The Budget

 One of the things that seemed apparent was that DOGE was doing the ugly work of killing popular programs because Congress doesn't have the nerve for it. Let Musk be the Sin Eater who kills the NIH. 

The problem is that eventually the GOP has to pass a budget. Josh Marshall seems to think that they are engineering a crisis whereby the accumulated pile of money that was not spent (because Musk gutted the federal government like a junkie stealing copper piping) gets validated by Congress. Basically, you have to agree to this or you have to agree to this. Honestly, I think that's the logic behind forcing what's called a rescission bill to validate the idea of impoundment. "We didn't want to violate the Constitution, but you made us."

It seems all very stupid and ill-conceived to me.

Paul Krugman looks at the actual budget they are trying to shove down the throats of the Lapdog Caucus. Basically, Trump wants to make his tax cuts "permanent" but he needs spending cuts - massive ones - to offset that lost revenue. He will not touch Social Security and Medicare; he wants to increase Defense spending. There are a few other areas that he wants to keep or expand upon. The FAA is apparently one. 

The problem is that all the money is in Defense and the broad umbrella of health care. If Medicare is off the table (and there is an actual waste issue with Medicare payments under Medicare Advantage), then you are basically left with gutting Medicaid. Poor people, amirite?

The problem is that 78,000,000 Americans are on the combined programs of Medicaid and CHIP. What's more, a lot of those people are Trump voters.

This is the inherent coalitional problem that Trump's coalition faces. They have brought a ton of low information, low propensity voters into the Republican Party. The central dynamic has its own meme: The Leopards Eating Faces Party. Still, while hard core cultists will gratefully embrace losing their health insurance, I think that many actually won't. I may be naïve, I admit it. 

The reason Trump took over the GOP is that he was able to bring in voters who were fired up for "The only war is the culture war" and who hated the Paul Ryan-led wing of the GOP. Trump promised to preserve THEIR government benefits while cutting THOSE PEOPLE'S benefits. 

Yeah, it doesn't really work that way. 

This year's budget will be a true acid test for those GOP members who are in anything worse than a GOP+10 district or state. It looks brutal, but can they defy Trump? I didn't think they would pass an earlier CR, but they did. Barely, but they did. 

How much pain are they willing to inflict? And what happens when the US economy enters the recession that sure seems imminent. What happens when you cut spending for the poor while actively making more poor people?

I'd like to believe that it would result in a 1932 style rejection of the GOP, but I simply do not trust the American electorate anymore.