What’s the Point?

We are expected to cheer on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act because it is the Republican bill.

This Republican bill adds to the deficit, adds to the debt, picks winners and losers, raises the debt ceiling beyond the $37 trillion in existing debt, and just rearranges deck chairs as the nation sinks into insolvency. It is fiscally irresponsible.

Without its passage, taxes will go up. That is the only real justification for this legislation. But taxes are going to go up on everyone significantly eventually because this legislation does not seriously tackle the issues of our fiscal solvency and uses sleights of hand to suggest any real benefit.

The Senate version of the plan will raise the debt ceiling $5 trillion. The House wanted to raise it $4 trillion. We will be crossing $40 trillion in debt soon.

All the savings come towards the end of the duration of the legislation, which means it is an accounting gimmick and the cuts will never actually come to be. I know this because that is what always happens. We’d be fools to think this time will be different. A new Senate with a new reconciliation package will just punt them again. The spending will be on the date of passage and the savings will be some nebulous time in the future.

Senate Republicans claim the legislation will actually reduce the deficit. Lindsey Graham late yesterday claimed it would reduce the deficit by $507 billion. What he did not say is that this is an accounting gimmick based on where one sets the baseline for spending. It is literally an accounting trick on paper designed to pass the Byrd Rule.

It is a sad reality that the only time we have had real and actually spending reforms that work are when a Democrat has been in the White House and Republicans have been in Congress. Only then do Republicans seem to take their role as fiscal stewards seriously.

This piece of legislation will not win or lose an election in November of next year. But it will also not have the stimulative effect so many of its cheerleaders want to claim. It may offset some of the costs of tariffs, but will saddle us with more debt and ultimately drive up interest rates to burden Americans, disincentivize the creation of families, and put more young workers on the path towards socialism as they blame market forces instead of Washington for their economic stagnation.

Trump supporters will cheer it because Trump wants it.

Democrats will jeer it because that is what their base wants.

The American people will lose because the debt will go up.

Some Republicans, understandably, claim the alternative of no legislation and tax increases is far worse than this legislation. I am sympathetic to the argument. Job creators and corporations will be screwed if the old tax rates return. That could push us into a recession.

But let’s not pretend this is good legislation. It is just potentially less bad than the alternative and I’m not sure it is worth the political capital used to carry it across the finish line.

Part of that political capital saw Thom Tillis decide not to run again because of his defiance of President Trump on this legislation. That’s no great loss for conservatives, but turns North Carolina into a toss up state as Republicans in Texas look to turn it into a toss up state by elevating Ken Paxton into the general election there.

The GOP will be playing defense on multiple more fronts that it needs to and now, in battling with Tillis, makes him a free agent less constrained by even the attempt to keep up appearances. Senators no longer wishing to run for re-election have a habit of throwing wrenches in the plans of their majority.

The whole thing is just a mess. But yippee we won’t get tax increases, just insolvency.

In a couple of years, as always happens, Republicans in Washington in private conversations will admit this legislation did nothing much, but will console themselves that it least it did not do what the Democrats wanted. When a Democrat takes back the White House and Republicans control Congress the GOP will get serious about cuts and not a moment before.

But the base will clap because that is what the base does and that is why Republicans can get away with accounting gimmicks.

F1

I rarely venture to the movie theater these days, but F1 was very much worth it. It is an excellent movie and, praise be to Apple, which produced it, the dialogue is front and center above the sound effects. You can actually hear and understand the dialogue. The plot is great. It is a fun, fun movie. I figured I would be bored out of my mind because I don’t like car racing. I was gripping my seat at times and, at others, holding my breath. It really was well done.

As a side note, the movie got diversity right. The cast was multiracial, there was a subplot about a woman in a man’s business of car racing, etc. And it all worked. It was not preachy. It was not box checking. It was all relevant. And, startlingly, one character got down and prayed before entering the car at each race. It was just an amalgamation of life in F1 and they did it well.

I cannot recommend seeing it in the theater enough. You want a big screen for this.