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   That Would Be Telling (thatwouldbetelling@shitposter.world)'s status on Monday, 26-May-2025 05:56:40 JST That Would Be Telling

   (((Stephen Miller))) makes some very important points about the Big Beautiful Bill in a long Xweet.

   I'm still going over the details, but a yuge claim, which in an admission against interest is backed up by Wikipedia, is that reconciliation rules for what it calls "budget reconciliation" cannot touch discretionary spending. that is, what's in theory specifically appropriated each year, like for NASA.

   Thus the vast majority of DOGE "cute" are not germane. Scare quotes because if you want the USAID 90% haircut to stand, in practice that must be in a rescission bill, another parliamentary maneuver to get around the Senate filibuster.

   Per Wikipedia, "Budget reconciliation bills can deal with mandatory spending, revenue, and the federal debt limit" and Social Security which is part of the first cannot be touched.

   Since mandatory spending defines it by things like "everyone 63 and older can get paid." DOGE cuts of for example people over 120 years old need no Congressional action.

   Thus the focus on Medicaid, a Federal-state "partnership" which is deeply corrupt when states tax providers and get paid by the Feds for that.

   https://x.com/StephenM/status/1926715409807397204

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconciliation_(United_States_Congress)

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     That Would Be Telling (thatwouldbetelling@shitposter.world)'s status on Monday, 26-May-2025 05:56:40 JST That Would Be Telling

     in reply to

     Next, the deficit, but first someone in Instapundit comments credibly claimed compared to 2019 we're paying half a trillion more per year in interest on the Federal debt (see first link for some clues to that). Three ways out of that, I suppose at best we'll do all of them: inflation, economic growth, and lower interest rates. The latter is potentially explosive because "Biden" sold a lot of short term debt even when rates were very low.

     OK, Miller says it's (very partisan I say) CBO math to count keeping the 2018 "tax cuts" increases the deficit. Here you must first remember the CBO does "static accounting," assumes tax rate cuts don't change behavior, in a tax regime which is very explicit about changing a lot of behavior.

     So where are we on the Laffer Curve? Which is a very real thing, I watched my father's business behavior change a lot after Reagan's tax rate cuts took effect, and we curse Reagan for giving the Federal government a lot more money.

     On the other hand, we have to see how the SALT debacle plays out, or if it's even "big money" in the scheme of things. State and Local Tax Deduction, Red state residents subsidize the Blue state ones by letting them deduct those from their Federal income.

     I was amazed in 2017 when this was capped at ten thousand, but (thanks to comprehensive Democrat vote cheating) the House has a razor thing Republican majority and the BBB will be vetoed by the ten or so Blue state reps unless the limit is removed or significantly increased. But here you'll need to do the numbers, not to mention see how the sausage is further processed in the Senate.

     The rest looks fine except for "The only funding in the bill is for the President’s border and defense priorities" and I wonder how that passes reconciliation rule muster ... but in any case we have to see how this plays out in the Senate anyway. Like, does the Senate Parliamentarian play ball? Does she want to keep her job?

     The history is weird, one Robert Dove was fired twice from the position, to be replaced by the same Allen Frumin twice :cirnothinking:

     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_States#Recent_statistics

     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve

     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentarian_of_the_United_States_Senate

     Fish of Rage likes this.