... Tariffs are set to bring in $172.1 billion in 2025, according to the Tax Foundation, which would be a nice financial boost to a country with a ballooning budget deficit.
“If this ruling is upheld, refunds of existing tariffs are on the table which could cause a surge in Treasury issuance and yields,” wrote Ed Mills of Raymond James in a note. ...
More.
The Elon Musk-DOGE spending cut affair was pure theatre.
When I said we spend $20 billion a day I wasn't kidding.
OK, it's only $19.869794 billion a day.
Meanwhile revenues are expected to fall short by $4.842671 billion PER DAY in 2025.
Trump tariff revenue expected to offset tax bill impact, S&P says in U.S. credit rating hold
... "We could lower the rating over the next two to three years if already high deficits increase ..." lol.
These people are afraid of Trump.
They don't want to be singled out for Trump's daily Two Minutes Hate.
They don't want to be the next Jerome Powell, or Lisa Cook, or Volodymyr Zelensky.
Meanwhile year to date the Trump deficit is running $112 billion ahead of Biden's last deficit. DOGE so-called spending cuts and Trump Tariffs have done nothing to reduce it.
... DOGE’s savings calculations are based on faulty math. The group uses the maximum spending possible under each contract as its baseline — meaning all money an agency could spend in future fiscal years. That amount can far exceed what the government has actually committed to pay out.
Counting this “ceiling value” gives a false picture of savings for taxpayers.
“That’s the equivalent of basically taking out a credit card with a $20,000 credit limit, canceling it and then saying, ‘I’ve just saved $20,000,’” said Jessica Tillipman, associate dean for government procurement law studies at George Washington University Law School. “Anything that’s been said publicly about [DOGE’s] savings is meaningless.” ...
... the EU is now promising to cut carbon emissions by 90% in just 15 years. This goes even further than its already foolhardy promise of a 55% cut by 2030. ...
The EU splurged $381 billion just in 2024 on solar panels, wind turbines, electric cars and the like — more than its entire spending on defense. This is delivering skyrocketing electricity bills — last year they were two times higher than in the US. ...
... the climate impact from the EU’s policies will be next-to-nothing. Run the promised 90% by 2040 and net-zero by 2050 in the United Nations’ own climate model and compare the temperature outcome with the current policy. Because the EU matters little in global emissions and because it has already cut emissions significantly, it will only reduce global emissions through the 21st century by a small 3%. The temperature difference in 2050 is a vanishing 0.02°F and even by 2100 the impact will be impossible to measure at 0.07°F.
All while models show that the cost for the EU by mid-century could be more than $3 trillion every year — more than all current public spending in the EU. ...
More.
Vance casts Senate tiebreaker to advance Trump’s DOGE-inspired cuts
... This was Vance’s sixth tiebreaker in the Senate, following his deciding vote on July 1 to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. ...
The fiscal year to date deficit October 2023-June 2024 was $1.273258 trillion.
The fiscal year to date deficit October 2024-June 2025 is $1.337372 trillion, $64.114 billion higher than a year ago, or 5%.
Yikes.
Even if all not voting GOP vote Yea, there's a tie. Not good enough.
And moments ago Thomas Massie changed his Yea to Nay lol.
Trump’s megabill is in real trouble; House GOP leaders need to flip a ‘no’ vote to a yes
The roll call votes are here, here, and here.
June 4, 2025, here:
Republican Sen. Ron Johnson on Wednesday blasted President Donald Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill” as “immoral” and “grotesque,” and reiterated that he will vote against it unless his GOP colleagues make major changes.
“This is immoral, what us old farts doing to our young people,” Johnson said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” after sounding alarms that the massive tax-and-spending-cut bill would add trillions of dollars to national deficits.
“This is grotesque, what we’re doing,” Johnson said. “We need to own up to that. This is our moment.”
“I can’t accept the scenario, I can’t accept it, so I won’t vote for it, unless we are serious about fixing it,” he continued.
Johnson has been among the Senate’s loudest GOP critics of the budget bill that narrowly passed the House last month.
Johnson and other fiscal hawks have taken aim over its effect on the nation’s debt. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated later Wednesday that the bill would add $2.4 trillion to the national debt over the next decade.
Johnson has proposed splitting the bill into two parts, though Trump insists on passing his agenda in a single package.
“The president and Senate leadership has to understand that we’re serious now,” Johnson said of himself and the handful of other GOP senators whose opposition to the bill could imperil its chances.
“They all say, ‘Oh, we can pressure these guys.’ No, you can’t.”
Republicans hold a narrow 53-47 majority in the Senate, so they can only afford to lose a handful of votes to get the bill passed in a party-line vote.
“Let’s discuss the numbers, and let’s focus on our children and grandchildren, whose futures are being mortgaged, their prospects are being diminished by what we are doing to them,” Johnson said.
Johnson’s comments came one day after Elon Musk ripped into the spending bill, calling it a “disgusting abomination” that will lead to exploding deficits. The White House brushed aside Musk’s comments.
Johnson said Musk’s criticisms bolster the case against the bill.
“He’s in the inside, he showed … President Trump how to do this, you know, contract by contract, line by line,” Johnson said of Musk. “We have to do that.”
Johnson said his campaign against the bill in its current form is not a “long shot,” because he thinks there are “enough” Republican senators who will vote against the bill.
“We want to see [Trump] succeed, but again, my loyalty is to our kids and grandkids,” he said.
“So there’s enough of us who have that attitude that very respectfully we just have say, ’Mr. President, I’m sorry, ‘one, big, beautiful bill’ was not the best idea,” he added.
This was taken down pretty early this morning by the suck-ups at Real Clear Politics. I guess the bosses come in a little later than the help.
This is arguably one of the best discussions of what is really going on that you will find.
In most cases, the parliamentarian looks at whether provisions have a purely budgetary purpose, rather than policy dressed up as a budget item. (This is known as the Byrd Rule, after the longtime Democratic senator from West Virginia, Robert Byrd; the process by which the parties debate the provisions and by which a ruling is made is known as the “Byrd bath.”) ...
For context, the House version costs $3.3 trillion over a decade, according to the latest estimates. We’re verging on $4 trillion for the Senate bill—unless the Republicans’ wish to have the $3.7 trillion in tax cuts entered as zero passes muster with the parliamentarian. ...
Update Wed Jun 25:
Real Clear Politics put this back up in the rotation this morning, lol.
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. ...
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.
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.
