One Big Beautiful Bill, Is That What It Will Be!

JimofPennsylvan

Platinum Member
Jun 6, 2007
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The huge media buzz right now is do the Republicans do one big beautiful reconciliation bill like the Republicans in the House of Representatives want to do or does Washington do two reconciliation bills a small one and a second big one like the Republicans in the Senate want. Nobody seems be focusing on what will be "in" the one big beautiful bill if that course is chosen because of the rushed deadline that will have to be met because of the need to raise the debt ceiling and will this be what is best for the American people. What is the best course for the American people that consideration should be driving the decision! Let's look closely at this dilemma for the country. The Senate Republicans want to do an initial small bill on immigration and long-term funding of the military because they know the big reconciliation bill is a Herculean task deciding what low tax provisions should be in the bill and deciding the where and how much to cut federal spending are going to be truly Herculean tough decisions with mega major political ramifications if certain choices are made and no way will smart negotiations be done by the largely June 1 deadline when the country hits the debt ceiling. Speaker Mike Johnson's view is that the Republicans need to do one big beautiful bill because the only way the Freedom caucus will vote for a debt ceiling increase is if they essentially get the cuts in federal spending they have long desired and the Republican House with its super slim majority cannot move a reconciliation bill or any Republican bill without these members of the far right flank of the Republican House conference voting for such a bill.

This is what leaders of the country of all political categories need to consider what is almost certain to happen unless significant bipartisan numbers of elected officials in Washington act extraordinarily virtuous on these matters. What is almost certain to happen is a small reconciliation bill that funds President Trump's immigration agenda and facilitates a significant Republican accomplishment the Party can run on in 2028 and gets rid of the debt ceiling issue for the next two years dies quickly because far right wing Republicans members in the House won't vote for it because raising the debt ceiling they cannot stomach and no Democrat House members signs on to the bill because their vote to lift the debt ceiling is their only leverage to stop draconian cuts to the Federal government social spending which Republicans have as their agenda and Democrats aren't throwing away this leverage. So what happens one big reconciliation gets done and because it has to meet the midyear debt ceiling deadline there is not sufficient time for prudence to be negotiated into the bill and it is an ugly decimating destructive monster of a bill for the American people. Elected officials in both parties that have been in Washington a long while know what this bill looks like and the off the charts suffering and harm it will cause but I will mention some of these provisions so that all the American people can know what Washington will do!

This one big Republican beautiful bill will have the following. Far right Republicans will implement their vision for Medicaid which is every year the Federal government gives each state a lump sum of money and the amount grows on the predictable inflation rate. A state can choose to match the Federal fund amount or not the Federal government will not care. If the federal/state Medicaid monies only cover ninety percent, eighty or sixty percent of the people in the state that need Medicaid healthcare the Federal government will not care they will view it as not their problem it is the states problem. My bet would be that the Republicans in this bill free the states from the Affordable Care Acts (ACA) coverage mandates to allow the states to stretch the Medicaid monies but they may not for political reasons that being criticism during election season that for poor and disabled people on Medicaid Republicans pulled the fundamental life saving and humanitarian protections of the ACA. What this Republican block grant program for Medicaid will mean for millions and millions of people across America that need Medicaid healthcare won't get healthcare because there isn't money to pay for it and many Americans every year will die because of this change and endure great suffering because of lack of healthcare. In regards to the ACA this Republican bill will give individual states the power to negate the ACA provisions for their state that mandate insurance companies not only offer people with pre-existing conditions health insurance but do not charge such people higher premiums because of the pre-existing health problem. For such states that choose this option the Republicans will give a portion of the yearly savings (the Federal government will save a ton of money from lower premium subsidies that it provides to Americans in the ACA individual insurance market) this yearly block of money will decrease over the years and the purpose of this money will for the state to set-up a health insurance fund for people with pre-existing conditions that either cannot get or afford insurance in the private individual market and this insurance will likely only cover catastrophic health care coverage and of course either initially or over time the fund won't have the funding to cover all the insurance needs for all the people in the state that need to buy insurance through the fund. The result of this Republican policy agenda is that a lot of Americans in these states that choose to separate out people with pre-existing conditions many of such people will die because they did not get health care treatment because they had no health insurance the fund had no openings or because of delayed treatment because the catastrophic insurance would not pay for the testing and doctor visits that could have picked of the respective disease earlier.

This one big Republican beautiful bill will sell the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac home mortgage financing institutions and this will be a disastrous development for the American people. These institutions are vital to the residential housing industry what they do is when a home owner buys a home the buyer borrows money from a bank or mortgage company to pay the purchase price, these institutions buy the home loans from the bank and sell bonds to the public and use the loan payment to pay the bond payments. The Federal government took over these institutions during the 2008/2009 Great Recession because their stock and finances were plummeting from the collapse of the housing market and now largely owns them. This is why selling Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is a disastrous move. First off these institutions finance over sixty percent of the home loans made in the United States. These institutions are as helpful to home buyers as is financially responsible possible. They allow down payments of as low as three percent and credit scores as low as 620 and in certain refinances they allow the home owner to not have to buy title insurance. If the federal government sells these institutions the executives and board members that run these institutions will have a legal duty protect profits and maximize profits. So they will likely especially during times of economic turmoil in the country raise minimum down payments and increase minimum credit scores. This will be a disastrous development for Americans that want to buy a home. Further, the private owners could increase the closing costs in buying homes further hurting buyers. And another King Kong size reason for the Federal Government not to sell it is that America has an economic model based on capitalism which means that the economy rises and falls over time and eventually we have recessions and quite likely sometimes deep recessions where the housing market from a price standpoint drops precipitously as there isn't enough buyers or the buyers don't have the money to sustain home prices. During this time of high unemployment many buyers cannot afford to pay their home loan and cannot sell their home because it is worth less then the mortgage loan principle. Good public policy during that time calls for mandating loan service providers lower loan payments, suspend foreclosures for missed payment and cram down the principal on home loans to the market value of the home. Lawfully the federal government cannot force these responsible changes because they are private contracts so the Federal government has no authority to act; however if the Federal Government owns Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac it also owns all the loans they own so it can force these responsible changes to these loans. Bottom line: a lot of ordinary working and middle class Americans will be hurt by the sale of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over time!

What America needs is responsible cutting to Federal spending that fully considers the ramifications of the cuts and only moves forward if it is a responsible move! To bring about such government action Democrat leadership especially in the House but also in the Senate needs to act extraordinarily virtuous they need to act in a manner like the following scenario! What it seems like needs to happen for America not to see a calumnious reconciliation bill be enacted into law is Speaker Johnson needs to tell Senate Majority Leader John Thune to rush his dream small reconciliation bill through the Senate than Speaker Johnson needs to bring it to the House floor extremely quickly for a passage vote and what will likely occur is the Freedom caucus won't vote for it the debt ceiling provisions will make the bill toxic to them and the bill will fail. Then the Republicans will be left with the one big "never done before in America's history" beautiful bill that will significantly hurt Americans that depend on the Federal Government's social programs and needs to be drafted and scored by the Congressional Budget Office and enacted into law in six months. Then Speaker Johnson and Senator John Thune needs to call their respective conference together and say this is the time where the American need to see if the Republican is more than rhetoric about transforming American can the party actually do it and be frank that it needs to be done by the time the debt ceiling is breached. And be further candid that the party to accomplish this will have to bridge the gap between the full bore MAGA branch of the party and the moderate branch of the party from purple states whose voter bloc may be sour and very angry about some of the provisions in the bill. These leaders need to be candid with their conferences and say for the welfare of the Republican party we need to try to see if the Democrats will negotiate a debt ceiling increase/immigration bill that will allow the nation to avoid a sovereign debt default and empower the Trump administration to accomplish what they promised to the American electorate that it would solve the immigration bill. If such a bill is possible it would not be negotiated until some time in March because the Democrats would understandably want to tie our hands to stop some of the cuts and changes they consider Draconian. By mid-March Republican Congressional leadership should have an idea of what the big reconciliation bill is looking like and how much support it has in the Republican conference and whether it is better for the Republican Party to go forward with the Bipartisan bill that scales back our ambitions but sets us up to accomplish some meaningful things and have a good case to offer to the American people come election time that we are making progress.

The Democrat leadership if they want to put country over party could negotiate this debt ceiling/border bill. In this bill they could block the aforementioned draconian Republican policy changes, but don't try to block the Republicans from generating an ACA mandate light program that states can adopt and Medicaid can be put under as long as it doesn't void or hurt any mandates protecting people with pre-existing conditions; the Republican party cannot accept terms that violate this condition for they need to cut federal spending. Democrats could put in provisions that block increases in the budget deficits that will cause a 2008 Greece like sovereign debt crisis which one suspects Republican quite possibly will do to enact into law their tax agenda. Democrats could also add other things in this bill to stop Republicans in areas where they seem like they will really hurt America, for instance, if the Trump administration puts twenty-five percent tariffs across the board on imports from Mexico and Canada, I am not an economist but I suspect such a move might cause a domino effect that sends the country into a recession! One last point I think Senator John Thune is making a big mistake in trying to negotiate a small reconciliation bill with both a border policy agenda and needed improvement in military spending policy the reason is that the military improvement provisions are going to be needed to provide cover for Republican senators from purple states to vote for the large tax bill which will have painful cuts in social program to pay for the tax provisions. This bill will be a ball and chain to these Senators come re-election the goal should be to mitigate the harm with good provisions in the bill!
 
Get one big win early, go from there. Much of what Trump wants can be done by EO.
 
Congress should right one budget, for four years not for one year. Then they need to get lost. We have a 100,000 laws, we don't need more. Make congress part time. Once every 4 years
 

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