Big Beautiful Bill (Act) Grab Bag
Media Hit 7/5/25
I’m on the Randy Tobler Show this lovely morning-after Independence Day, where we’re going to talk about the Big Beautiful Bill Act (Chuck Schumer insisted on adding the word “Act” to the bill’s title because of course he did).
I really like Veronique De Rugy’s take on this and feel similarly.
What are the positives of this bill?
There’s the permanent extension of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act
The permanent expensing of machinery and equipment
Expanded access to federal lands and waters for energy development.
Note: I think we need to make sure that this is tastefully done. For example, I don’t want to see Old Faithful plugged up with some hydroelectric dam monstrosity.
Tightens Medicaid and SNAP benefit work requirements.
HSA expansion
Border security funding increases
Again, this needs to be done with care in a way that treats all people with dignity and respect, regardless of their country of origin.
Removes Section 899 from the original House version
This is the one that we’re going to retaliate against foreign countries that unfairly tax American corporations
Implementing this would “be like tossing a grenade at your stuff while it’s still inside our house.”
What are the negatives of this bill?
A lot of the above might be politically unpopular and cost Republicans votes at the ballot box. To stave this off, they’re not engaging on a nationwide talking tour or anything of the sort.
They’re simply delaying their implementation until after the midterm elections.
This is at least a bit deceptive, at least in my book.
If you believe this bill is good, then you should stand by it and be voted on based on it.
Adds massively to the deficit
There has been plenty of hullabaloo about this and I’ve already been caught up in it.
The Congressional Budget Office, the Joint Committee on Taxation, and the Yale Budget Lab (which are kind of the Big Three places to get scores on bills) all argue that this is going to explode the national debt over the next decade and beyond.
The only group that suggests otherwise is… the President’s Council of Economic Advisors.
Given Trump’s penchant for firing people he doesn’t like and for arguing that we should vote non-MAGA republicans out of office, I’d argue that the CEA has a pretty strong incentive to find reasons why this bill will save money.
In fact, Veronique De Rugy (again) has spot-on analysis breaking down the CEA’s thinking on this bill.
So where do I stand?
There are positives in this bill, to be sure.
I do not like the means/process by which those positives were implemented, i.e. through budget reconciliation.
I have a much more restrictive interpretation of what “budget reconciliation” is to be used for than even the Senate Parliamentarian, but perhaps I’m alone in this.
I also have a tremendous amount of respect for the legislative process and believe that it, in its entirety, is an important and under-appreciated reason for our nation’s success.
Budget reconciliation was never intended to be an opportunity to streamline the overall legislative process.
It was supposed to be so boring and so mundane that the only people who bothered to learn about it are people like me, who are irrationally obsessed with the intricacies of the federal budget process. Normal people who have literally anything else to care about would never learn about this thing because it’s just that boring.
To give an example: I’m on the board of a charter school here in Michigan. Here’s how our annual budget process works (simplified a little bit):
We get a preliminary budget for the upcoming school year in the mid-to-late summer. This preliminary budget is based on estimates of, among other things, what we think 1) Lansing is going to provide on a per-student basis and 2) how many students will be in the building on Count Day. Now, we’ve been doing this for a while, so we’re pretty good at reading the tea leaves and our estimates are never that far off, but they are still estimates.
In January, we revise that budget in light of answers to 1 and 2 above as well as other, additional knowledge about how much everything actually ends up costing.
Then, toward the end of the school year, we get a finalized budget that is much, much more final.
Budget reconciliation is supposed to be more like the school board’s revised budget in January, not an opportunity to do whole new things.
If we want to do new things mid-year, that’s fine and there’s a process for doing them. We follow that process. We do not throw them into our revised budget to get fast-track approval.
I do not buy the CEA’s analysis on the overall fiscal effect for one second.
Given the above, it’s very hard for me to cheer for this bill.
It does not reconcile the budget.
It adds massively to our national debt, even above and beyond the CBO’s overall score.
The positives of the bill were implemented in what I believe are unprincipled ways that the Founders and the men who wrote the Constitution would find appalling.
And the fact that it was passed literally on strict party lines with JD Vance breaking the tie in the Senate is really, really troublesome for me.
Frankly, I would support raising the threshold for passage to 60% in both Chambers for all bills if only to force some measure of bipartisanship out of Congress.