The Fallout From One Bloated Ugly Bill

The “One Big Beautiful Bill” was hurriedly written and then reviewed in the early morning hours to make it less likely that the public would learn everything it encompassed. It was voted on quickly to try and push it through before resistance could grow.

The bill passed by just one vote, with two Republicans voting against it, two not voting, and one voting present. Every Democrat voted against it, but three Democratic congressional seats were vacant at the time of the vote due to members passing away between March and May. Had those seats been filled or had Congress been given more time to review the bill properly, it would not have passed. Speaker Johnson knew this, so he pushed hard to get it through.

Since then, some House Republicans, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, have tried to distance themselves from the bill they voted to pass. The congresswoman said she regretted voting for it because a provision would ban states from regulating AI for the next decade, which she feels violates states' rights. Her reason for voting yes when she’s so against this? She didn’t know it was in the bill. She didn’t read it. And she’s not the only House Republican to admit to not reading it or to come out against it after voting for it.

The OBBB is now in the Senate's hands, but only after a recess, which gave more time for the truth about the bill to spread and opposition to grow. During this window, Musk left his position at DOGE and began attacking tariffs and the OBBB.

Elon Musk tweeted:

“Call your Senator,

Call your Congressman,

Bankrupting America is NOT ok!

KILL the BILL”

While Republican leadership is trying to find a way forward for the bill, other members of Congress are trying to bring Musk’s DOGE cuts to a vote to finally handle that process correctly.

The problem is again that Republicans aren’t unified on the cuts, and they aren’t that big of reductions anyway. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, Trump asked his aides about the DOGE efforts “Was it all bullshit?” Musk came in with claims of being able to cut $2 trillion in waste and fraud, then lowered the expectation to $1 trillion, then $500 billion, and finally claimed they achieved around $170 billion, while only having receipts to show $40 billion.

Like so many MAGA politicians' claims, what was possible was highly exaggerated, and when it couldn’t be delivered on, the topic was dropped. The first DOGE cuts package heading to Congress accounts for only around $9 billion in reductions. In comparison, the OBBB raises the military budget by $150 billion, with another $50 billion allocated to build a wall on the Southern Border. The government is spending more, not less.

America didn’t achieve massive savings from DOGE because there weren’t massive savings to be had. There are already watchdogs to look for waste, fraud, and abuse, and the only department that fails to pass audits is the military, yet it is being rewarded with a massive increase in its budget.

The overarching problem is that MAGA campaigned on lies, which means there’s no way for them to govern without exposing those lies.

• They told people the government was so full of waste, fraud, and abuse that they would be able to save enough to send every American a $5,000 DOGE check. As it turns out, DOGE may have cost more than it saved.

• They said tariffs would make America rich, but they put our economy in reverse, angered our allies, shrunk our GDP, and slowed job growth.

• They claimed they could cut taxes and somehow reduce the debt at the same time, when all they’ve done is grow the debt faster and put forward a bill to shift more wealth from the poorest to the richest.

This is a party that declared states' rights but now infringes on them. It used to affirm the importance of law and order, but now seeks to break rules and weaken the courts. It demanded that the government stay out of people's lives, yet it is sending everyone’s personal information to a company to create an AI database to monitor us all.

Everything was a lie.

The slight silver lining is that the OBBB is in danger. There isn’t enough support in the Senate to pass it, at least not yet, and some members of the House say that even though they voted to send it to the Senate, they won’t vote for it when it comes back.

There are also more people on the far right speaking some truth. Steve Bannon, the conspiracy theorist who played a significant roll in shaping Trump’s first campaign and who spent time in prison for contempt of Congress due to refusing to cooperate with the Jan 6 hearings, has directly said that we will never solve the deficit or debt without increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans, which is true.

Other conservative pundits are finally realizing that Putin is the enemy and that it is in America’s best interest to make sure Ukraine wins this war and defends its homeland. And Trump is asking for the debt ceiling to be eliminated altogether, which it should be, although his reason is so that fewer people will notice how much he adds to the debt.

This unfortunate time of struggle, setbacks, and a worsening economy might be what America needs to inject some truth back into politics, or at the very least, allow some voters to escape from the MAGA bubble and realize they were preyed upon by politicians grasping for power.

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-elon-musk-relationship-64773ad1