee, told The Bulwark that he is ready to go. “While I oppose current policy baseline, if the GOP utilizes it to pass their BBB then this becomes the new normal and we will absolutely use it in the future,” he texted.
—Sam Stein
RIP, USAID: USAID is officially done. The international aid agency had its last day on Monday, as the remnants of it were formally tucked into the State Department. In a departing note, the acting administrator, Kenneth Jackson, told employees that he understood “that the last six months have created many challenges for USAID staff and their families.” He applauded them for embodying “the highest standards of public service.” Let’s just say the alums were not pleased. A proton mail account called “USAID’s Ghost” replied to Jackson’s note, while apparently looping in a massive portion of the USAID diaspora (we were forwarded the note twice).
“Our fallen colleagues’ legacies will live on, but not through any Memorial Wall at the Department of State, USAID’s long-time resentful bully. No, their legacy will live on in the millions of lives they saved and in the hearts of their colleagues who respected and loved them,” it read. “Your legacy will also live on—through the millions of memorials that will be created around the world honoring those who died due to preventable diseases, starvation, and HIV/AIDS; deaths you will have directly caused.”
Ouch. On a lighter note, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bono sent USAID staffers an emotional video farewell, thanking them for their service. According to a person familiar with the calls, they were done over Zoom and held for USAID employees: “a mix of live panels from past Administrators and staff and videos.”
—Sam Stein
SLAPP-ING SELZER: We got an update yesterday in one of Donald Trump’s most inexplicable personal vendettas: his ridiculous lawsuit against J. Ann Selzer, the famed Iowa pollster. Selzer’s reputation for preternatural accuracy received a major dent last year after her last statewide presidential poll of the 2024 election showed Kamala Harris winning Iowa; Trump ended up winning it by 13 points. Trump has maintained that Selzer’s polling miss wasn’t a miss at all, but a deliberate act of “ELECTION FRAUD” meant to sway results and make him look bad. That this was an extremely stupid thing to believe for about eight different reasons didn’t stop him from suing Selzer in federal court.
Yesterday, Trump’s legal team abruptly pulled the plug on that lawsuit—only to refile it hours later in state court. What gives? Selzer’s attorneys at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) have a pretty good idea. “This maneuver was not in response to any settlement and in a transparent attempt to avoid federal court review of the president’s transparently frivolous claims,” they said in a statement. “The case was refiled in state court today, one day before an Iowa law intended to provide strong protections against baseless claims like this—an ‘anti-SLAPP’ statute—goes into effect.”3
You might think the president of the United States would have better things to do than hatch strategies to get around state laws so he can continue a vendetta against a pollster who sparked headlines he didn’t like for a single weekend eight months ago. Or rather: Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a world where you might still think such things?
Cheap Shots
We imagine he’d like to sign it and set off a bunch of fireworks at the same time.
The current bill would give seniors a flat new tax credit instead.
SLAPP stands for “strategic lawsuit against public participation.” Anti-SLAPP statutes make it more difficult for well-heeled plaintiffs to squash speech they don’t like by filing frivolous lawsuits they can afford to lose but the person they’re suing can’t afford even to win. As of today, Iowa is the 37th state with such a law in place, next year, Idaho will become the 38th. They’re great!
For the sake of the country, I hope those millions of Trump supporters DO lose thier healthcare. They'll still blame Democrats of course, but more importantly, they'll be too dead to vote in the future. But what's important is that they will get what they voted for.
This kind of legislating is why there’s a decent chance the 2028 Democratic nominee ends up being some “burn it all down” populist type who pushes for the filibuster to go away if they have unified control. We’ve got 99 Senators sitting around waiting to see if Lisa Murkowski will vote for this bill…and she may, but only if she can keep Alaska from suffering the consequences of a truly terrible piece of legislation. Totally shameful indeed.