Wednesday, July 2, 2025
House GOP can't agree to proceed to debating Senate reconciliation bill, vote stands at 206 Yea, 216 Nay (4 GOP against), with 10 GOP not voting
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
Deane Waldman argues Medicaid cuts of 20 million new Biden enrollees who don't belong there would save lives by shortening wait times for care which have swelled to 132 days
Medicaid cuts could save thousands of lives
... Reduced enrollment and cuts to nonclinical spending could shorten wait times, make care more accessible, and reduce death-by-queue. No one in the media has reported this potential benefit from cuts to Medicaid. ...
Housing in a Fed stress test scenario
The median price of houses sold in the United States in March 1963 was $17,800.
Adjusted for inflation to March 2025, that would be $186,600.
But in fact the median price of houses sold was $416,900, 123% higher.
A 36% shock to that as contemplated by the Fed's recent bank stress tests could bring the median price of houses sold down to $266,800, dialing the clock back to 2013, which is still 43% higher than what the long term price would be merely adjusted for inflation.
A large number of homeowners who have purchased homes from 2020 when prices skyrocketed by 31% could be instantly underwater in this scenario. There have been 4.73 million new large bank consumer mortgage originations since 2Q2020.
Add losing a job and boom, you could have another foreclosure crisis all over again.
The 2007 shock to the median price of houses sold was only 19% 1Q2007-1Q2009, with prices not recovering until 1Q2013, but many millions of foreclosures were completed over the period.
A mitigating factor for homeowners generally today is owners' equity in real estate, which was almost 62% in 2005, but in 2025 is almost 72%, ten points higher. We haven't seen a level like that since 1960.
Owners' equity had crashed by a quarter to 46% by 1Q2012, the lowest on record in the post-war.
Every major bank passes stress test from the US Federal Reserve
507 banks failed in the United States 2008-2014 inclusive, costing the Deposit Insurance Fund nearly $90 billion. Many millions of homes went into completed foreclosure.
... All 22 banks tested this year would have remained solvent and above the
minimum thresholds to continue to operate, the Fed said, despite
absorbing roughly $550 billion in theoretical losses. ...
Under this year’s hypothetical scenario, a major global recession would
have caused a 30% decline in commercial real estate prices and a 33%
decline in housing prices. The unemployment rate would rise to 10% and
stock prices would fall 50%. In 2024, the hypothetical scenario was a
40% decline in commercial real estate prices, a 55% decline in stock
prices and a 36% decline in housing prices. ...
The 2024 benchmarks are a mixture.
The 2007 shock to the median price of houses sold was only 19% 1Q2007-1Q2009, with prices not recovering until 1Q2013. But since the median price of houses sold has jumped by about 31% just since 2020, planning for a future 36% decline is more than appropriate.
Unemployment
peaked at 10% in October 2009. The civilian employment level contracted
by almost 7 million 2007-2010 on an average basis, and did not recover
until 2014, seven long years later. Pandemic unemployment peaked at 14.8% in April 2020. We got as high as 10.8% in November and December 1982. Great Depression unemployment peaked at 25.59% in May 1933. This one is a crap-shoot.
The average price of the S&P 500 fell 50.8% between October 2007 and March 2009, but in 2007 the S&P 500 was valued about 26% above the long term mean, not 130% as in 2024.
That's the datum that worries me. Just to get to its historical median value of 81, the S&P 500 today would have to fall 61%, to about 2425.
Imagine the howls.
Ukraine suffered its largest attack yet from Russia, Trump's response is to cut weapon shipments while dithering yet another two weeks on his Putin ultimatum
Trump is a detestable, amoral fiend.
... The weapons being delayed include dozens of Patriot interceptors that can defend against incoming Russian missiles, thousands of 155 mm high explosive Howitzer munitions, more than 100 Hellfire missiles, more than 250 precision-guided missile systems known as GMLRS and dozens each of Stinger surface-to-air missiles, AIM air-to-air missiles and grenade launchers, the two defense officials, two congressional officials and two sources with knowledge of the decision said. ...
Ukraine has repeatedly appealed for additional U.S. and European air defense weaponry as Russia has stepped up its air raids in recent months. Over the weekend, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said Russia had launched the largest aerial attack on the country since Moscow’s full-scale invasion in 2022, firing 60 missiles and 477 drones. ...
The munitions were approved as part of Presidential Drawdown Authority and Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative packages during the Biden administration, the defense officials and two sources with knowledge of the decision said. Some of the shipments are already in the region but have been stopped before being turned over to Ukraine, according to a defense official and two sources with knowledge of the decision. ...
Senate reconciliation bill gives chipmakers like TSMC more tax credits while cutting Medicaid
... Under the bill, passed by the Senate Tuesday, tax credits for those
semiconductor firms would rise to 35% from 25%. That’s more than the 30%
increase that had made it into a draft version of the bill. ...
The new provisions expand on tax incentives under the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, which provided grants of $39 billion and loans of $75 billion for U.S.-based semiconductor manufacturing projects. ...
... Recent changes to the bill would cut roughly $1.1 trillion in health-care spending over the next decade, according to new estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
More than $1 trillion of those cuts would come from Medicaid, a joint federal and state health insurance program for disabled and low-income Americans, according to the CBO. The funding cuts go beyond insurance coverage: The loss of that funding could gut many rural hospitals that disproportionately rely on federal spending.
The CBO estimates that the current version of the bill would result in 11.8 million people losing health insurance by 2034, with the majority of those people losing Medicaid coverage. ...
Approximately 72 million Americans are currently enrolled in Medicaid, about one-fifth of the total U.S. population, according to government data. Medicaid is the primary payer for the majority of nursing home residents, and pays for around 40% of all births. ...
Tuesday, July 1, 2025
The US Senate's biggest phony, Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, boasted he had enough votes to stop Trump's bill, but voted for it all three times in the end
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.
GOP coward Senator Lisa Murkowski today hopes the US House will fix the reconciliation bill she just voted for, just like GOP coward Rep. Chip Roy hoped in May the US Senate would fix the reconciliation bill he just voted for
You can't make this up!
Cowards hope someone else will do what must be done.
Heroes do it themselves.
Vote Nay for once!
The dark side had to come to the rescue of Trump's reconciliation bill in the U.S. Senate THREE TIMES
Vance breaks 50-50 tie as Senate passes GOP megabill after voting around the clock
Vice President Vance cast the tie-breaking vote as Senate Republicans on Tuesday delivered a huge legislative victory for President Trump by passing his One Big, Beautiful Bill Act after hours of tense negotiations that lasted through the night. ...
 |
| the three ties which J. D. Vance had to break |
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.
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