In the Beltway newsletters on Thursday, they’re writing about House Speaker Mike Johnson’s historic, “massive victory” in guiding President Donald Trump’s big, ugly bill to final passage in the House. That’s true in the most technical, process-based sense only. For America, this bill is a calamity in nearly every way. The only question is whether enough Americans will feel and see that to do the GOP the political damage it deserves.
I think they will. They’ll see, eventually, that Trump and Johnson and all of them just lied continually about the Medicaid cuts dealing only with “waste, fraud, and abuse.” They’ll watch as deep-red states build more versions of Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” with the billions in this bill for a mean-spirited and wanton immigrant detention system that majorities already disapprove of. They’ll see veterans—veterans—lose their food stamp benefits. They’ll see interest rates go up because of the trillions the bill adds to the debt.
Here’s the important question to ponder: Why is this happening? What kind of people want to close rural hospitals? What kind of people want veterans to stop being able to buy decent groceries? Answering these questions teaches us a lot about what’s become of the Republican Party over the last three-plus decades.
The seminal moment in this history isn’t Trump coming down that escalator. In fact, it has nothing to do with Trump.
The year was 1990. At an impromptu meeting at Andrews Air Force Base with congressional leaders, President George H.W. Bush agreed to the last tax increase that a critical mass of Republicans backed. The tax increase was responsible fiscal policy— the deficit had jumped significantly since 1989—and in fact the revenue, and other spending caps in the bill, helped stabilize the country’s finances. But all anyone remembers is that Bush broke his “read my lips” campaign pledge not to raise taxes.
Ever since, Republican domestic policy has consisted entirely of two prongs: cutting taxes, overwhelmingly for the rich; cutting spending, overwhelmingly for, or one should say “on,” working-class and poor people. This is who they are.
Within that broad category, there are three camps.
First, there are the coward-hypocrites: the ones who know something about policy and actually know better—who know, for example, that cutting taxes for rich people doesn’t increase revenue.
Second, there are the hard-hearted red-hots: those who devoutly believe that government shouldn’t be in the business of doing things like helping veterans pay for groceries, that we as a nation can’t afford this (because we have to give the billionaires their tax cuts) and that it creates a nation of girly men. These are your Freedom Caucus extremists like Chip Roy and Andy Harris, who caved once again this week, proving that they have no actual principles whatsoever (or more precisely proving that their real principle is obedience).
Third, there’s the clown posse: those, mostly new to politics, who are so stupid that they actually believe these lies about taxes and revenue, and spending being out of control. The lies are powerful and pervasive. If you try to Google the effect of those 1990 tax increases, for example, the first couple things you’ll see are right-wing accounts that completely rewrite history. These people, mostly under 40 or so, have been hearing the lies about tax cuts and spending since they attended their first Young Republicans meeting, and they just buy it.
Donald Trump is, surprise surprise, in the stupid category. No, he’s not young, but he is new to politics and utterly incurious about how policy actually works, so when someone from the Heritage Foundation or wherever fills his brain with post-Andrews dogma, he says “sure,” because it’s exactly what he wants to hear.
Likewise, when aides assure him, “Sir, with respect to Medicaid, we’re only going after waste, fraud, and abuse,” that sounds good to him. He asks no questions, because he doesn’t give a shit whether some 23-bed hospital in Point Coupee Parish in Mike Johnson’s Louisiana might close (neither does Johnson, obviously); all that matters to Trump is muscling his bill through, showing MAGA that he can push the likes of Roy and Harris around.
This is our reality. The Republicans just passed a cruel, stupid bill whose priorities have repeatedly failed the country over the past 25 years. But they have something that the Democrats don’t have, that no political party in American history has ever had: a multibillion dollar propaganda machine that will see to it that its vast audience never learns the truth about the impacts of this bill.
The economy contracted by 0.5 percent in the first quarter of this year. What percentage of Fox News viewers do you think know that? If Fox has reported that, it has surely blamed it on Joe Biden, which they’ll continue doing for a while yet.
That’s the battle now: to make sure that as many Americans as possible, as many whose minds are open to evidence, see the impacts of this bill. That they connect the dots from that nurse at the assisted living facility who took such good care of mom and always had a smile on her face, to the same nurse losing her job because the facility had to close, to this bill that Trump did such a “masterful” job—as Johnson put it—of pushing through.
I think the evidence will be so clear that enough people will see what this bill has done to their family, friends, and community, and the Republicans will rue the day they passed this sick, reactionary bill. Historic indeed.
