Senate The US Politics 2.0 Discussion Thread

Look, I said a few days ago that Dems have been the budget-centric party for a long time now. But, while the Republicans have been saying "cut taxes and still spend," the Democrats have been still saying "tax and spend."

There's even a theory that was talked about a few years ago called "Modern Monetary Theory" that said, essentially, deficits don't matter. And AOC was one of the biggest champions of that.

Deficits do matter. Budgets matter. We can't have everything and not pay for it. Sure, it'd be nice to have the Green New Deal and Universal Healthcare and all that stuff. But we have to pay for it somehow. Taxes. That's a governments income source. Get the stuff, pay for the stuff.

Deficits matter, folks.

 

Since when has AOC advocated for not increasing revenue?

 

...but only when you're the party out of power criticizing your opponents' budget. Otherwise, deficits are fine.

Trump's bill increases military spending while cutting everything else. Neither party cares about deficits, and they should stop pretending that they do.

 

So, they don't really. But that's also a function of our broken political system.

Now, wonky talk but bear with me. Ideally, let's take a bank. A bank has, say, 100 million dollars in deposits (checking, savings, CDs) from customers, and pays low interest on the liquid money (checking/savings) and slightly higher interest on the illiquid money (CDs). A bank then takes that deposit money and lends that money (both commercially and personally) to their other customers at a significantly higher interest rate. That's how banks make money, and that's how the economy is stimulated -- lending money drives spending, spending drives the economy, spending creates equity (home ownership) and jobs.

With the US government, the reason Democrats talk about "tax and spend" and have become the party of fiscal responsibility is because all of the Federal government's spending is based on their revenue, which is entirely tax based (well, some interest but not enough to be significant).

https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/personal-finance/history-us-income-tax

That's the history of income tax in the US. Personal wealth is going up, and income taxes on that wealth tends to go down in Republican administration -- so all of the budget initiatives passed by the previous Congresses now cause additional deficits. The GOP's plan to "fix" the problem they caused is to cut spending (largely for the poor and underserved), and the Democrat's "fix" is, you know, simply to tax people who can afford it. Like when people say the 1950s/60s were "the best America has ever been" they mean the racism and white supremacy, and not the 70 - 90% top tax rates that allowed the US to deliver some of the largest economic boom for its poor and middle class citizens in the history of the country.

 

I wouldn't mind the tax cuts if they cut Defense Spending. We still spend more on defense than the next 9 countries combined, many of which are were our allies.

 

"Rep. Mark Amodei, whose Nevada district alone is poised to gain more than 20,000 jobs in mining, refining and processing lithium for EVs and batteries, previously told CNN that continuing to fund these facilities in his district is “fundamental.” Nevertheless, Amodei voted yes for the House bill on Thursday."

The GOP are always going to be like this. It's unreal. Despite all this when China has world domination of renewable energy you're going to see Republicans saying, "Hey! No fair!!!"

 

Of course the Rs caved.

 

Two of the Rs "accidentally" missed the vote. Anyone want to bet me they were going to be "nay" and it wasn't an "accident"?

 

Well, the main stickup with the Republican holdouts was that the bill wasn’t hurting people enough so I guess he managed to convince them that it was sufficiently cruel.

Excited to personally pay more in taxes for dramatic decreases in service all so a few rotting empty husks hoarding more money than they could possibly ever spend can make their piles of stolen wealth just a little bit bigger. Human spawns of Ungoliant, fundamentally empty, never satisfied no matter how much light they consume.

 

@DarthIshyZ Always remember Democrats want to fall in love, but Republicans want to fall in line. They will do whatever their leader wants. It's honestly been like this since Nixon, who had historically low approval ratings due to Watergate, for them to dump him finally. Thanks to voter stupidity/ignorance and FNC, along with the rest of the "mainstream press" who want to see a "horse race", that will never happen again, no matter how bad it gets. You have to go back to when my parents were teens (1950s) to find Republican congressional members defying a Republican president over policy matters. And I do not find it a coincidence that it was the last time there was a good Republican president since Ike found the conservative wing of the GOP to be utterly insane, therefore began cutting deals with moderate Republicans and Democrats.

@mnjedi "We can add more cruelty later" was Trump's main selling point to Republicans yesterday on Capitol Hill. I did enjoy when Trump almost walked into a column and had to be stopped by Turd Mike at the last second. But hey, Biden is old, so that is the most important thing right now.

 

Apparently Trump went David Hogg on the GOP and threatened them if they didn't pass it.

 

I wish someone had created a gif of all the times he said he'd protect Medicare. Shameful.

 

@DarthIshyZ I will see that and raise you for how many times he said something would take, "two weeks". He truly says it more often than they did in "The Money Pit," as that was the answer the construction people kept giving for how long the job would take on the house:





And in reality, this is how it goes with both the administration and in-home repairs in general:



Meanwhile, it's let them eat bitcoin:

https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lprdm2pkms2t

This is absolute insanity. If any Democrat said this, it be nonstop news for 6 months. When a Republican says it, it's built into the equation. Oh, and Biden is old.

 

It's like a televangelist telling the flock they need to give him money to sow financial 'seeds' to reap the blessings later on. Which ... never come.

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/22/trump-harvard-students-international.html

lol. This is about as transparently retaliatory as you can imagine... of course it's about as slam-dunk a 1A case as you could imagine, but who the hell knows with this SCOTUS...

 

My wife works at Harvard U. She says that its about 75% international students in her school alone.

 

AOC's main message which she reiterates constantly is "tax the rich". Is that enough to pay for everything she proposes? I don't know, maybe not, but at least would be increasing the deficit in service of a worthy cause...unlike the Republicans who are doing a reverse Robin Hood. If we look at recent history, it has always been Republicans who have increased the deficit, while Democrats have reined it in. If we do reach the point where we really have to reduce the deficit, we should start with taxing wealthy people, and only as a last resort should we cut services to ordinary people. Republicans are following a perverted upside-down moral compass where they start with cutting services to ordinary people in order to funnel that money to the rich. And then after they've ransacked the Treasury, Republicans turn around and blame society's problems on gay and transgender people, and that's how we got Donald Trump.

 

Well, the Freedom Caucus managed to move up the deadline for Medicaid work requirements two years to 2026, so the leopards will be unleashed sooner than the planned 2029 timeframe after Trump leaves office.

Oh, and businesses that had planned on using green energy credits that are going to be phased out will likely cancel projects and lay off workers as soon as the bill becomes law. So yes, red states are getting shot in the foot. Whether or not it makes a difference remains to be seen.

“How bad could it get?” said people who…oh, never mind.

 

I missed this news at first because I've been spending all my time working in a factory screwing in tiny screws!

 

https://newrepublic.com/post/195617/republicans-pass-tax-bill-democrat-deaths

Democrats have an age problem

 

https://nitter.com/pslnational/status/1925468146024034305

Check it out.



They also debunk claims down in the comments.

Good on the PSL.

I'm not apart of them and don't like some of what they do or say but good on them.

Edit: I can just post pictures of the X or Twitter posts if you all want; I don't want to break any rules and I will happily not promote any X or Twitter posts around here. I just thought it was worth bringing up, given the recent shootings at the embassy.

 

Virginia Democrats especially have this problem.

 

So they’re almost certainly going to use reconciliation for a simple majority vote, since it’s mostly just budget stuff.

But I think it’s still a chance the Senate would do its own version that would then need to go back to the house? Hoping the Medicaid part doesn’t pass the Senate without heavy revisions, but I have no idea how the current Senate is. I don’t think they’re as bad as the House but I really don’t know.

Is there any news article yet that just outlines the facts and details of what actually passed?

Yes and no. It’s overblown, and usually misconstrued into false choices that end up protecting the status quo or justifying tax cuts to the wealthy and spending cuts to the poor, like what’s happening now. Do you agree with that? And do you understand what I meant when I made my last post to you? AOC might have made a comment that can be taken out of context, but she largely meant the same thing that I put in my last post, which I don’t think is radical at all. Or do you disagree with what I mentioned?

I just saw this post. What month in 2026? I’m currently unemployed (since January) and on COBRA, which is expensive at over 50% of monthly unemployment income, I would only qualify for Medicaid when my unemployment runs out this August if I can’t get a new job by then (I only had Medicaid for a month, when my unemployment was approved they said it was too high for Medicaid so I stayed on COBRA). The state healthcare plans would not cover my Crohn’s disease infusions without costing $2000 via coinsurance per visit on the Obamacare ACA state healthcare plans (and a huge deductible first), but Medicaid covers it all, as does my COBRA but that’s $1090 a month.

 

Connolly's legacy should be the Trump budget bill. This is part of his life's work. Because they keep wanting to talk about legacies... they should know this is part of it.

In the 2020s, it's been 10 Democrats vs 4 Republicans.
In the 2010s, it was 8 Democrats vs 4 Republicans.
In the 2000s, it was 12 Democrats vs 7 Republicans.

 

Just a hunch, but I’m guessing we aren’t going to hear much from the Senate parliamentarian this round of reconciliation.