The Disgusting Trump Finance Victory
Early yesterday, July 3, 2025, “a date that will live in infamy,” the House approved the Senate version of the Trump finance bill which has an insipid name that I will not repeat here. I will agree that one word in the title of this statute is apt: “big.”
As Jonathan Martin writes, this bill was “never about those tax rates or Medicaid or the deficit.” He writes, “The underlying legislation was no bill at all, but a referendum on Trump. And that left congressional Republicans a binary choice that also had nothing to do with the policy therein: they could salute the president and vote yes or vote no and risk their careers in a primary.”
This is a one-man deal: Trump. John Thune, Republican Senate majority leader and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson are merely the Charlie McCarthy or Mortimer Snerd (the slow-witted one) ventriloquist dummies to ventriloquist Trump. Simply put, neither one could persuade reluctant members but for the Trump assault to which each was subjected.
All the talk of the “holdouts” in each chamber was just blabber. Trump met them or spoke to them to give them the map to their political ruination unless….
In this regard, the House Freedom Caucus is over. These professed fiscal conservatives have driven previous legislative leaders and presidents nuts with loud threats that were believed. This time all its members voted aye in the face of a $ 3.3 trillion estimated addition to the national debt over ten years by the nonpartisan Congressional Budge Office (using dynamic scoring.) Cong. Thomas Massie (R.Ky) did vote nay but he had quit the HFC.
Ok, it’s over $600 billion in just ONE year. (Who really knows what happens in years 2 to 10?)
Those who Ed Koch called the “Richies” will love that their 2017 tax cuts are now permanent.
On the flip side, the cuts to Medicaid falsely described by the Trumpies as “waste, fraud and abuse,” that all-purpose subriquet, will kill sick children, cause hunger for the poor, cause 11.8 million to lose health insurance, and result in the closing of hospitals serving Medicaid recipients. On this July 4, “we the people” are incensed!
Polling on the statute is just what you would expect. It’s all in the framing of the poll questions. Objective questions yield opposition by a majority. Questions that characterize the “big” bill as the second coming of Magna Carta yield high approval!
Congressional Democrats are being instructed on how to characterize the bill to constituents this Summer. Likewise Republicans.
Even if 2026 is a wave election and Democrats win the House and Senate, this “ big” statute cannot be undone. Trump will veto it. For that we have to wait for the 2028 presidential and legislative elections. If the Democrats control Congress and the White House this nightmare ends.
Happy July 4 indeed!
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My last blog predicting Zohran Mamdani’s election as Mayor of New York was misinterpreted by some as an endorsement. I oppose Mamdani and will not vote for him. In my prediction and in my characterization of Mamdani’s appeal I was being descriptive, not judgmental.