It passed in the Senate
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So much packed into this bill. Hard to be brief; it's called the "one big beautiful bill" for a reason.
My biggest concern is the price tag. We keep spending way more money than we have. And this bill takes money from people who don't have much and gives it to people who do.
And we are leaving a lot of people behind when it comes to medical care. Kaiser has a great summary of changes to a lot of programs.
https://www.kff.org/tracking-the-medicaid-provisions-in-the-2025-budget-bill/
CNN hits the highlights of how this will affect various groups:
https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/01/politics/congress-senate-bill-tax-spending-trump-gop-explainer
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So much packed into this bill. Hard to be brief; it's called the "one big beautiful bill" for a reason.
My biggest concern is the price tag. We keep spending way more money than we have. And this bill takes money from people who don't have much and gives it to people who do.
And we are leaving a lot of people behind when it comes to medical care. Kaiser has a great summary of changes to a lot of programs.
https://www.kff.org/tracking-the-medicaid-provisions-in-the-2025-budget-bill/
CNN hits the highlights of how this will affect various groups:
https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/01/politics/congress-senate-bill-tax-spending-trump-gop-explainer
@wtg said in It passed in the Senate:
We keep spending way more money than we have. And this bill takes money from people who don't have much and gives it to people who do.
Yeah, I would be quite OK with spending money we don't have on investments, like infrastructure, resource development, education, R&D, etc.
Unfortunately it looks like this bill takes on huge deficits to cut taxes for the very rich.
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That’s the whole purpose. Always was.
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A new absurdity in the bill:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/02/upshot/republicans-food-aid-alaska.html
It goes like this:
- the intent was originally was to make the states that have higher error rates when it comes to administering the food stamp programs pay more -- supposedly this is to encourage states to "have skin in the game" to lower error rates when administering the food stamp programs.
- But to get Murkowski's vote, with Murkowski representing the state with the highest food stamp administration error rate, the Senate bill ended up adding a provision that exempts states whose food stamp error rates exceeding certain threshold from having to pay anything at all (at least for a while).
- so if the Senate bill ended comes to pass, the states with high error rates will be exempt from paying for the food stamps (at least for a while), while states with low-enough food error rates will have to pay something.
- in effect, this may end up incentivizing states to jack up their food stamp administration error rates (at least for a while) to avoid having to pay anything towards the their food stamp programs.
The modern GOP really sucks at governing.
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A new absurdity in the bill:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/02/upshot/republicans-food-aid-alaska.html
It goes like this:
- the intent was originally was to make the states that have higher error rates when it comes to administering the food stamp programs pay more -- supposedly this is to encourage states to "have skin in the game" to lower error rates when administering the food stamp programs.
- But to get Murkowski's vote, with Murkowski representing the state with the highest food stamp administration error rate, the Senate bill ended up adding a provision that exempts states whose food stamp error rates exceeding certain threshold from having to pay anything at all (at least for a while).
- so if the Senate bill ended comes to pass, the states with high error rates will be exempt from paying for the food stamps (at least for a while), while states with low-enough food error rates will have to pay something.
- in effect, this may end up incentivizing states to jack up their food stamp administration error rates (at least for a while) to avoid having to pay anything towards the their food stamp programs.
The modern GOP really sucks at governing.
Random Internet sites inform me that the Murkowski provision was eliminated from the bill right after Murkowski voted. Not sure if if that’s possible.
Have not been able to verify.
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Inside Hakeem Jeffries' decision to filibuster Trump's big bill
The overwhelming consensus on Capitol Hill was that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) would only delay President Trump's "big, beautiful bill" by about an hour. As noon approached on Thursday, that expectation was shattered.
Why it matters: For months, the Democratic base has been demanding their party's leaders "fight harder" and use every tool at their disposal to stymie the GOP agenda. In the eyes of many lawmakers, this is Jeffries delivering.
Jeffries blasted the GOP's marquee tax and spending bill as an "immoral document," vowing to "stand up and push back against it with everything we have on behalf of the American people."
As of late Thursday morning, Jeffries was on track to surpass then-Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's (R-Calif.) record-breaking, 8-and-a-half hour speech to delay the Build Back Better vote in 2021.
If Jeffries keeps speaking until 1:23pm ET, he will have set a new record.
https://www.axios.com/2025/07/03/hakeem-jeffries-speech-big-beautiful-bill-trump
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The dueling House and Senate bills differ on details but agreed on a key point: Both would massively expand federal spending on immigration enforcement.
Overall, the Senate version will dedicate $175 billion to an immigration crackdown, including an extra $30 billion for ICE, which can be spent over four years. To put that in perspective, ICE’s current budget is about $8 billion per year.
The bill also designates $45 billion for detention facilities, which can also be spent at any time over the next four years. By comparison, the U.S. spends about $8 billion a year on the Bureau of Prisons.
From The Intercept:
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Who are the winners, and who are the losers. Bloomberg reporting.
