The Big, Beautiful Bill—As Musk Suggests—Is Big, Not Beautiful

Once again, the House Republicans are lauding their passing of the Big, Beautiful Trump Bill. (Musk was asked in an interview what he thought of the bill--he said it could be big, or it could be beautiful, but not both.) Frankly, I am not only unimpressed by the bill, but I think they have betrayed their mission to act on behalf of the American people. They like to brag about all the great things they have passed: extending the 2017 tax deadline and stopping taxes on tips and overtime. But as Senators Ron Johnson and Rick Scott explain, they have decided to be loose and careless with our tax dollars.

What are these senators criticizing? Johnson has repeatedly recommended splitting the bill in two, to give the Senate more time to work on the deficit:

‘If we split this thing into two parts: border defense, take what spending cuts that we've already identified, bank those, extend current tax law, take an automatic tax increase off the table, increase the debt ceiling for about a year—by the way, that will be a shocking amount, about $2.5 trillion just to get us into March of 2026. That ought to tell people, we better fix this.’

He has also called for going back to pre-pandemic levels:

‘It's been [an] unprecedented level of spending. There's no justification for $4.4 to $7 trillion in just six years. Getting back to a reasonable pre-pandemic level, you do it line by line by line,’ he said.

But will the people in the Senate understand the importance of this approach?

I doubt it. All they know is that they want their pet projects and expect to get re-elected accordingly.

Rick Scott also opposed the House bill:

‘If we follow the path of the House bill, we'll have close to, I think, $60 trillion worth of debt in 10 years,’ Scott said on ‘Mornings With Maria,’ Thursday. ‘What we've got to do is do what every family does: We've got to go through every line of the budget.’

Sen. Johnson echoed Scott’s proposal on ‘Sunday Morning Futures,’ saying he would trust Scott to oversee a line-by-line review to find areas to cut spending:

‘Rick Scott has the experience in Florida. Take a look at how successful he was at reducing spending, balancing his budget, and then giving tax cuts to Floridians,’ Johnson told host Maria Bartiromo. ‘He'd be great on a budget review panel, I propose that.’

Hello?? Did anyone see that debt amount?

The Senate has other grievances with the House bill:

Senators have signaled they’d like to make changes to a litany of House proposals, including reforms to Medicaid and the timeline for phasing out green energy tax credits, among others, and have grumbled about the hike to the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap pushed for by moderate House Republicans.

What does this mean? Those “moderate Republicans” are prepared to pay off their constituents by increasing the SALT allowance:

The bill includes a proposal that would raise the cap for the state and local tax (SALT) deduction, which would allow taxpayers — especially those in higher-tax blue states — to deduct more of their regional taxes from their federal tax bill. The measure calls for raising the current deduction cap to $40,000 for filers making less than $500,000. The deal House GOP leadership struck with SALT Caucus Republicans was crucial in getting the bill passed. Several Republicans from high-tax blue states had threatened to tank the entire measure if the deduction cap wasn’t increased to their liking.

Not to their liking? We have an economy in crisis, and nobody is willing to bite the bullet. Insisting that adults without children work in order for them to keep Medicaid--remember when Medicaid was for the needy? And they want to take the Pentagon budget up to $1 trillion. How about an audit first?

And trust me—there’s much, much more to this irresponsible bill.

But no one wants to be responsible.