So, Yeah... The Con In Trump’s/Musk's Economic Plan
Republican Conference Chair Lisa McClain (R-MI) told Politico that Señor T “is very clear about what he wants” on the GOOP tax bill members ae fighting over now. “He gives us a lot of latitude on how to get there, so he’s not a micromanager. But he is very clear on his expectations.” The Trump priorities— some actually very good, though likely nothing like the Musk or Vought priorities— “include ‘eliminating a tax break for owners of sports teams’ as well as zeroing out ‘taxes on overtime pay, tips and Social Security’… [and] ending the carried interest tax break used by private equity fund managers and expanding the state and local tax deduction,’ which is a top priority for a number of swing-district Republicans in blue states. Depending on the details, a package like that would reduce revenue by between $5–11.2 trillion over 10 years… while boosting debt ‘to between 132 and 149 percent of GDP by 2035, if not offset.’Hard core final conservatives in the House aren’t going to support that, meaning, someone is going to have to make a deal with Hakeem Jeffries.
It gets worse for the GOP: “Trump has vowed to ‘love and cherish’ Medicaid— but the White House and House Republicans will continue to build support within the party for making deep cuts to the program… [T]he House Energy and Commerce Committee was already on track to slash hundreds of billions of dollars from programs within the panel’s purview to offset the budget reconciliation effort, much of it coming from Medicaid.” (Cue the attack ads! “Digital ads are already running against vulnerable Republicans David Schweikert of Arizona, David Valadao of California), Young Kim, Ken Calvert of California, Nick LaLota of New York, Andrew Garbarino of New York, Mike Lawler of New York, Ryan Mackenzie of Pennsylvania, Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania and Dan Newhouse of Washington state.)
His bullshit tariffs aren’t going to come anywhere near covering that deficit and the description everyone was using this week to describe how things were coming about in the House: stuck in the mud. Panicked Senate Republicans want to punt on the tax bill until… someday, and just deliver Trump an easy win with border security (and maybe raising the Pentagon budget, though that won’t be as easy as deporting Black and brown people). “House GOP leaders, wrote Emily Wilkins, “initially proposed trimming several hundred billion dollars over a 10-year period by making changes to Medicaid, adding work requirements for able-bodied adults with no dependents. But that was not enough for many of the conference’s fiscal hawks, who want to see upward of $2 trillion in cuts. The more cuts Republican leaders agree to make to a top-line number at this early stage, however, the less money they will have to work with later on, when it’s time to decide which priorities to fund… [H]ard-line conservatives are pushing for any tax cut package to pay for itself, and be either deficit neutral or even begin to reduce the national debt.”
Yesterday, Gerald Seib wondered if any congressional Republicans— or courts— have the guts to push back against Trump. Right now what’s happened is that Señor T “is testing the system to find the outer limits of his powers. It’s unlikely he thinks he can get away with everything he is trying, but he also knows that one way to find out is to try. It is a strategy that he has deployed repeatedly in his business career, in both of his presidential campaigns, and in his first term as president. Now this approach is unfolding again, but on a grander scale than ever before. As it does, only two factors really matter in determining its outcome: At what point will Congress stand up for itself? And when and where will the nation’s courts draw the line on the aggressive use of presidential power? For Trump, discovering the answers to these questions may be less a feature of the exercise than its whole point.”
For now, a Congress with a paper-thin Republican majority in both chambers seems reluctant to draw lines. It is ushering into place the president’s most controversial nominees and barely batted an eyelash when, in firing inspectors general across the government, he ignored the requirements of a law Congress passed just two years ago.
In the courts, the verdict is still very much out. Some of Trump’s actions— including his attempt to nullify by executive order the 14th Amendment’s grant of citizenship to all those born in the U.S.—seem designed specifically to set up a test before a conservative Supreme Court sympathetic to a powerful chief executive. Meanwhile, lower-court judges are starting to act. On Thursday, a federal judge paused a Trump deadline for federal workers to accept buyouts, while other judges have paused his birthright-citizenship order and one imposing a sweeping freeze on federal spending. In all of these cases, however, it will take weeks or months for final verdicts to be rendered.
…[L]awmakers have to some extent paved the way for this moment, by openly ceding powers to the president and by creating a power vacuum through their recent failures in performing even their most basic tasks. Congress, for example, has passed at least five different laws that give a president authority to impose tariffs on his own for various reasons.
Democrats now charge that, in justifying his tariffs, the president has stretched those trade laws beyond what they actually allow. More broadly, Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the liberty and national security program at the Brennan Center for Justice, argues that, regardless of how Trump’s power grabs turn out, clear legal boundaries are in place: “Congress and the courts have said what the limits are, and Trump has defied them.” She wonders whether Elon Musk, in particular, will abide by court decisions.
Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna says the president is engaged in “gross overreach” that will eventually produce a popular backlash and prompt his Republican colleagues in Congress to be more assertive about their own powers. In the meantime, he says, “maybe I should just get a copy of the Federalist Papers and give it to all my Republican friends.”
Of course, we all know by now that Trump’s economic populism is always a Trojan horse— wrapped in promises to the working class but stuffed with billionaire handouts and fiscal recklessness. While the idea of eliminating taxes on tips and overtime pay sounds good on paper, it’s bundled with a tax bill that will blow a multi-trillion-dollar hole in the budget, forcing Republicans to either betray their deficit-hawk posturing or gut Medicaid, food stamps and other social programs to compensate. And when the knives come out, we know exactly whose interests will be protected. The same GOP leadership that scoffs at spending on food assistance will trip over themselves to shield hedge fund managers’ carried interest loophole. Some House hardliners aren’t just rejecting Trump’s tax plan because of the deficit— they know that if working-class voters see through the con, they’re toast in 2026.
The irony is, Trump can’t even get his own party in line, let alone pull enough Democrats into his orbit to pass the package. His economic agenda is a tangle of contradictions— pretending to uplift the working class while shredding the very safety nets they rely on. If Senate Republicans get their way, they’ll sidestep the entire tax fight and hand Trump an easy border security “win” instead, banking on nativist fearmongering to distract from their legislative failures. But even that strategy is precarious. With House GOP factions at war and vulnerable Republicans already under siege from attack ads, Trump’s second-term agenda is looking less like a governing plan and more like a hostage situation where no one— least of all working people— gets out unscathed.