Will It Pass?

 If you had asked me in January if the "Big Beautiful Bill" (Jesus wept) was going to pass, I would have said, "no." In fact, I think I did. MAGA has proven spectacularly unable to pass actual laws; this is why they rely so much on theatrical Executive Orders and executive overreach.

Looking at the bill now, I'm less certain it will fail, but I'm not convinced it won't pass. As Martin Longman lays out, they have settled on a "kick the can" strategy that simply moves the bill along to the next step, even though no one actually loves the bill. As Richardson points out, "moderate" Republicans are uncomfortable with how deep the cuts go and extremists hate how shallow they are. The bill absolutely explodes the national debt in ways that have led Moody's and likely others to downgrade America's credit rating. 

Still, the bill keeps passing certain hurdles. It goes to the Rules Committee in the middle of the night tonight to try and hide this grotesquerie under cover of darkness. It might pass. In fact, it likely will. 

The question is what will happen when Johnson has to bring the final shitball to the House floor for a vote. Don Bacon just saw the popular Republican mayor from Omaha (his district) lose her reelection bid. Johnson can only lose three votes (it would be narrower if a handful of superannuated Democrats had stepped aside last November). 

The idea that House Republicans in Florida will vote against the bill to protect Venezuelans from being deported seems like a fantasy. Still, this is one real opportunity for Republicans to demonstrate actual principles. 

The same goes for the Senate, where long term concerns about the debt might actually resonate.

The strategy for this bill has been to force everything into one big omnibus bill - including raising the debt ceiling to the ionosphere - which will presumably force Republicans to fall in line or the whole thing collapses. That's... not the worst strategy for dealing with Congressional dysfunction.

Maybe they fail tonight. Maybe they fail in the subsequent vote in the House. Maybe the Senate.

Anyway, Joe Biden is old and someone should write a story about that, I guess.