The GOP seals their own fate with the Big Ugly Bill
How badly will MAGA who lose their benefits punish the GOP lawmakers who took them away?
Today, the Senate passed they’re version of Trump’s giant tax-cut Medicaid-defunding deficit-busting bill. I had thought, perhaps naively, that they wouldn’t be able to pull together the votes for this monstrosity. I thought they weren’t capable of this shit.
I was wrong.
And the worst part is Lisa Murkowski who flipped her opposition to the bill at the last minute in exchange for an exception on SNAP and Medicaid cuts for Alaska, as if these cuts were too bad for Alaska to tolerate, but not for any other state.
This bill is going to cause a lot of pain, and I had hoped it would fail in order to prevent Americans from going through all that.
But sadly, from another point of view, this might be exactly what we need to finally destroy the fever dream of tax cuts and punishing the poor that has lead the GOP for decades.
Simple math is not their strong suit. And the simple truth is that 99% of America’s deficit and debt problem comes from the Bush and Trump tax cuts.
This is a very simple chart of deficit spending since 2000.
As you can see in the year 2000 the deficit was negative. We were running a surplus.
Why was that?
It was because Bill Clinton and the Democrats in 1992 passed a bill that raised the top marginal tax rate by 2%. They raised taxes on the rich. We were told that increasing taxes on the rich would stall the economy, that it would lead to a recession, that the bond markets would seize up.
None of that happened.
Instead, we had what still stands as one of the greatest economic booms this nation has ever experienced. Average GDP during this. period was 3.8%. Total Jobs created was 17.7 Million. Unemployment started at 7.3% in 1993 and fell to 3.8% in 2000.
This was not what we were promised.
But to be fair, much of that growth was based on the DOT.com bubble which burst in 2000 and did lead to a mini-recession. George W. Bush implemented tax cuts to “spur the economy” and that recreated the deficit spending we can see starting in 2001 and peaking in 2003. After that, from 2004-2007 you can see that the deficit was on a downward trend heading again back toward balance reaching a mere $200 Billion until we were hit with the Great Recession of 2008.
Just like the boom and bust of the DOT.com era, this was another boom-bust cycle which has been ushered by the passage of legislation that allowed for regular banks to get gamble with their funds on the investors market. What they bet on was mortgage failures which were created by their own self-destruction loans which were designed to fail. Subprime mortgages which rapidily grew due to interest payments were intended to default, and when they did their bets multiplied. They made more money as more mortgages failed but like any runaway gambler the investment firms kept pushing the strategy to increase their profits until the entire house of cards collapsed taking our entire economy with it. Average GDP was 2.1%, only 3.6 million jobs were created and unemployment went from 4.3% in 2001 to 7.8% in 2008.
This led the Obama era and TARP, and you can see the deficit skyrocket to an incredible high of $1.4 Trillion in 2009. 7 times higher than it had been just 2 years previously. But again, as you can see starting in 2011, the deficits again started to shrink. During Obama’s term the deficit was reduced by $900 Billion before finally in 2015 the GOP managed to wrangle a “reconcilliation” bill out of Obama where he again cut corporate taxes, as well as made permanent some of George W. Bush’s orignal tax cuts.
This is the year everything reversed.
Before this, under Clinton, Bush and Obama the deficit in almost every year was gradually decreasing. The balance we had of taxes and the economy was bringing the deficit down, the money coming in was slowly catching up with the money going out. Trump’s subsequent tax cut has continued this trend even after the rest of Bush’s cuts have since expired. Obama had an average GDP of 2.3%, with 11.6 million jobs created and unemployment peaking at 10% in 2009, then falling to 4.3% in 2016.
If we had continued on that downward deficit track, we would have again reached balance and another surplus in 2017-2018. Instead, under Trump and his tax cuts, the GDP averaged at just 2.4%. Trump started with 4.3% unemployment in 2017 and only improved it by 0.8% to 3.5 by 2019 before it exploded to 14.3% in 2020 under COVID. After an initial 7 million jobs that were gained during his first 3 years, 2.7 million jobs were ultimately lost due to COVID (meaning we actually lost 9.7 million job since all his gains were erased) meanwhile the deficit steadily crept up year-after-year which was completely against the historical trend.
If you laid down a ruler from 2016 thru today in 2024 you would see a very consistent growth in the deficit each and every year, not counting the two years that COVID-19 and the CARES, PPP and American Rescue Act catapulted the deficit to it’s all time high of $3.2 Trillion. It’s practically a straight line.
Since those measures were temporary, their effect on the deficit immediately receded in 2022 dropping the total by a grand total of $1.4 Trillion. So far, under Biden, that has been the greatest single year reduction in deficit spending. If you include the previous greatest drop ever from 2021 of $400 billion the total 2-year drop comes to $1.8 Trillion combined.
And yet, with both the 1st and 2nd place greatest deficit single-year reductions under his belt, the GOP painted Joe Biden as an “out of control spender.”
But then, if you look at the simple numbers, it’s clear that it hasn’t been “spending” that’s been driving up the deficit — it’s been the TAX CUTS. Obama and Bush spent quite a bit to get us out of the Great recession but that eventually receded. Trump and Biden both spent quite a bit — and just for the record, Trump spent more — to recover from COVID. (And I think this was necessary and both of them deserve credit for doing the right thing because what they did managed to bring us out of that recession faster than any other recession in history.) So you can see where the spending went, but what remains outside those singular events is the steady gradual growth in the deficit that is tied almost entirely to GOP Tax cuts. Trump’s first term added a record $8 trillion to the debt.
It’s fair to note that Covid also had lingering inflation was grew as high as 9% in 2022 (Which was not an all-time record) it rapidly dropped to 2.4% just one year later. The US recovered from inflation faster than the entire G7 and even at its worst we were only ranked at #13 for all countries internationally. Inflation did get very bad, but we also came out of it faster than almost any other nation. Under Biden, we had an average GDP of 3.4% (peaking at 5.9% in his first year) with 14.4 million jobs (re)created, including recovering all of the 9 million that were previously lost by Trump. Unemployment started at 6.2% in 2021 and fell to 3.4% by 2023 (Which was lower than Trump’s previous record of 3.5%)
So even with far better GDP, far better job growth than everyone except Clinton (although in half the time), the lowest unemployment rate in history, and the fastest reduction in inflation on Earth the GOP has managed to reverse the reality of Biden’s accomplishments and stands on the precipice of extending Trump’s deficit busting tax cuts to the tune of another $3.4 Trillion while cutting $900 Billion from Medicaid and $300 Billion from SNAP.
This is nuts.
This bill is a fucking disaster in the making. It’s going to not only ruin millions of lives, it’s going to yet again ruin our economy and drive us EVEN FURTHER into crushing debt. It’s not going to do anything that the GOP promises.
As shown on the chart, the 2024 deficit is $1.8 trillion. If we were to remove all discretionary spending, that would still be only $1.6 trillion, so if we cut everything we possibly could, we’d still have a growing deficit. And they know this because that’s why the bill includes a $5 trillion increase in the debt limit. They know what’s going to happen.
So far this year, yet again under Trump, the GDP is shrinking at -0.5%, unemployment is higher than it was under Biden at 4.2%, inflation has risen to 2.7% and with Trump’s tariffs, prices are rising on groceries and many household items.
The absolute only way to get control of our spending is the let these tax cuts expire as they are scheduled to do at the end of this year. Things won’t snap back immediately, but we will very likely get going back into a downward slope of deficit reduction like we had under Clinton, Bush and Obama. That’s the natural tendency of our budget when these cuts are not in the picture. Eventually, we would again reach balance and start paying down the debt with a surplus, just like we did before.
All we need to do is make sure this bill fails.
And I certainly hope that the GOP finds a way to step on another rake and make that happen as the they struggle to bring together to 2 conflicting versions of this bill.
But on the other hand, if they do manage to pull this nightmare together. If they do manage to put 10 million people off their healthcare, cut clean energy subsidies so that electricity costs jump 10-20%, and throw millions of children off of SNAP — most of that pain and suffering will be in the Red States.
Most of those who will be impacted by all this will be TRUMP voters.
I do have a small hope that if this tragedy does happen, it just might — maybe — finally get the people who blindly trusted and believed this convicted felonious fraud to understand that he’s been telling them nothing but BULLSHIT this entire fucking time.
It just might be enough to wake some of this cult up. [Also, Elon Musk putting his money into primaries against every MAGA who voted for this bill as he’s promised won’t hurt.]
And if it does, we just might have a chance to throw the GOP out of power and start cleaning up this fucking mess with control of the House, Senate and eventually the White House starting in 2026.
I don’t want anyone to suffer through this, even for a short period, but that also might be just what it’s going to take to finally make people realize that the “Laffer Curve” is nothing more than Fantasy Math.
It’s never worked, and it never will work.
Lisa Murkowski responding to Senator Paul saying that her vote for this bill was “A bailout for Alaska.”
“I find that offensive” she says.
Well, at least we know she has feelings, but she still fucked over the rest of the country while protecting Alaska from the worst of the bullshit storm.