The Big Bad Not So Beautiful Bill
Also Elon Musk and Donald Trump are going through something.
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The Iran-Iraq War of Political Conflicts.
This is legitimately sad. If two thin-skinned sociopaths can’t find love, what hope is there for the rest of us?
The source of Trump and Musk’s bro-vorce is the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which the House already passed, but is now facing serious hurdles in the Senate. Musk has declared war on the bill, which is a good thing since the bill is terrible; though I assume he’s doing it to get back at Trump, and not because he actually cares about what’s in the legislation. One has to assume that most Republicans will side with Trump on the bill, but with Musk’s billions — and his vindictive nature — there’s always a chance that he funds primary challenges against certain GOP members who are backing it.
Musk’s opposition is just one more hurdle for Republicans to climb in passing a bill that is already deeply unpopular — and has exposed genuine fissures within the GOP.
The Big Bad Shitty Bill
The more we learn about the House-passed “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” the worse it sounds.
Millions of Obamacare enrollees would lose health coverage under the Republicans’ major policy bill, which would make coverage more expensive and harder to obtain.
Most of the proposals in the bill, which passed the House last month, are technical changes — reductions to enrollment periods, adjustments to formulas, and additional paperwork requirements. But together, they would leave about four million people uninsured in the next 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office reported Wednesday.
Alongside these proposals is another challenge to the program: Additional Obamacare funding is set to expire at the end of the year, and Republicans do not plan to extend it. If they don’t, the C.B.O. estimates an additional 4.2 million Americans would lose coverage.
…. Taken together, proposed changes and the expiration of the subsidies could threaten the viability of the Obamacare markets themselves, which have more than tripled in size since 2014, and currently cover 24 million people.
Keep in mind, these changes to Obamacare are in addition to the 7.8 million Americans who will lose Medicaid coverage if this bill passes.
For those of us old enough to remember, when Obamacare passed in 2010, it was deeply unpopular — and contributed to Democrats losing the House of Representatives later that year. But the effectiveness of the legislation — and, in particular, changes made to the bill in 2021 that increased Obamacare subsidies — has not only reversed public opinion but has also turned Obamacare into a genuine public policy success story.
When you factor in the 20 million people who have received health insurance coverage because of Medicaid expansion, around 44 million Americans now receive health care coverage because of Obamacare. Before Obamacare became the law of the land in 2020, the uninsured rate was around 19 percent. Today it’s at 8 percent.
It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that Obamacare is one of the most successful public policy initiatives in my lifetime. The GOP’s assault on it will only heighten public opposition to the Big Beautiful Bill — and as much as Republicans like to rail against Obamacare, even they understand that attacking it will cause political problems.
I still expect Republicans to pass a tax cut bill (cutting taxes if the only policy goal that truly unites Republicans, aside from deporting brown people), but anyone who tells you they know how this will definitely play out can be safely ignored. The path forward for Republicans — and the One Big Beautiful Bill — is murky as hell.
READ THE BILL
One of the chief Republican criticisms of Obamacare was that Democrats hadn’t bothered to read the bill … which makes this development extra ironic (and hilarious).
Last week, Representative Mike Flood of Nebraska admitted during a town hall meeting in his district that he did not know that the bill would limit judges’ power to hold people in contempt for violating court orders. He would not have voted for the measure, he said, if he had realized.
And as lawmakers returned to Washington on Tuesday after their weeklong break, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said that she had been unaware that the mega-bill she voted for would block states from regulating artificial intelligence for a decade.
“Full transparency, I did not know about this section,” Ms. Greene posted on social media, calling it a violation of states’ rights and adding that she “would have voted NO if I had known this was in there.”
Even the GOP’s faux fiscal hawks are publicly admitting they passed a lemon of a bill.
“The bill is big but not yet beautiful,” said Representative Andy Ogles, a hard-right lawmaker from Tennessee. “Hopefully, the Senate will make steeper cuts and truly make it beautiful.”
Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania said in a post on X that members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, nearly all of whom voted to pass the legislation, expected “MASSIVE improvements from the Senate before it gets back to the House.”
None of this should come as a surprise, considering that the Big Beautiful bill was not fully drafted until about eight hours before House members voted on it. And, because of Speaker Johnson’s push to get the bill passed before Memorial Day weekend — and a desire for consensus within the GOP ranks — the contents of the bill were largely irrelevant. The bill passed because Republicans needed it to pass.
However, voting on legislation that contains toxic provisions can backfire. Indeed, House Republicans have given their 2026 Democratic opponents plenty of ammunition to use in campaign ads against them. That won’t matter to the Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the world. She’s in a safe district. But for House Republicans in blue or purple districts, the One Big Beautiful Bill, which will undoubtedly be rewritten in the Senate, will likely come back to haunt them. In Johnson’s desperation to pass any bill by his self-imposed deadline, he’s placed a political albatross around the necks of GOP members he needs to remain as Speaker.
What’s Going On
For MSNBC, I wrote about Pete Hegseth’s middle finger to the LGBTQ community.
Great piece by Sheila Katz on why Jews in America are afraid
Your daily reminder about the evils of nepotism.
The New Yorker’s profile of Curtis Yarvin is quite something.
I was already not planning to vote for Andrew Cuomo in the NYC mayoral race … but if I had any doubt, this interview with the New York Times clinched it. Cuomo has not lived in New York since he was 32 years old, and it couldn’t be more obvious that he is only running to rehabilitate his image after his humiliating resignation as governor. My problem is that every other candidate in this race is terrible, particularly Zohran Mamdani. It’s not easy living in the greatest city in the world and having to choose from one of these clowns to be my next mayor.
Great post from Elliot Morris on how the Kilmar Abrego Garcia deportation hurt Trump politically (and also why the Abundant-bros are wrong about the future of the Democratic Party).
Musical Interlude
This despicable bill, more than changing what government does, would change what government is. It has Project 25's smell all over it. And to sell it to the public, nothing but whopping lies - "largest deficit reduction", "not cutting anything meaningful", "not cutting medicaid". I believe that mid-terms will likely have Republicans wishing they had never started this fight.