Take another bite
Seriously, what use is the GOP if this One Big Beautiful Bill passes?
If the GOP passes a budget that intentionally increases the deficit and includes left-wing tax idiocy like no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and deductibility of (some) auto loans, I'll be prouder than ever to have left the Republican Party.
Maybe I'm stuck in the past, with my first vote for president have been for Reagan in his re-election. But even through all these years as an unaffiliated voter I thought the Republicans stood at least a bit for fiscal responsibility.
With Trump in charge, they don't. It's just some bogus right-wing populist nonsense. To be clear, populists do get quite a few things right...I'm emphatically NOT saying Trump gets nothing right. In fact, he gets more right than wrong.
He’s like a quarterback with an incredibly high completion percentage who frequently throws interceptions in the Red Zone and doesn’t win nearly as much as he should, or at least not in the most important games.
Trump has been great on crushing DEI, controlling the border, supporting Israel, trying to get international investment in the US. (Less great on tariffs and on relationships with allies.)
But on the two biggest issues right now, i.e. the biggest domestic issue and the biggest international issue, Trump is wildly wrong. He's a big-spender who believes in redistributing income through the tax code. And he's siding with an implacable enemy of the United States in the Ukraine war.
The former is more important than the latter.
There is no more important issue than our debt and deficit. Other than working to extend the broad tax cuts of 2017, almost everything else he's pushing for (and against) are things you'd expect Dems to push for (and against.) He wants expensive tax cuts on people who individually tend to pay little in income tax (but it’s still expensive because there are a lot of those people. He wants to increase the deficit and push individuals to take out more debt by making (some) auto loans tax deductible. He doesn’t want Medicaid reform that’s absolutely necessary. (Of course, even with all these Bernie Sanders-style provisions, still no Dems will vote for the bill.)
Huge respect to Senator Ron Johnson for being particularly outspoken against the travesty that this bill represents.
Here’s Ron on my show yesterday: Senator Ron Johnson and the Ongoing Congressional Budget Process | KOA 850 AM & 94.1 FM | Ross Kaminsky
This One Big Beautiful Bill is a political sin and I'm disgusted by Republicans cheering for it. It is indeed big...it’s freakin’ huge. The exact sort of massive nonsense, a “pass it so we can find out what’s in it” Christmas tree that every Republican campaigns against. It is very far from beautiful.
One Big Beautiful Bill is a sh*t sandwich and it's sooooo depressing to see Republican after Republican asking to take another bite.
well, it depends on whether you're looking at absolute dollars versus percentage benefit. Every major tax reform from Republicans during my lifetime (as far as I know) has cut taxes for lower incomes a bigger percentage than for higher incomes.
So if rich person got a 2% total income tax cut, a less-rich person probably got 3% or 4%.
I don't like that at all even though I'm far from the top 1% of earners.
Tax cuts should go to people who pay taxes in proportion that they pay taxes, and really the income tax should be at a flat rate, not "progressive."
People who use the term "trickle-down economics" these days tend to be people who don't understand economics but I'll just note that it's just a synonym for "people keeping more of what they earn" and "people getting less of what other people earned."
You can go check CBO scoring of the no tax on tips thing, but my primary objection isn't fiscal. It's political and moral.
Can we be clear on which way he redistributes wealth? You can’t be saying this bill is better for lower income people than the top 1%? Do you really think taxing tips is protecting the deficit? When tips were cash nobody paid them and now that most tips go through payroll it is an increased burden on often young citizens who have the deck stacked against them right now. Do you really still believe in trickle down economics?