Wow, so in the last week...I've agreed with Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Can someone check the temperature in hell?
I've had to do the same double check myself a couple times - "tucker is saying something correct?, do I need to rethink my position??.... No, he's actually found the correct position, and some pretty reasonable points to go along with it".
If there is one thing that threatens the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, itâs the fact that it blows up the budget deficit. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), it will increase borrowing by a total of $2.4 trillion by 2034, because the $1.3 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, food stamps, and other programs do not come close to canceling out $3.7 trillion in tax cuts for the rich. Just the tax cuts going to the richest 5 percent outstrip the cuts to Medicaid and food stamps by $300 billion. And if you add in interest costs, the total debt the bill rings up is more like $3 trillion.
A loud faction of Republican âdeficit hawksâ are reportedly unhappy with this, not so much because of the tax cuts, but because the welfare and food aid cuts are not savage enough. But a smaller faction of Senate Republicansâperhaps scenting danger if they vote to throw millions of their own constituents off their health insuranceâare wavering on the existing Medicaid cuts.
What to do? The Trump administration has come up with a solution: outrageous, bald-faced lying, with talking points delivered through Fox News. Just claim that the bill will decrease the deficit with a blizzard of preposterous nonsense, and hope that will give congressional Republicans enough of an excuse to vote it through.
One argument here is a straightforward falsehood. Republicans claim that the âmandatory savingsâ in the bill will cut $1.7 trillion, but as noted above, the Congressional Budget Office found only $1.3 trillion. (Whatâs a cheeky $400 billion between friends?)
Another argument is tendentious metaphysics. Top White House aid Stephen Miller argued on Fox Business that âExtending and making permanent the 2017 tax cuts does not and cannot add to the deficit.â Hey presto, that $3.7 trillion in new borrowing disappears!
By this logic, anything can be made to not increase the deficit. Just pass it for one year, then claim that making it permanent will have no effect. We can, of course, draw up budget estimates where every current policy is assumed to be permanent, but thatâs not how either the CBO estimate or budgetary processes work. The CBO is saying, correctly, that passing this bill will cut tax collection by $3.7 trillion relative to current law.
Amusingly, BBB relies on precisely the opposite trick, gaming the CBO budget window with various tax cuts that are set to expire. For example, âno tax on tipsâ sunsets after four years, as does the elimination of taxes on overtime pay and a tax benefit for seniors. If those are assumed to be permanent, as Miller advocatesâand that is highly likely if Republicans are in charge when they expireâthen the true deficit increase will be more like $5 trillion. (...)
Seems to be another attempt to dismantle ACA, which was already gutted by eliminating the individual mandate.
Medicaid provides healthcare for those who can't â low income healthcare/disabilities/lt care for elderly - coverage grew from about 23m people in 1990 to 74m in 2024), 1 in 5 peopleâ¦particular growth after ACA.
Cost grew to $870B in 2024. Jointly funded by Fed and States. Fed pays close to 70%.
Trump/GOP looking to cut about $800B over 10 years, lets say roughly 10% of annual cost.
ACA â 2010 â states can expand Medicaid to those making up to 138% of fed poverty lineâ¦40 states and DC expanded Medicaid in response, mostly funded by the Fed. GOP wants to cut this matching funds.
Where? Waste & Fraud, reducing Fed matching $ and work requirements.
Fraud? CMS said about 5% of payments were problematic. Of that 5%, 79% was due to state admin/documentation errors and not necessarily fraud.
Work requirements â have job or be a student. Arkansas had work requirements in 2018, which resulted in less coverage. But the courts shut this down.
Most recipients are already working or have disabilities/care taking responsibility.
If you cut fed funding, states will need to either cut coverage, benefits or provider reimbursement.
Bottom line, call a duck a duck...this is an attempt to reduce public funding of healthcare...dismantle publicly funded healthcare.
But the vast majority of healthcare is not an option...you get either get the care or you suffer morbidity, which leads to higher costs. Or you die.
The costs dont disappear, they just shift...usually in the form of higher bad debt expense for providers, which is then born by higher premiums.
Insurance 101 preaches diversity, get everyone in the pool and you reduce uncertainty and thereby improve efficiencies and lower costs. ACA was a step, albeit not a great step, towards this. But, gutting the individual mandate significantly impaired the intended goal. Now GOP is looking to mop up the rest.
