Monday, June 30, 2025
Phony Republican current policy baseline says Trump tax cuts will cost $0 going forward, Congressional Budget Office says $3.5 trillion
Graham claims sole authority to decide if GOP megabill complies with budget laws
... Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), the ranking member of the Budget Committee, immediately appealed the ruling of the chair.
He pointed to a letter he received from Congressional Budget Office Director Phillip Swagel asserting that the Finance portion of the bill would increase federal deficit by $3.5 trillion between 2025 and 2034 and increase deficits beyond the 10-year budget window, which ends in 2034.
“The ability of the chair to create a phony baseline has never been used in reconciliation, not ever,” Merkley argued.
“This breaks a 51-year tradition of the Senate for honest numbers,” he declared.
Merkley’s appeal of the chair’s ruling empowering Graham failed by a party-line vote. Senators rejected it by a vote of 53 to 47. ...
Every Republican in the U.S. Senate drank the koolaid this morning and voted for the current policy baseline, including Thom Tillis, Rand Paul, Ron Johnson, you name 'em, they voted for it
I'm speechless.
The roll call vote is here.
Using their magic eraser, the Trump tax cuts will cost $0 going forward.
Words have a meaning, and Real Clear Politics wants you to think Donald Trump intimidated Senator Thom Tillis to disappear
Thom Tillis announces retirement from Senate after clash with Trump
The truth: ... The North Carolina Republican announced on Sunday that he would not seek reelection in the 2026 cycle. ...
Thom is still there, hopefully to vote Nay again today on Trump's big, ugly charade of a reconciliation bill, and will be there for eighteen more months, and there's not a damn thing Trump can do about it.
He will be a potent second potential Nay vote in the US Senate on everything with Rand Paul.
Sunday, June 29, 2025
Republicans are doing an end-run around the Senate parliamentarian to make novel use of the current policy baseline instead of current law, asserting a Democrat precedent from 2022
Senate GOP declines to meet with parliamentarian on whether Trump tax cuts add to deficit
... Republicans, however, say that the parliamentarian doesn’t have a role in judging how much the tax portion of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act would add to the deficit within the bill’s 10-year budget window or whether it would add to deficits beyond 2034.
They argue that Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has authority under Section 312 of the Congressional Budget Act “to determine baseline numbers of spending and revenue.”
Ryan Wrasse, a spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), pointed to a Budget Committee report published when Democrats were in the majority in 2022 stating that the Budget Committee, through its chair, makes the call on questions of numbers, not the parliamentarian.
Graham received a letter from Swagel [CBO Director] on Saturday stating that the Finance Committee’s tax text does not exceed its reconciliation instructions or add to deficits after 2034 when scored on the “current-policy” baseline that Graham wants the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) and CBO to use.
Taylor Reidy, a spokesperson for the Budget panel, asserted on the social platform X that “there is no need to have a parliamentarian meeting with respect to current policy baseline because Section 312 of the Congressional Budget Act gives Sen. Graham — as Chairman of the Budget Committee — the authority to set the baseline.” ...
All you really need to know is that whatever these yokels end up passing, the country will be $50-$60 trillion in debt ten years from now because they spend too much and tax too little.
Republican Senator Thom Tillis from North Carolina will not run again in 2026 after voting to stop Trump's reconciliation bill
Tillis won’t run for reelection in North Carolina
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) on Sunday announced he will not seek reelection to the Senate next year, firing a political shock wave into the midterm cycle after he said he would oppose President Trump’s mammoth tax package. ...
Good morning to all, except to those who cannot spell yesses and noes
Alexander Bolton at The Hill here:
... The vote to proceed to the sprawling budget reconciliation package remained open on the Senate floor for more than three and a half hours, stuck for a long time at 47 yes’s and 50 no’s. ...
Trump & Co. played up Fordow from the beginning because they knew they couldn't do anything about Isfahan
... The comment by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, which was described by three people who heard his remarks and a fourth who was briefed on them, is the first known explanation given for why the US military did not use the Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb against the Isfahan site in central Iran. US officials believe Isfahan’s underground structures house nearly 60% of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, which Iran would need in order to ever produce a nuclear weapon. ... Isfahan was only struck by Tomahawk missiles launched from a US submarine. ...
An early assessment produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency in the day after the US strikes said the attack did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program, including its enriched uranium, and likely only set the program back by months, CNN has reported. It also said Iran may have moved some of the enriched uranium out of the sites before they were attacked. ...
Caine and Hegseth on Thursday said the military operation against Fordow went exactly as planned but did not mention the impacts to Isfahan and Natanz.
The emphasis on Fordow from the beginning was intentional, because they knew they couldn't do anything about Isfahan.
You know, like "Look over there! A deer!"
Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin folds like a house of cards, switches his Nay vote to Yea to advance reconciliation bill to the Senate floor for debate
Trump megabill narrowly advances in Senate despite two GOP defections
Senate Republicans on Saturday narrowly voted to advance a sprawling 1,000-page bill to enact President Trump’s agenda, despite the opposition of two GOP lawmakers.
The vote was 51-49.
Two Republicans voted against advancing the package: Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who opposes a provision to raise the debt limit by $5 trillion and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who says the legislation would cost his state $38.9 trillion in federal Medicaid funding.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) changed his “no” vote to “aye,” and holdout Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah), Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) also voted yes to advance the bill.
The bill had suffered several significant setbacks in the days and hours before coming to the floor, at times appearing to be on shaky ground.
The vote itself was also full of drama. ...
Flashback to May 25 when Johnson said he had enough votes in the Senate to stop the bill:
GOP senator says resistance to Trump's 'Big, Beautiful Bill' could stop it in the Senate
President Donald Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson are hopeful for minimal modifications in the Senate to the "One Big, Beautiful Bill" passed by the House last week, but one Republican senator said there's enough resistance to halt the bill unless there are significant changes.
"The first goal of our budget reconciliation process should be to reduce the deficit. This actually increases," Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday, urging deeper spending cuts than those in the bill to reset to a "reasonable, pre-pandemic level of spending."
"I think we have enough to stop the process until the president gets serious about spending reduction and reducing the deficit," Johnson said. ...
Didn't even have him!
Saturday, June 28, 2025
Trump administration fails to intimidate Canada, goes Galt and ends trade talks
... The first payments from Canada’s digital services tax, which was enacted
last year and applies retroactively to 2022, are set to be collected
Monday. The tax would hit both domestic and foreign tech companies,
including U.S. giants such as Amazon, Google and Meta.
Canadian officials said this month that they would not pause the digital services tax, despite ferocious opposition from the United States.
“Obviously, we think it’s patently unfair to do it retroactively,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said later Friday on CNBC’s “Closing Bell: Overtime.”
Bessent said the Trump administration was hoping that Carney’s government would “put a brake on” the tax “as a sign of goodwill.” ...
Trump's idea of good will is 50% tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, 25% tariffs on autos, an overall 10% tariff on most everything else, and a 25% "fentanyl" tariff.
Trump is the Uniparty, floats an Iran policy similar to Obama's
... The potential deal would mark a major reversal in policy for President
Trump, who pulled the U.S. out of the Obama administration’s nuclear
deal with Iran in 2018 arguing in part that the sanctions relief and
unfreezing of Iranian assets had provided a “lifeline of cash” to the Iranian regime to continue its malign activities. ...
Friday, June 27, 2025
The weekend help has arrived early at Drudge lol
Four trillion TRILLION dollars! Now that's a lot of money!
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