Political
differences are normal and healthy.
Sharp divergences in norms and in assessments of the facts will arise in
times of great polarization. Both are
consistent with the functioning of a healthy democracy.
Rampant lying
damages the fabric of democracy. DOGE
leader Elon Musk’s insistence that vast numbers of people were fraudulently
receiving Social Security at implausible ages when that age entry was a default
for missing data, or HHS Secretary Kennedy’s denials that his department has
fired scientists when it has done so in droves, fractures the political community
and makes respectful political discourse much more difficult. President Trump’s and Vice President Vance’s
deliberate lies about Haitian immigrants even more directly fracture our
political community, persuading their followers that we live in a Hobbesian war
of all against all where democracy is impossible.
Perhaps by comparison,
congressional Republicans’ machinations to pass their catastrophic budget
reconciliation bill are tame. Yet they
also demonstrate the complete collapse of serious democratic discourse in the
country. When you openly contradict
yourself, making claims that no thoughtful observer of any political stripe
could accept, you express the utmost contempt not just for your opponents but
for the electorate as a whole. The
message to voters is that either they are members of a minority that may be
disregarded because it is powerless or they are so thoroughly enraptured by divisive
rhetoric that they will not bother examining the facts. And, indeed, the message to Republican
Members of Congress is that their obedience is so thoroughly taken for granted
that leadership sees no need to give them a credible position to defend.
In 2017, when
President Trump and congressional Republicans enacted a vast package of
deficit-financed tax cuts tilted heavily toward the affluent, they tried to
obscure the true cost to the country with phony expiration dates. These directed the Congressional Budget
Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation to assume that these costly tax cuts
would disappear at the end of 2025 and have no further impact on the
deficit. Republicans never believed that
the tax cuts would or should end at that time, but any extension would require
further legislation with the deficit impact to be addressed at that time.
Some months ago, however,
Republicans announced that they would ignore the expiration dates from 2017 in
estimates of this year’s legislation’s effect on the deficit. In other words, well over a trillion dollars
is being added to the national debt without being accounted for in estimates of
either the 2017 tax bill or the current one. One can only imagine Republicans’ shrieks of
indignation should Democrats ever attempt such a stunt.
But now it turns
out that congressional Republicans’ dishonesty is even worse than that. Their current tax-cut package also contains new
phony expiration dates: expiration dates
that lack any plausible policy justification and that the sponsors do not
purport to intend take effect. And
Republicans are counting the deficit impact of this legislation as if those
expiration dates are real at the very same time their estimates are treating
the identical 2017 expiration dates as irrelevant. The Congressional Budget Act and longstanding
precedent are clear that expiration dates should be treated as real in
estimating the cost of a bill, making their treatment of the 2017 expiration
dates lawless and dishonest. But now
Republicans are not even saying that we should change our scorekeeping
conventions going forward: they are just
adopting diametrically opposed positions at the same time to mislead journalists
and the public about the size of the hole they are blowing in the federal
budget.
Nor can this be
chalked up to arcane maneuvering of which most Senate Republicans were
unaware. Senate Majority Leader Thune
raised two points of order against his own bill on this basis only to have the
Republican presiding officer rule that Senator Lindsey Graham, the Republican Chair
of the Budget Committee, can determine how he wants the bill’s costs to be estimated. Democrats appealed those rulings and lost
twice on party-line votes. Not one of
the supposed Republican “deficit hawks” had any problem with adding over $1
trillion to the national debt off the books.
For comparison,
Democrats included an expiration date on the expanded Child Tax Credit in the
American Rescue Plan Act they enacted in early 2021 to solidify the country’s
recovery from the Pandemic Recession. They,
too, wanted that credit to continue. But
they never questioned that the full cost of continuing current policy must be attributed
to any legislation to extend it. The
cost of extending the Child Tax Credit was one of the major reasons why their
Build Back Better proposal failed later that year. Had the Democrats followed the maneuver that
Republicans are here, extending the expanded Child Tax Credit would have been
scored as “no cost”. This was not an
option, however, because the Democrats’ coalition includes numerous genuine
deficit hawks and open government advocates who would not stand for such
deception.
With the books now
adequately cooked, the Senate has been proceeding with “vote-a-rama”, a long
string of amendments decided after debates consisting of one minute each for sponsors
and opponents. This gives each party the
chance to force opposing senators to cast difficult votes. Of course, some Republicans could avoid that
predicament by voting for appealing Democratic amendments.
To give his
senators that option, Majority Leader Thune has been preparing a substitute amendment
to be offered at the end of vote-a-rama.
This amendment will replace the entirety of the bill as amended up to
then, including any Democratic amendments that Republicans accepted. Thus the Senate’s votes on amendments are
fake, too.
The Thune “king of
the hill” amendment will represent the final text upon which the Senate will
vote. Democrats may demand that clerks
read it out loud to give them time to read it, but they will have no time to
debate it, and no estimates of its deficit impact or the number of people who
will lose health care coverage. I am
always amused by Textualists’ complaints that nobody reads committee reports: Senate (and House) procedures often ensure
that nobody can read legislative text, either.
Republicans can
afford to lose three votes in each chamber of Congress. Senator Rand Paul has said he is voting “no”
because of the catastrophic deficit impact; Senator Thom Tillis of North
Carolina said he would vote “no” because the bill’s Medicaid cuts would
devastate the rural health care system in his home state. (He was promptly forced to declare his
retirement next year.)
In theory, that
would mean that the Senate’s two moderate Republicans, Senators Lisa Murkowski
of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, could sink this ghastly bill. Senator Murkowski certainly seems unhappy
with the bill’s effect on health care and food assistance in her state, but
Senator Collins has given every indication she will be voting “yes”. Absent a clear sign to the contrary from
Senator Collins, Senator Murkowski likely will do so, too, in exchange for some
special provisions for Alaska. This is frustrating
to say the least as neither is realistically vulnerable to primary
challenge: Senator Murkowski already
lost a primary to a far-right Republican and won her seat anyway as a write-in
candidate, and no MAGA candidate would have a realistic chance of holding Maine
for Republicans.
With a final Senate
vote expected in the wee hours overnight, House Speaker Mike Johnson has called
his Members into session for Tuesday, with the expectation of a final vote on
Wednesday. The two House Republicans to
vote against the bill previously over its deficit impact have no reason to
change their minds: the Senate bill
appears to be even worse.
This means that the
bill could go down with the votes of only two of the supposedly moderate House
Republicans. Many of them vowed to vote “no”
in the House unless clean energy credits were preserved. The House bill gutted those credits but not
one single moderate opposed the bill.
Some mumbled something about expecting the bill to get better in the
Senate. The Senate bill not only guts
the clean energy credits (in a slightly more convoluted but no less effective
way) but also establishes a new tax on wind and solar projects likely to
devastate the industry. The Senate Medicaid
cuts are also even worse than those in the House. If again no House “moderates” can find the
courage to vote “no”, they may officially be labeled frauds. But that would be just one more layer of
dishonesty on top of an already tall pile.
@DavidASuper.bsky.social
@DavidASuper1