Oops! And Other Megabill Adventures
We're not talking about master legislators, here.
As I write this, the Republican megabill is scheduled for a Thursday morning vote in the House, perhaps before this item publishes. Or not. We’ll see. And the actual details of the bill remain murky, at best; House Republicans will mostly just have to trust Speaker Mike Johnson on a lot of it when they vote. There are a bunch of things that can be said, however:
Apparently the markets suddenly noticed this week that the Republicans are trying to massively increase the federal budget deficit. No, I don’t know why it took this long, given that (1) Republicans ran on promises to massively increase the deficit; (2) they’ve made it clear from the start, including in the budget resolution that passed both chambers, that they were on track to do so; and (3) that this is exactly what they’ve done every time they had unified Republican government from 1981 on.
I don’t know what the markets were and are thinking; I’m just repeating what’s being reported. I do know that there are widely shared perceptions - in this case, that they’re concerned about government debt, and that political actors sometimes react to those perceptions.
What I do know is that increasing federal government deficits is what Republicans do. Which is why what actually baffles me is how at this late date, after almost fifty years of this, some pundits and reporters take claims that conservatives are fiscal “hawks” seriously. Carl Hulse in the New York Times, for example, tells us that Chip Roy and the other House radicals are “are single-mindedly focused on slashing deficits by restructuring the government to dramatically scale back social programs.” This is…preposterous. Not the second part; they certainly do want to slash or eliminate Medicaid, food stamps, and more. But they also want to dramatically increase spending on other programs, including defense and attempts to achieve “mass deportation” of people they don’t like.
It’s like if someone claimed to be switching to a fresh fruits and vegetable diet between their third and fourth corn dog, but did pause at one point for a grape. And had done so for over 40 years. Maybe the media should report that they say so, but don’t take it seriously. At all.
Meanwhile…all bill titles are advertising, even the most straightforwardly descriptive ones. Certainly the Democrats’ “Inflation Reduction Act,” hastily renamed that after inflation flared up despite being basically the same bill it had always been, was advertising. So the question isn’t whether calling the megabill the “Big Beautiful Bill” bill is advertising; the question is what the message they’re sending it, and the answer, obviously, is that they’re advertising Donald Trump rather than the substance of the bill or any indented effects.
Most of that, no doubt, is because flattering Trump is easy and often rewarding. Part, however, is likely because most of the components of this bill are wildly unpopular; not everything – I suspect that increasing spending on border enforcement polls well – but quite a bit of it. Granted, sponsors can claim anything is an Economic Growth Act or for that matter a Balanced Budget Act even if it does the exact opposite, but Republicans are unlikely to brag about cutting taxes for wealthy people or slashing funding for Medicaid or clean energy.
Or cutting Medicare. I said last week that these are not exactly policy experts. It seems now that they may have accidentally triggered Medicare cuts. Large ones. Oops!
I’ll also make the same point I made last time: People whose benefits are cut will notice it, won’t like it, and (with the exception of the most partisan Republicans) will blame the incumbent party for it. Regardless of how Trump and the Republicans spin it. But GOP spin may have much better success in fooling Republican Members of Congress. These are not policy experts.
More generally: You’ll hear plenty of outrage about middle-of-the-night votes and back-room deals. I don’t mind those. But rushing the bill to a final vote just hours after those deals are made? And it’s not as if they had carefully considered the text up to know, which itself was rushed through. Legislating is hard, and the exact language matters. It’s one thing for the rank-and-file to not know what the bill will actually do; it’s something else if all sorts of things show up later that either no one intended or that someone included when no one was looking. The potential for additional Oops! moments? Much too high.
By the time you read this, the bill might have passed in the House. Or been defeated in a floor vote. Or been yanked off the floor because they didn’t have the votes. Speaker Mike Johnson has pushed hard to get this done before the Memorial Day recess, even though there’s no real rush. It’s probably the right move. The longer it sits out there, the more time opponents – of the whole bill or of specific provisions – have to organize. Meanwhile, if he misses the artificial deadline, so what? It will look bad for a few minutes, and then everyone will move on.
That said, actually losing votes is never good for the party leadership. A tactical retreat is no big deal, but Speakers don’t want to have a reputation of being defeated on the House floor. Johnson has avoided that so far, but it’s not clear as I write this how it will go.
One thing that is clear: Mainstream conservatives continue to be pushovers. Including, or maybe especially, the least conservative and the most electorally vulnerable. Once again, it appears that they’re going to support a bill that contains plenty of stuff they claim to oppose, and that they believe might harm them in the 2026 general election, in order to pacify the relatively small radical faction. The party’s politicians remain absolutely terrified of being insufficiently “conservative” while also ceding to a bunch of yahoos and extremists what “conservative” means at any particular moment.
Even though it’s very unclear what happens to this bill in the Senate. Johnson is urging Republicans in that chamber to pass the bill without major changes, but it’s quite possible that they won’t – leaving House Republicans vulnerable for their extremist votes for things that may not wind up in the final bill.
And of course we don’t know for sure if there even will be a final bill.