The OBBB is going to pass, because the "principled opposition" is and always was bullshit. It will be really bad, a return to a place, especially with regards to the working poor, that we thought we had left behind. Many voices online wonder "if we can ever recover" from this.
That's absurd.
As I and Erik Loomis have argued, we are not likely living in a repeat of 1934 Germany. We are living in a repeat of the 1890s United States. The Gilded Age was awful in all the ways that this is awful. The result was the Progressive Era, which - combined with the New Deal, itself an offshoot of the Progressive Movement - reordered American government.
If there is a real threat to America's long term prospects, the most immediate is the Republican war on democracy, which is real and frightening. However, a lot of this seems wrapped up in the perverse "charisma" of Donald Trump, and he is already quite old and clearly mentally diminished. I don't see JD Vance being able to capture the same enthusiasm Trump elicits from his cult. Americans do actually value democracy, and if Democrats can win the midterms (which OBBB makes exceedingly likely) then we have a chance of saving our democracy. Again, democracy is not a toggle switch that flips between on and off. It's a spectrum. We weren't very democratic in the Gilded Age - Blacks, women, Natives, none could vote.
The real peril for America from this monstrous and noxious regime is to the full faith and credit of the United States government. As Krugman points out, the national debt is not an absolute evil or an absolute good, it's relative to other conditions. Republicans' war on taxes have largely been constrained by a deficit hawk wing of the party and the basic fiscal responsibility of the grownups in the Democratic Party. Deficits - and thus the debt - rise during Republican administrations and declines during Democratic ones.
The two pronged attack on both taxes and tax collection will blow up to debt during a time of relatively high interest rates, relatively high employment and - up until the last quarter - economic growth. This is the time to get deficits under control, precisely so that during emergencies - recessions, war and pandemics - we have the credit space to deficit spend.
We still seem on a course for a stagflation episode, as economic growth is shrinking, inflation remains stubborn, as food prices seem to continue to rise - a dynamic sure to be made worse by Stephen Miller's pogrom against immigrants - before tariffs have really and truly hit the American and global economy.
If the coming Crypto Crash happens, while we reduce our workforce and immiserate the poor, a true depression is not out of the question.
If Democrats hold the trifecta in 2028, they can roll back a great deal of Trump's evil plans surrounding immigration, executive abuse of power, corruption, tariffs, environmental degradation and so on. If America does truly enter a sovereign debt crisis...that will be bad beyond living memory and won't be easy to recover from.
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