The U.S. Senate parliamentarian still has not ruled on the GOP's wacky current policy vs. current law baseline

The current policy is the temporary Trump tax cuts from 2017. 

The current law is the tax compromise worked out by Barack Obama and John Boehner.

I don't think this thing is going to be done by the Fourth of July.

 

 GOP’s food stamp plan is found to violate Senate rules. It’s the latest setback for Trump’s big bill

... The parliamentarian’s office is tasked with scrutinizing the bill to ensure it complies with the so-called Byrd Rule, which is named after the late Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., and bars many policy matters in the budget reconciliation process now being used. ...

Some of the most critical rulings from parliamentarians are still to come. One will assess the GOP’s approach that relies on “current policy” rather than “current law” as the baseline for determining whether the bill will add to the nation’s deficits. ...

I guess stocks didn't like the monthly Treasury statement indicating worsening fiscal conditions lol

 

Five months in, the Trump administration still doesn't have spending under control with the fiscal year to date deficit running 13.5% higher than last year to this point

Deficit FY 2024 through May: $1.202 trillion

Deficit FY 2025 through May: $1.364 trillion

Difference: $162 billion MORE in the hole than last year at this time

I don't care what Elon Musk's DOGE claims, the May numbers from the US Department of the Treasury do not lie.

A tax increase was never more needed. 

 

 

It took only a few months of intense familiarity for Elon Musk to develop his complete contempt for Donald Trump and Capitol Hill

 Elon made his Oval Office farewell just six days ago, and now look at them.

Elon is an exceptionally accomplished person in the auto industry, the communications industry, and the space industry. He's not a perfect man by any stretch of the imagination, but he stands head and shoulders above the puny little rejects of the political class, a bunch of climbers whose sole ambition in life is to control the $7.2 trillion in its hands this particular fiscal year. That must have been pretty boring to be around, and frankly beneath him.

 

Not your daddy's Republican Party

 

The Republican claim that the Big Beautiful Bill's cuts to Medicaid coverage will be offset by enrollments in employer-provided health insurance is a bad joke

The enrollment rate in employer provided health insurance is down four points 2008-2021, from 54% to 48%.

Why?

Costs.

The average premium for a health insurance plan from an employer was 36% higher in 2021 than the inflation adjusted premium from 2008 should have been. The 2008 premium of $4,386 should have been $5,446 in 2021. Instead it was $7,380.

People can't afford this insurance.

Meanwhile their out of pocket cost for it increased 86% over the period, while their deductibles shot up 131%.

Government mandated health insurance, Obamacare, has been a disaster for workers who have voted with their feet against it because they can't afford it and benefit little from it, swelling Medicaid enrollments in desperation.

Republicans promised to fix this in 2017 and failed.

Now they're saying, Let Them Eat Cake.

 

 

 

 

Mad King Ludwig's soul is in chaos, full of conflicting desires which he is utterly unable to satisfy: Trump now calls for letting Congress spend without limit weeks after touting tax increases on the rich to pay the bills

 Trump calls for scrapping debt limit  (June 4)

Trump pushes Republicans to have rich pay more taxes (May 8)

Trump pivots, says GOP should ‘probably not’ raise taxes on rich  (May 9)

Trump millionaire tax hike idea upends Republican political wisdom (May 10)

He belongs in a psych ward, not in The White House.

 

Interest on the national debt has to be paid out of current tax receipts, crowding out other spending

 Defense department spending in fiscal 2025 is estimated to clock in at $873 billion.

Tesla sales must be worse than we thought

 

Musk torches Trump budget bill: ‘Disgusting abomination’

 

 

 

These lunatics are their own worst enemies

 The guy with the common sense about the national debt who stands in the way of Trump's Big Beautiful Bill wants to re-litigate 9/11.

Sen. Ron Johnson on 9/11: "A Lot Of Legitimate Questions Remain Unanswered"

The lead actor in the sequel to the Grace Commission didn't realize it was just a show

 

Elon Musk says Trump’s spending bill undermines the work DOGE has been doing

 

... “I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk said in a clip the program shared on social media platform X. ... “I think a bill can be big or it could be beautiful, but I don’t know if it could be both,” Musk said in the clip. ...

In an interview with The Washington Post published Tuesday, Musk said that the federal bureaucracy is “much worse than I realized” and that DOGE became “the whipping boy for everything.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson's spending bill is in big trouble with the US Senate's Ron Johnson

 

Sen. Ron Johnson: Spending Cuts In House GOP's Budget "Basically A Rounding Error," Adds $22 Trillion In Debt

... You have heard people talk about zero-based budgeting. I'm talking about a budget of $5.5 trillion to $6.5 trillion. Those are options from Clinton, Obama, and Trump (first term), where you just take their actual outlays, plus them up by population growth and inflation, leaving Social Security, Medicare, and interest untouched. That would leave you somewhere between $5.5 trillion and $6.5 trillion. So you start there, but you have to do the work, and you need the time to do the work. ... I think we have enough [senators] to stop the process until the president gets serious about spending reduction and reducing the deficit.

The complaisance is amazing, we are the French

 Yes mon ami, there are Muslim-controlled no-go zones in gay Paris, but what can we do? 🤷

2 Cheers for Passing Tax Bill. Too Bad Spending's Still Out of Control

NY Post

 

... Federal outlays are up more than $2 trillion a year over the prepandemic level, from $4.4 trillion in 2019 to $6.8 trillion in 2024. ...

Yet the Republicans blinked at rolling back practically any of it, let alone all. ...

 

Paper tiger Donald Trump March 2018: I will never sign another bill like this again

He's signed them ever since lol. Nothing's changed.

 

Trump signs $1.3 trillion spending bill into law despite being ‘unhappy’ about it

... Trump slammed the rushed process to pass the more than 2,200-page bill released only Wednesday. Standing near the pile of documents, the president said he was “disappointed” in the legislation and would “never sign another bill like this again.” ... 

 

 

 

So-called fiscal hawks of the House GOP totally cave and narrowly pass Trump's omnibus tax and spending bill 215-214: Massie of Kentucky and Davidson of Ohio were the sole Nay votes

 The House Freedom Caucus is a joke, along with the rest of them: At least $20 trillion in new debt over ten years, increases the SALT cap for itemized deductions important in high tax Blue states, Green New Deal spending still in there, ratifies federal support for Medicaid's backdoor vehicle as insurance under Obamacare, etc.

The Chair of the House Freedom Caucus:

 

 

 

 

 

This is the sort of stuff which makes me think America is finished

 

Republicans finally advanced their budget out of committee late last night, but just barely

 

USA loses last AAA rating, from Moody's, perfectly timed for after GOP can't move a budget out of committee lol

Moody’s downgrades U.S. credit rating, citing rise in government debt

... Moody’s had been a holdout in keeping U.S. sovereign debt at the highest credit rating possible, and brings the 116-year-old agency into line with its rivals. Standard & Poor’s downgraded the U.S. to AA+ from AAA in August 2011, and Fitch Ratings also cut the U.S. rating to AA+ from AAA, in August 2023.

“Successive U.S. administrations and Congress have failed to agree on measures to reverse the trend of large annual fiscal deficits and growing interest costs,” Moody’s analysts said in a statement. “We do not believe that material multi-year reductions in mandatory spending and deficits will result from current fiscal proposals under consideration.” ...

“... we expect federal deficits to widen, reaching nearly 9% of GDP by 2035, up from 6.4% in 2024, driven mainly by increased interest payments on debt, rising entitlement spending and relatively low revenue generation,” Moody’s said. ″We anticipate that the federal debt burden will rise to about 134% of GDP by 2035, compared to 98% in 2024.″⁣ ...

Moody’s officially rated U.S. bonds in 1993 for the first time, but had assigned a “country ceiling rating” of Aaa on the U.S. since 1949.

The GOP runs the House but fails to get Trump's bill out of the budget committee, vote fails 16-21

 

GOP fiscal hawks sink key vote on Trump ‘big, beautiful bill’  

Budget Package Remains Bottled Up in House Committee, for Now

House Budget Committee rejects Trump agenda bill in major setback for GOP leaders

The funniest thing that's happening to Donald Trump right now is that while he tries to intimidate the Fed to reduce interest rates and they do nothing, yields are soaring all by themselves

 The bond market is issuing a vote of no confidence in our elected leadership.

One branch of Republican government thinks this is the 19th century with a robust manufacturing base it needs to protect with crazy wild tariffs, and another branch of Republican government thinks it's just fine to go on spending like drunken sailors and not raise taxes to pay for any of it.

Interest payments alone on the national debt in fiscal year 2024 soared to $1.1 trillion against revenues of $4.9 trillion.

Meanwhile the most powerful military in the world can't stop a bunch of rag-headed heathen bastards from launching missiles at Israel.

These people are crackerdog.

US Treasury yields are now up a net 2.37% across the curve since last Friday.

 

Long duration is very unhappy: 10Y at 4.53 at the close yesterday, 20Y at 5.00, 30Y at 4.97.

 

VUSTX ytd total return: -0.53%.