The Democrats are divided, leaderless, and without an effective communications strategy—all they can do is whine and throw tantrums. Republicans have a golden opportunity to pass sweeping legislation—the great big, beautiful bill—while the political opposition is quite literally a chicken with its head cut off. The only thing stopping the GOP…is the GOP.
This bill barely got through the House in a vote that was held in the early morning hours last week. Now, it’s off to the Senate, where at least three Republicans aren’t happy with the legislation, paving the way for some serious agita as we come to crunch time. Sen. Ron Johnson (D-WI) isn’t a fan. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) thinks the spending cuts aren’t deep enough. It’s not looking good right now, so leave it to the GOP to fumble the ball on the goal line.
Now we need to go through a second round of heart attack antics on the Hill, with the GOP being the ones who could sink this legislation that must be passed. There are several items Senate Republicans hate about the bill in its current form (via Politico):
Weak spending cuts — Senate Republicans want to go higher than the House’s $1.5 trillion in spending reductions, instead eying a $2 trillion ceiling. Thune said in an interview he is aiming for his chamber to hit the higher end of that range and had been encouraging the House to go bigger in their own deficit reduction targets, too.
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Medicaid financing changes — House Republicans avoided some of the most controversial changes to how the federal government treats states that have expanded Medicaid offerings under the Affordable Care Act. But even some of their more modest provisions could be jettisoned by GOP senators who fear political blowback from any policy that would appear to be pushing vulnerable Americans off their health insurance plans.
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.
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Accounting methods — GOP senators are planning to use a novel, controversial accounting tactic to completely zero out the cost of extending $3.8 trillion in expiring tax cuts. The tactic, known as current policy baseline, would go a long way in helping Senate Republicans make Trump’s tax cuts permanent. That’s because budget rules would otherwise require Republicans to offset much of the long-term deficit impact of their tax breaks.
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Drastic cuts to clean-energy incentives — Senate Republicans have been warning for weeks that there is opposition to gutting the clean-energy tax credits created by the Democrats’ 2022 climate law. Instead, House Republicans opted to speed up the sunset dates for several credits to appease hard-liners railing against the “green new scam.”
Now Senate GOP leaders will need to navigate concerns within their own ranks from the other side of the equation: Republicans worried that cutting off the tax credits would undercut investments and lead to possible job losses in their states.
There will be a lot of back-and-forth, with a lot of inside baseball, DC-swamp talk over the next few weeks. It’s going to be painful. The oddity is that voters do not care about the deficit vis-à-vis making the Trump tax cuts permanent. Failing to pass this bill means a massive hike is coming for everyone. So, while these Republicans rant about spending cuts, no one cares. No one will buy that as a defense if this bill goes belly-up, and they need to explain to their constituents why their taxes went through the rough. Fiscal responsibility lectures will be laughed out of the room. It might make sense to these lawmakers, but taking that stand isn’t what it seems.
Just pass the damn bill.
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