The four worst parts of the budget bill, or just among the worst parts?
Jacob S. Hacker and Patrick Sullivan peer into the budget bill now before the Senate so you don’t have to. It even has a section titled “Working Families Over Elites.” How populist is that? Not very. They call it “the most regressive, least populist policy package in memory.” Voters will dislike the medicine in it (New York Times gift link):
We know, because we asked them. In a survey we ran after the House version of the bill passed, we showed a random selection of voters how the bill would affect the take-home income of less affluent Americans versus the top 1 percent. Opposition exploded, with only 11 percent of Americans supporting the bill — one-third the level of support seen among those not shown the distributional results. Among Republicans, the shift was even larger: Support and opposition flipped — to nearly 3 to 1 opposition from nearly 3 to 1 support.
As unpopular as the bill is, however, Americans have yet to fully understand the special alchemy of inegalitarianism that defines it. Break through the deception and misdirection, and Republicans’ signature policy bill, which President Trump and G.O.P. lawmakers call the One Big Beautiful Bill, seems more aptly named Elites Over Working Families.
The pair outline four worst ways that the bill is especially bad. Since it’s Hacker, he focuses on the economic impacts, although the last is the Medicare cuts Republicans have tried to masquerade “in so much duplicitous rhetoric.”
And then there’s the immigration enforcement portion. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council believes the bill will hand Trump’s ICE secret police more money “for detention than the enrire federal Bureau of Prisons.”
Politico reports:
Every major health system in Louisiana is warning Speaker Mike Johnson and the rest of the state’s congressional delegation that the Senate GOP’s planned Medicaid cuts “would be historic in their devastation.”
The group sent the warning in a letter that also went to Majority Leader Steve Scalise and GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy, a physician who has also raised concerns about the cuts.
The health systems said the Senate’s revised text hits states like Louisiana even harder than previous iterations and would slash more than $4 billion in Medicaid funding for the state’s health care providers.
Johnson won’t flinch. He’ll vote for it if it makes it back to the House.
Trump is threatening Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina with a primary challenge after Tillis failed to kiss and vote to advance the text of the Senate bill.
Lovely.
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