I can’t help but think of ABBA when I read or write a story about OBBBA (the One Big Beautiful Bill Act), which just passed the Senate yesterday with Vice President JD Vance providing the tiebreaking vote.
The 1970s Swedish pop band was famous for, among many other hit songs, “Dancing Queen.” (It’s playing in your head now, isn’t it? You’re welcome.) One of my favorite Rush Limbaugh parody songs was “Banking Queen,” performed by Paul Shanklin as “Barney Frank” singing about congressional legislation. Albeit for OBBBA, you might now retool that as “Spending Queen.”
Yes, there is spending in the OBBBA. Elon Musk is very upset about some of it, in fact. Yet a lot of the spending is allocated for defense and border security, which are good priorities. Most of the other “spending” is via the tax code.
Ultimately, however, the Congressional Budget Office scoring of the legislation is also complete garbage. It does not, as the CBO says, “add $3.3 trillion to the debt” over the next 10 years. That’s based on the CBO’s bogus baseline scoring, which treats the tax cuts as if they will expire and then calculates the “cost” of extending them.
The single best thing the OBBBA does is make the massive tax cuts from Donald Trump’s first term permanent and prevent a $4.5 trillion tax increase that would hit income earners at nearly every level.
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Even Democrats want all but the top rate extended. Even Democrats — every one of whom voted against the OBBBA — don’t want to be on the hook for the largest-ever middle-class tax hike if the bill doesn’t pass. Therefore, it’s misleading for the CBO to score the legislation in this manner. Without that “phony baloney plastic banana good time rock ‘n’ roll” math (hat tip to Rush again!), the CBO scoring on current policy is that the Senate bill would save $500 billion over a decade.
A significant portion of the savings is achieved by eliminating $1 trillion in waste from Medicaid. The Leftmedia gladly are doing Democrats’ bidding by almost literally screaming from the hilltops about all the poor people who will be cut off from the safety net, but the reality is that millions are lying in a hammock when they could be working and providing their own income.
Moreover, a “cut” in Washington is actually just a reduction in growth. “CBO projects that Medicaid spending will increase by about 4.5% annually over the next decade,” The Wall Street Journal editorial board notes. “The Senate bill slows the growth to about 2% a year. This isn’t a real cut.”
Another notable contribution is that the bill ends the massive tax subsidies for wind and solar energy under the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, while also eliminating credits for electric vehicles. (Trump thinks that’s Musk’s real beef.)
Unfortunately, there are some stinkers in the bill. One particularly dubious tax carve-out, for example, is expanding the state and local tax (SALT) deduction to $40,000 a year. The SALT deduction subsidizes high-tax blue states at the expense of low-tax red ones. In short, a handful of Republicans held the rest of the party hostage to secure a huge favor for Democrats. Unreal.
Nevertheless, Senate Majority Leader John Thune declared, “We were very excited to be a part of something that was going to make America stronger, safer, and more prosperous.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson said the bill will be “JET FUEL” for the economy in a post on X. “It makes the Trump tax cuts permanent, eliminates taxes on tips and overtime, provides tax relief for seniors, and slashes regulations to spur job creation and economic growth.”
Naturally, Trump was even more enthusiastic. “The One Big Beautiful Bill, perhaps the greatest and most important of its kind in history, gives the largest Tax Cuts and Border Security ever, Jobs by the Millions, Military/Vets increases, and so much more,” Trump proclaimed on Truth Social. “The failure to pass means a whopping 68% Tax increase, the largest in history!!!”
Indeed, just remember that every single Democrat in both chambers effectively voted to raise your taxes by $4.5 trillion.
What next?
The bill passed the Senate 51-50 over the opposition of every Democrat and three Republicans — Susan Collins (ME), Rand Paul (KY), and Thom Tillis (NC). The chamber made significant changes to the House version, largely thanks to the unelected Senate parliamentarian. It now heads back to the House, where that chamber’s version passed 215-214 in May. If the House makes any changes, that would require another nail-biter Senate vote.
Because it keeps taxes where they are, it’s worth passing it for Trump’s signature. We’ll see if Republicans are up to the task.
