This Is The Time For Democrats To Stand Up To Trump

 Robert Reich says Democrats must stand up to Trump and get concessions or shut down the government at the end of this month:

The U.S. government runs out of money September 30. 

Under ordinary circumstances, I would see that as a huge problem. I was secretary of labor when the government closed down, and I vowed then that I’d do everything possible to avoid a similar calamity in the future. 

Under ordinary circumstances, people like you and me — who believe that government is essential for the common good — would fight like hell to keep the government funded beyond September 30.

 

But we are not in ordinary circumstances. The U.S. government has become a neofascist regime run by a sociopath.

 

That sociopath is using the government to punish his enemies. He’s using the government to rake in billions of dollars for himself and his family.

 

He’s using the government to force the leaders of every institution in our society — universities, media companies, law firms, even museums — to become fawning supplicants: pleading with him, praising him, and silencing criticism of him.

 

He is using the government to disappear people from our streets without due process. He is using the government to occupy our cities, overriding the wishes of mayors and governors. 

He is using the government to impose arbitrary and capricious import taxes — tariffs — on American consumers. He is using the government to worsen climate change. He is using government to reject our traditional global allies and strengthen some of the worst monsters around the globe.

 

Keeping the U.S. government funded now is to participate in the most atrocious misuse of the power of the United States in modern times. 

So I for one have decided that the best route is to shut the whole f*cking thing down. 

Morally, Democrats must not enable what is now occurring. Politically, they cannot remain silent in the face of such mayhem. 

To keep the government funded, Senate Republicans need seven Democratic senators to join them.

 

Last March, when the government was about to run out of money, Chuck Schumer, the leader of the Senate Democrats, voted to join Republicans and keep the government going. Schumer successfully got enough of his Democratic colleagues to follow him that the funding bill passed. 

As New York Times columnist Ezra Klein has argued, even if you supported Schumer’s decision then, this time feels different.

 

By now, Trump has become full fascist. 

Congressional Republicans are cowed, spineless, deferential, unwilling to make even a small effort to retain Congress’s constitutional powers.

 

The public is losing faith that the Democratic Party has the capacity to stand up to Trump — largely because it is in the minority in both chambers of Congress. 

But this doesn’t mean Democrats must remain silent. 

If they refuse to vote to join Republicans in keeping the government open, that act itself will make them louder and more articulate than they’ve been in eight months. 

It will give them an opportunity to explain that they cannot in good conscience participate in what is occurring. They will have a chance to show America that they have chosen to become conscientious objectors to a government that is no longer functioning for the people of the United States but for one man.

 

They will be able to point out the devastating realities of Trump’s regime: its lawlessness, its corruption, its cruelty, its brutality. 

They will be able argue that voting to fund this government would violate their oaths to uphold the Constitution of the United States. 

Then what?

They can then use their newfound leverage — the only leverage they’ve mustered in eight months — to demand, in return for their votes to restart the government, that their Republican compatriots give them reason to believe that the government they restart will be responsible.

 

It is time for Democrats to stand up to Trump. This is the time. This is their clearest opportunity.

Multiple Polls Show Public Is Opposed To The Trump/GOP Budget Bill

The chart above uses figures from an NBC News article. It shows that poll after poll shows the American public opposed to the "Big Beautiful Bill" being considered currently by Congress. Trump is urging passage of the bill. 

The public has not been fooled by Republican lies. They know the bill will toss millions of health insurance rolls, deny food aid to millions more, and add trillions to the national debt - all to give the richest Americans a tax break (which they do not need).

The Latest poll (shown below) verifies this. It is the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between June 20th and 23rd of a nationwide sample of 1,590 adults (including 1,455 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.5 points for adults and 3.1 points for registered voters.

Most Don't Like Trump's Tariffs Or His Budget Bill

 

The charts above are from the CBS News / YouGov Poll -- done between June 4th and 6th of a nationwide sample of 2,428 adults, with a 2.4 point margin of error.

Poll Of Battleground Districts Shows The Trump/House Bill Is Not Popular

 

The charts above are from the Navigator Poll -- done between May 28th and June 1st of 1,500 likely 2026 voters in 62 battleground districts. The margin of error is 2.5 points.

Public Perception Of Who The Trump Budget Benefits

 

The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between May 30th and June 2nd of a nationwide sample of 1,610 adults (including 1,436 registered voters). The margin of error for both groups is 3.2 points.

More Oppose Than Support The Trump/House Budget Bill

The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between May 23rd and 26th of a nationwide sample of 1,660 adults (including 1,486 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.2 points for adults and 3 points for registered voters.
 

More Oppose The Trump/GOP Budget Bill Than Support It

The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between May 16th and 19th of a nationwide sample of 1,710 adults (including 1,558 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.2 points for adults and 2.9 points for registered voters.
 

Can The GOP Pas It's "Big Beautiful" Budget Bill?

The Republicans are still in the process of hammering out their budget bill for next year. And if what we hear about it is true, they are going to have to pass it without any Democratic Party votes. That's because it will be making huge cuts for the poor and working classes while giving big tax breaks for the rich. 

But problems are developing among Republicans as they get closer to actually writing the bill. Some Republicans are already drawing a "red line" that would keep them from voting for the bill. And the Republicans cannot pass the bill if they lose too many votes from their own party. Their margins in both houses are just too small.

Can they write a bill that will keep the resisters happy? Will Trump be able to force the resisters in line and get their votes? Right now, no one knows. But it is causing some growing doubt on whether they will be able to pass the bill.

Here, from The Washington Post, are some of the "red lines" being drawn by some of the Republicans:

Medicaid

House Republicans have asked the Energy and Commerce Committee to find at least $880 billion in cuts as part of the bill, which the Congressional Budget Office said will be impossible without cutting Medicaid, Medicare or the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Trump has pledged not to cut Medicare or Medicaid.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) voted against a budget framework last month because of concerns that it would clear the way for Medicaid cuts. Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) have said they are open to adding work requirements to Medicaid but will not vote to cut Medicaid benefits.

A dozen House Republicans warned Johnson in a letter last month that they “cannot and will not support a final reconciliation bill that includes any reduction in Medicaid coverage for vulnerable populations.”

The state and local tax deduction cap

To help pay for their 2017 tax bill, Republicans limited how much Americans could deduct in state and local taxes on their federal returns. Now five House Republicans who represent suburban districts in high-tax states — Reps. Nick LaLota (New York), Andrew R. Garbarino (New York), Michael Lawler (New York), Young Kim (California) and Tom Kean Jr. (New Jersey) — say they won’t vote for legislation to extend the 2017 tax cuts unless the $10,000 cap is lifted.

Taxes and fees

The House Transportation Committee has proposed a new $250 electric vehicle registration fee and a $100 registration fee for hybrid vehicles to help pay for the bill. That’s a dealbreaker for Sen. Rick Scott (R-Florida), who said he won’t vote for legislation that includes any fee increases.

A return to 2019 spending levels

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) said last week he would not vote for the bill unless it reduces spending to 2019 levels — which he acknowledged was unlikely to happen. “There’s a growing group of us that are insisting on returning to a pre-pandemic level of spending, which is much lower than what anybody is working on in either the House or the Senate,” Johnson said.

The debt limit

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) voted against the framework underlying the bill because he objected to Republicans’ plan to use the bill to raise the debt limit by $5 trillion.

Asked last week whether including such an increase in the bill would lead him to oppose it, Paul said, “I’m not for raising the debt ceiling $5 trillion, so I’m not for it.”

The deficit

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky), who also voted against the budget framework last month, said he has a different red line: He can’t vote for a bill that increases the deficit.

House Republicans Want To Help The Rich By Hurting Everyone Else

House Republicans have finally come up with an outline for the appropriations bill they hope to pass. Here's some of what the bipartisan nonprofit Center on Budget and Policy Priorities had to say about it:

The House Republican budget released today by Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington is an extreme giveaway to the wealthy at the expense of families who already have a hard time making ends meet. It would raise families’ health care, food, and college costs, increase the nation’s economic risks, and worsen poverty and hardship for tens of millions of people, while doubling down on huge tax giveaways for wealthy households and businesses. This budget plan reflects a stark betrayal of President Trump’s campaign promises to protect families who struggle financially.

The proposed budget’s reconciliation instructions — the directives to the tax-writing and other committees that set up a special fast-track process for passing budget and tax legislation — make the Republican agenda clear: costly tax cuts for the wealthy and businesses, paired with deeply harmful cuts in programs and services for families and communities. This is an upside-down plan that prioritizes the wealthy and well-connected over families for whom the cost of health care, college, and food is a serious concern. A reconciliation bill that meets the reconciliation directives to each committee would add trillions to the debt over the decade.

For weeks, House Republicans have been circulating proposals that would take health coverage and food assistance away from millions of people and raise the cost of student loans to offset part of the cost of extending the expiring 2017 tax cuts. Based on various proposals, 36 million people or more could be at risk of losing their health coverage through Medicaid, and more than 40 million people could receive less help from SNAP to buy groceries, millions of them potentially losing their food assistance altogether. About 5 million undergraduate students a year use federal student loans to pay for college, and many are at risk of higher costs to go to college given the cuts assigned to the Education and Workforce Committee. Millions of borrowers no longer in school could also be at risk for higher loan costs.

These aren’t just numbers. The loss of Medicaid means, for example, a parent can’t get cancer treatment, and a young adult can’t get insulin to control their diabetes. Cuts to food assistance mean a parent skips meals so their children can eat or an older person who lost their job has no way to buy groceries. These cuts will affect people in every state and of all races and ethnicities, but the impacts will often be especially severe in poorer states and among Black, Latino, and Indigenous people and people in rural communities, who have higher poverty rates and thus are more likely to qualify for food assistance and health coverage. Rather than expanding opportunity, the budget would make it harder for people to afford the health care and food they need to survive and succeed. . . .

The budget resolution directs the House Energy and Commerce Committee to reduce the deficit by $880 billion over ten years, a target Republicans have indicated they will hit primarily by cutting Medicaid. Similarly, it directs the House Agriculture Committee to reduce the deficit by $230 billion over ten years, which the committee would achieve primarily by cutting SNAP benefits, restricting eligibility, or both. And it directs the Education and Workforce Committee to reduce the deficit by $330 billion, the bulk of which is likely to come from making student loans more expensive. . . .

This budget also cuts myriad investments in the budget area that covers everything from schools to roads, medical research, assistance with rents, and administering Social Security, known as non-defense discretionary (NDD) spending. In 2024, total NDD funding outside of veterans’ medical care was 14 percent below the 2010 level, after taking into account inflation and population growth, and it will likely fall further in 2025, when appropriations are finalized. The House Republican budget would continue this disinvestment in the future. . . .

The reconciliation instructions allow for the Ways & Means Committee to increase the deficit by $4.5 trillion through 2034. This is $900 billion more than is needed to extend the expiring 2017 tax provisions over that time period, signaling that more tax cuts will be added on top of the already expensive 2017 tax cuts and could include additional regressive corporate tax cuts. . . .

The House Republican budget’s path of less opportunity, higher poverty, and more inequality is the wrong direction for our nation.   

Biden's Budget Cuts Trillions From Deficit - GOP Plan Doesn't

The Republicans in Congress love to whine about the deficit. But their plan for new tax cuts for the rich will just increase the deficit. President Biden has revealed his budget plan. It's a plan that will accomplish some needed things and will cut over $3 trillion from the deficit over the next 10 years.

Here's what Jennifer Rubin says about Biden's budget (and the GOP's lack of one) in The Washington Post:

President Biden’s budget, like all administrations’ budget proposals, will not become law. But it achieves two important goals: It makes several policy proposals whose times have come. And it reveals GOP hypocrisy on deficit control.

A favorite Biden expression is, “Don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.” And that certainly applies here. In particular, his tax proposals evince a commitment to narrowing income inequality. He also advances several innovative programs to address the housing crisis.

For starters, Biden’s tax proposals seek to bolster the working poor. “The President’s Budget would restore the expanded Child Tax Credit, lifting 3 million children out of poverty and cutting taxes by an average of $2,600 for 39 million low- and middle-income families that include 66 million children,” the administration’s fact sheet explains. “This includes 18 million children in low-income families who would be newly eligible for the full credit, and 2 million children living with a caregiver who is at least 60 years old.”

At the other end of the spectrum, Biden tackles one of the most regressive aspects of our tax system: the cap on earnings subject to Medicare taxes. His plan would lift the cap on earnings subject to these payroll taxes and hike the rate to 5 percent on those with incomes over $400,000. It would also end the payroll tax exemption for some earnings from “pass-through businesses.”

The proposal comes at the point in the calendar in which people who make $1 million a year have already capped out on payroll taxes. “Most Americans can expect to pay Social Security payroll taxes throughout 2024,” CNBC reported. “But for top earners with gross annual wage income of $1 million, March 2 marks the date at which they will stop paying into the program, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research.” With the income cap presently set at $168,600, they’ll enjoy the rest of the year without payroll tax deductions.

Frankly, there is no policy reason not to simply lift the $168,600 cap for everyone. However, Biden is sticking with his promise not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000. That means his new proposal would create a sort of “doughnut” where earnings between $168,600 and $400,000 still are not subject to Medicare taxes, but those above $400,000 start paying more. Despite the awkward nod to politics, the concept remains strong. So long as the very well-to-do continue to draw Social Security paid for through the earnings of much less affluent taxpayers, the wealthy can and should pay more.

With a House Republican majority, Biden’s Medicare tax proposal will go nowhere. But it should begin a robust discussion. Why is there a cap? And why not lift the cap for Social Security as well as Medicare taxes?

Coupled with a refusal to renew the costly Donald Trump tax cuts for the richest Americans and increases in the corporate tax rate, the Biden tax proposals fulfill his promise of making the tax code more progressive while giving a specific boost to poor parents. Those changes allow Biden to lay claim to cutting $3.3 trillion from the deficit over 10 years. . . .

In response to this array of proposals, Republicans will holler that tax hikes will crash the economy and spending will balloon the debt. But Biden’s budget, which cuts the deficit, now stands as a challenge: What is their plan?

We already know Republicans want to extend the Trump tax cuts, expanding the pool of red ink. Trump’s incoherent rambling about entitlements suggests … well … we don’t know exactly what he meant. But it sure sounds like he is open to cutting Social Security and Medicare. (“There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements in terms of cutting and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements, tremendous bad management of entitlements. There’s tremendous amounts of things and numbers of things you can do.”If such a word salad came out of Biden’s mouth, the press would be apoplectic.) Forcing the Republicans to explain what spending they want to cut and whose taxes they want to lower should be part of Biden’s budget rollout.

Republicans talk a good game, but so far we have seen nothing of their “economic populism” or any realistic deficit-cutting plan, even one acceptable to their own House and Senate members. Biden has showed his hand. Now it’s time for them show theirs.

McCarthy - Stop The Extremists & Pass A Budget W/Dems

From The Washington Post editorial board: 

The U.S. government will almost certainly shut down on Oct. 1, the work of ultraconservative holdouts who want to “burn the whole place down,” as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) put it. Yet, for now, Mr. McCarthy does not appear willing to take away the matches. He could sideline the objectors by calling House Democrats and agreeing to pass bipartisan legislation to fund the government. . . .

 The resisters had plenty of chances to bargain, and they have refused. They won’t even approve a defense bill that has everything in it they want. And even if legislation passed the House, the Democratic-controlled Senate would reject it.

Those Democrats have good reason to object to House GOP spending-cut proposals. President Biden and Mr. McCarthy agreed in May to a 2024 and 2025 budget outline that includes some spending cuts (about$180 billion worth of savings in those two years). But the holdouts demand more — and big — cuts. They argue a government shutdown is better than approving a bipartisan budget.

If the objectors’ goal is to control government spending, as they claim, forcing a destabilizing and expensive shutdown over what amounts to only about 10 percent of the federal budget is counterproductive. They don’t want to touch Social Security or Medicare. They refuse to discuss tax policy. They want to increase spending on defense, veterans aid and border control. Their deep concern about federal spending falls entirely on a portion of the “nondefense discretionary” budget, which funds education, transportation, science research, policing, parks, support for low-income Americans and other popular programs.

Meanwhile, a shutdown would hurt the economy. Historically, consumer confidence drops during shutdowns. This could be especially harmful now, as consumers and businesses pull back on spending and banks issue fewer loans. It would also demoralize federal workers at a time when many agencies are struggling to recruit. And it would reaffirm why Fitch downgraded U.S. debt last month, a decision owing largely to political dysfunction. Moody’s — the only one of the three major credit rating agencies that has not downgraded U.S. debt — has already warned a shutdown would be a “negative” in its assessment.

In an ideal world, the House and Senate would pass the necessary 12 agency budget bills by Sept. 30. But that has rarely happened this century; instead, federal budgeting usually involves smashing funding bills into one big package and passing it at the last minute — perhaps after lawmakers have given themselves an extension. That is the only realistic course now: passing a continuing resolution to keep the federal government running until December to give lawmakers time to debate and advance a full 2024 budget. The Senate is expected to approve a bipartisan “CR” by this weekend, a deal far from what the House GOP holdouts are demanding.

There is discussion of a discharge petition in the House, through which a majority of members — Democrats and some Republicans — could force a vote on a CR without Mr. McCarthy’s approval. In return for signing such a petition, moderate Republicans could insist that a bipartisan debt commission be included in any compromise deal. They could also push for Ukraine aid and other supplemental funding requests from the White House to be offset by revenue increases or spending trims elsewhere. At some point, moderate lawmakers from both parties, who represent a much broader swath of the country than the ultra-partisans, have to retake control of the legislative process.

Yet, it is hard for even the most frustrated of moderate Republicans to break ranks with their party leadership by signing on to a discharge petition. Until that changes, Mr. McCarthy is in charge, and the speaker is worried he could lose his job if he strikes a deal with Democrats to pass a CR, because the resisters would move to oust him. He should tell them, “Good luck.” Eventually, he will have to. The only way out of this impasse — in which Republicans control just one chamber of one of the two branches of government responsible for budgeting — involves bipartisan agreement.

Mr. McCarthy can’t lead the Freedom Caucus holdouts to accept this reality. But he can win over the public by putting the nation first, standing with the majority of his own party and getting a deal done — with Democratic votes.

Biden's Plan Is Plausible - The GOP Plan Is Nonsense

 

President Biden released his budget plan yesterday. The Republicans have no real plan -- only a bunch of nonsense about cutting the budget (without detailing what they want to cut). Here is economist Paul Krugman's analysis of the situation:

On Thursday the White House released its latest budget; Republicans haven’t offered a specific counterproposal, but they seem to be coalescing around a plan released by Russell Vought, Donald Trump’s last budget director. Neither plan will become law. Instead, they’re intended to position the two sides for the looming confrontation over the federal debt ceiling.

But let’s not engage in false equivalence. The Biden budget may be political theater, but its numbers make sense. The Republican numbers don’t.

In some ways we’ve been here before. A decade ago President Barack Obama also confronted a G.O.P.-controlled House, which sought to use blackmail over the debt ceiling to extract policy changes it couldn’t have enacted through the normal budget process. And Vought’s plan bears a strong family resemblance to the plan advanced back then by Paul Ryan, who would become speaker of the House in 2015.

But the political and intellectual environment is different this time. In 2013 Washington was full of Very Serious People who were obsessed with the budget deficit and believed Republicans who claimed to be deficit hawks. Ryan, in particular, was the subject of much media swooning, although anyone who looked at the details of his proposal realized that it was flimflam.

These days the deficit scolds are much less influential than they were. The news media is, by and large, treating Republican claims that they have a plan to balance the budget with the ridicule they deserve. And the parties themselves have changed: Democrats have become more unapologetically progressive, while the G.O.P. seems far less interested in fiscal policy, or policy in general, than in the past.

So, about President Biden’s budget: The starting point for this budget is that Biden’s people evidently view deficits as a source of concern, but not a crisis. Overall, Biden’s budget proposes increasing social benefits on a number of fronts even in the face of rising debt. It nonetheless proposes to reduce the budget deficit, but only modestly — yes, it claims to shrink the deficit over the next decade by almost $3 trillion, but that’s less than 1 percent of G.D.P.

How can Biden reduce deficits while expanding social programs? Mainly by raising taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals, with an assist from cost-cutting measures in health care, especially using Medicare’s bargaining power to reduce spending on prescription drugs.

Are Biden’s numbers plausible? Yes. Notably, the economic projections underlying the budget are reasonable, not very different from those of the Congressional Budget Office. The projections even assume a substantial but temporary rise in unemployment over the next year or so.

Now, even economists like yours truly, who have been fairly relaxed about budget deficits, generally believe that at some point we’ll have to do more than this. We’ll need a much broader effort to bring down health care costs, and we’re also going to need more revenue than you can raise solely by taxing Americans with very high incomes. But Biden’s plan is a step in the right direction.

What about the Republicans? They claim to believe that rising federal debt is a major crisis. But if they really believed that, they’d be willing to accept at least some pain — accept some policies they dislike, take on popular spending programs — in the name of deficit reduction. They aren’t. The Vought proposal calls for preserving the Trump tax cuts in full, while also avoiding any politically risky cuts in defense, Social Security or Medicare.

Yet it also claims to balance the budget, which is basically impossible under these constraints. In fact, even with savage cuts to Medicaid and drastically reduced funding for the basic functions of government, Vought is able to claim an eventually balanced budget only by promising that tax cuts and deregulation will cause a big rise in the economy’s growth rate. Tax cutters often make such claims; they never, and I mean never, deliver on their promises.

What I find a bit puzzling is why Republicans are still rallying around this stuff. The modern G.O.P. gets its energy from culture war and racial hostility, not faith in the miraculous power of tax cuts and small government. So why not give up on the ghost of Reaganomics? Why not come out for a strong social safety net, but only for straight white people?

Part of the answer may be that the party still needs money from billionaires who want to keep their taxes low. But it also seems to me that the peddlers of right-wing economics have done an extremely good job of marketing their wares to politicians who don’t know or care much about policy substance. That Vought proposal, as I said, looks a lot like Paul Ryan’s plans a decade ago — but it’s titled “A Commitment to End Woke and Weaponized Government,” and somehow manages to mention critical race theory — which is not exactly a line item in the budget — not once, not twice, but 16 times.

In any case, where we are now is that Biden is offering a basically reasonable fiscal plan, while Republicans are talking meanspirited nonsense.