The Hot Take and Long Take

ᗺig ᗺackassward ᗺoondoggle ᗺumbles On

Young Mitch McConnell helps a voter get over the fact that the federal government will never do squat for her. See below for details!

I have been reading the news intensively in the last few weeks, looking for any indication that Trump's ᗺig ᗺackassward ᗺoondoggle (ᗺᗺᗺ) could be thwarted or measurably improved.

I always look at events with the eye of a strategist. How do things stand and what can we do about it? However, the more I learned, the less hopeful I became. The bad news is that the Republicans are going to pass this mess, no matter what we do. More about that below.

Although this legislation is intended to set the nation’s course for the next 10 years, it doesn’t have to stay that way. If we can elect a Democratic president and House in 2028 and the Senate is close to 50/50, I am sure that much of this bill can be “repealed and replaced.” Notice that Biden passed plenty of great bipartisan legislation with a Senate that was split about 50/50. For one thing, without Trump breathing down her neck, I am sure that Lisa Murkowski would join in repealing and replacing this horror show. As for Susan Collins, she fought like a tiger for a fund to stabilize rural hospitals, many of which would close because of decreased Medicaid revenues. Note that a closed hospital degrades medical care for everyone who depends on it, not just those who are insured through Medicaid. Senate leadership offered her $10 billion, she asked for $100 billion, and she obtained $50 billion. Collins actually played tough! I didn’t know she had it in her.

Collins also offered an amendment that would attack the basic insanity underlying the bill. She called for raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans back to what they were before the 2017 tax cuts. Her amendment was defeated.

Republican Senators Collins, Murkowski of Alaska and Rand Paul of Kentucky also joined Democrats in a quixotic proposal to deny the White House Office of Management and Budget operating funds. This would defund Russell Vought, head of the OMB, who has led the Trump Administration in ignoring Congressional control of government expenditures.

The Basic Insanity

This chart, from the New York Times, tells you all you need to know about Trump’s ᗺig ᗺackassward ᗺoondoggle.

The heart of the bill is the enormous deficit-bloating tax cut. If that giant hunk of money disappears into the pockets of the rich, this bill cannot possibly be meaningfully improved. Every improvement becomes trivial.

A quick run thru this atrocity:

COSTS

TAX CUT EXTENSIONS: For individuals and businesses. Impact depends on income level:

• Tax cuts for everyone: adds ~$4.2 trillion to deficit

• Tax cuts for those earning less than $1 million (Trump’s proposal): adds $2.6–2.8 trillion to deficit (this means that no cuts to Medicaid would be needed)

• Tax cuts for those earning less than $400,000 (2024 Democratic platform): adds ~$1.8 trillion to deficit

OTHER TAX PROVISIONS: Reducing the SALT tax that hits blue state taxpayers hard.

TEMPORARY TAX CUTS: No tax on tips or overtime but lasts ONLY four years.

DEFENSE: increases DOD budget by 16 percent, including billions for a Golden Dome project that revives Reagan’s Star Wars failure

SECURITY / IMMIGRATION: Doubles budget for ICE personnel and detention facilities. This means twice as many masked goons arresting immigrants at their jobs! Also, $50 billion for Trump's border wall.

OTHER: 10% tax on green energy. Selling federal land. Selling spectrum frequencies next to those used for defense and air traffic.

SAVINGS

MEDICAID: reducing enrollment by greatly increasing red tape. More than doubling the uncompensated administrative burden on the states to enroll and requalify recipients. Reducing provider taxes that are a large source of Medicaid funding for hospitals.

GREEN ENERGY / ENVIRONMENT: Eliminating virtually all subsidies for solar, wind, battery, and nuclear development.

STUDENT LOANS: reversing Biden's student loan forgiveness programs.

Food benefits: SNAP

On to the House

What is the future of the ᗺᗺᗺ in the House?

Unfortunately, the two most determined groups in the House will work to make the bill worse. The SALT Caucus wants to increase tax cuts for real estate owners in high income states. The Freedom Caucus wants to cut Health care and Green Energy expenditures even more. The stated goal of the Freedom Caucus is to reverse every new spending measure passed during the Biden administration to make it as if Trump never left the presidency.

There is no significant force in the House to oppose these forces. The two caucuses that spoke in favor of Green Energy subsidies and Medicaid have been hardly audible in the last two months. Not a single House Republican has spoken in favor of taxing the rich to preserve Biden era programs. Frankly, the House looks to me like a worse environment for improving the bill than the Senate.

Short Run = Long Run

The strategy we need to pursue in the next few days is the same as the strategy we need to pursue in the next 16 months.

The best strategies I know of for organizing against this bill are offered by INDIVISIBLE. They are famous for tanking Trump’s effort to “repeal and replace” Obamacare in 2017. They did this primarily through town halls. That’s where citizens confronted Republican lawmakers over the impact that losing health insurance would have on them. These town halls created dramatic footage for local TV news and was the primary vehicle by which the public was aroused to defend the ACA. That is why the Republican leadership has absolutely forbidden Republicans to hold town halls! Since we don’t have the weapon of town halls, INDIVISIBLE has other suggestions. Here is part of an email, I received from them:

This bill is very unpopular… People like Medicaid, food stamps, and hospitals. People do not like cutting taxes for billionaires or taking Trump’s anti-immigrant militarization tactics nationwide.

This is not yet a done deal -- so public pressure matters. The House and Senate have to work out their differences before this becomes law. The GOP margins in the House and Senate are tight, vulnerable members up for reelection are skittish about voting for a deeply unpopular bill, and every day of delay makes their coalition more precarious. The last thing congressional leadership wants is a lot of angry constituents pressuring their members.

This is why they are trying to move quickly! They know many voters don’t even know this bill exists, and they like it better that way. The faster Congress moves, the less time there is for public opposition to derail their efforts.

I’ll be straight with you: The odds of stopping this bill are still stacked against us. There’s nothing Republicans love more than cutting taxes for billionaires and cutting healthcare for everyone else.

Let’s not make it easy on them. Elected officials don’t like it when their constituents are pissed off at them. Sometimes it changes their votes. Sometimes it leads to their electoral defeat. But their constituents won’t know to be pissed off at them if they don’t know this bill exists.

It’s times like this that demand one simple thing of grassroots movement: we’ve got to make some noise. We’ve got to break through the cacophony of daily news and distraction to communicate to as many people as possible what Republicans are on the verge of doing this week. And we have to let Republicans know we’re doing that.

In solidarity, Ezra Levin

Co-Executive Director, Indivisible

Suggestions for Good Trouble

Phone Banks (sponsored by INDIVISIBLE, MoveOn and Working Families) will enable you to call Medicaid recipients in key Republican districts so that you can urge them to call their representatives. Regardless of where you live, you can join a phonebank to help drive constituent calls to target Members of Congress.

Neighbor2Neighbor: If you live in a key Republican district, there is a program to identify addresses where you can knock doors to urge people to call representatives through the Neighbor2Neighbor program.

HOUSE TARGETS

AZ-01: Rep. Schweikert // AZ-06: Rep. Ciscomani

CA-40: Rep. Kim // CA-22: Rep. Valadao

CO-03: Rep. Hurd // CO-05: Rep. Crank // CO-08: Rep. Evans

MI-07: Rep. Barrett // MI-09: Rep. McClain // MI-05: Rep. Walberg // MI-02: Rep. Moolenaar

NE-02: Rep. Bacon

NJ-07: Rep. Kean // NJ-02: Rep. Van Drew

NV-02: Rep. Amodei

NY-01: Rep. LaLota // NY-02: Rep. Garbarino // NY-11: Rep. Malliotakis // NY-17: Rep. Lawler

OH-14: Rep. Joyce

PA-01: Rep. Fitzpatrick // PA-07: Rep. Mackenzie // PA-08: Rep. Bresnahan // PA-09: Rep. Meuser

VA-02: Rep. Kiggans // VA-01: Rep. Wittman

SENATE TARGETS

Iowa: Sen. Ernst

Maine: Sen. Collins

Missouri: Sen. Hawley

North Carolina: Sen. Tillis

Ohio: Sen. Husted

Utah: Sen. Curtis

West Virginia: Sen. Capito

Targeting Senators is still relevant because this bill will have to go back to the Senate after it is considered by the House.

🦨🦨🦨 Skunk of the Century🦨🦨🦨

Some folks have no excuse. Senator Mitch McConnell has been freed from any need to placate Trump by his announced retirement from the Senate, but he has offered no resistance whatsoever to the ᗺᗺᗺ. In fact, he encouraged his colleagues not to fear the electoral consequences of the bill.

In a discussion about potential cuts to Medicaid, according to the Kentucky Lantern, McConnell reportedly told Republican colleagues concerned about constituents' reactions that "I know a lot of us are hearing from people back home about Medicaid. But they'll get over it."

Let's see that again!

It's our job to help our fellow citizens to not get over it.

To summarize, from now on we are going to have to play the long game. And my thoughts and writing will be focused on a strategy that will win that long game.

As long as it takes!