The hard-right lawmakers are insisting on steeper spending cuts to Medicaid and the Biden-era green energy tax breaks, among other changes, before they will give their support to President Donald Trump’s “beautiful” bill. They warn the tax cuts alone would pile onto the nation’s $36 trillion debt.
The failed vote, 16-21, stalls, for now, House Speaker Mike Johnson’s push to have the package approved next week. But the Budget Committee plans to reconvene Sunday to try again. Lawmakers vowed to negotiate into the weekend as Trump is returning to Washington from the Middle East.
“Something needs to change or you’re not going to get my support,” said Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas.
I’m betting on Trump attacking Moody’s to force them to put up a fake rating. “Raise it or else!”
WHO IN THE NAME OF UNCLE SAM PUT A FUCKING BUFFOON IN CHARGE OF A COUNTRY? I DEMAND HE BE THROWN OUT OF OFFICE! WHO CAN I CALL ABOUT THIS?
when you realize the supporters are even bigger buffoon than the one in the whitehouse, theres your answer.
A lot of deluded voters
The whole country played a part
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The US’ credit rating has already been dropped from triple A with the deficit being cited as a key reason.
The goal is to cut funding and services as fast as possible to accelerate the process of returning to feudalistic times. One where you and I fight over ‘limited’ resources due to artificial scarcity while they live lavishly in their palaces.
Well you see if they burn everything else, then their part becomes much more valuable. It’s like taking half the pie and then shitting on the rest.
the deficit being cited as a key reason
You think the current efforts and changes will get that credit rating fixed?
Republicans certainly have no intention of meaningfully addressing the deficit and they never have. Their appetite to drive the deficit up to fund tax cuts for the rich has only grown since Reagan.
The fact that this was blocked is mildly surprising at best. It means very little when we know all they’re looking for is to cut funding for key public services even further.
It’s truly amazing that every time I read a headline that makes it sound like these people are doing something even remotely beneficial, additional context shows that they’re actually preparing for something even worse.
I read one a week ago or so that started with Matt Gaetz (I think, if not him someone like him) going to El Salvador to see their prisons, and I thought it was going to end with some line about him being appalled by the conditions. Turns out the visit was many months ago and after seeing it, it was his idea to deport people there.
“Something needs to change or you’re not going to get my support,” said Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas
In b4 Chip Roy is demonized as an “activist rep” who is “subverting democracy”.
They blocked it because it wasn’t hard enough, they want it to be worse.
Exactly this. I read they want Medicaid to be cut even more.
They’re afraid frog is starting to notice the water’s getting hotter, so they need to move faster
Same as every funding bill for the last 8+ years. Far right sides with the Democrats, for opposing reasons. Then we either get a far right bill with freedom caucus support, or we get the bill pulled up the left for moderate democrat support.
Seeing headlines before reading the articles, I thought “could they be growing a conscience?”
Silly, silly me.
They fear for their lifestyles, and their very lives.
We don’t want the nation to go into debt to pay for our tax cuts. We want the poor to go into debt.
Well basically they are saying it’s better for the poor to be sick and die, and to destroy the environment, than for the rich to pay their fair taxes, although they are already lower than for average people.
Exactly. Anyone “stunned” by this isn’t paying attention.
The real test will be if the Dems have the integrity to filibuster whatever sick shit ends up getting to the Senate.
good luck with that with schumer, fetterman and all the other DINOS.
I never understand the constant pressure to the middle class and “poor.” Like how do you expect ANYTHING to get done if people have nothing?
I always go back to thinking about corporations and anyone who produces a “product” and think what consumer will spend the money they don’t have so some company and their board can have more money? If consumers have no money to spend, how will the rich continue to extract it from them? You can’t draw blood from a stone. They don’t even have to care about people, but if there’s literally nothing to take from them, then where is all the “wealth” coming from?
When the government just takes the tax money and gives it to the wealthy there really is no reason to have to go through the act of building a business and hoping people buy your product or service.
As long as a non zero portion of that middle class are happy in their place because they have an under class to punch down on shit isn’t going to change. We have people blaming immigrants for their problems, one of the least powerful segments of our society. How absolutely brain dead do you have to be to think the folks that can’t vote or hold office are the ones pulling the strings in our semi representative democracy?
how do you expect ANYTHING to get done if people have nothing?
Slavery. Or feadalistic serfdom.
I think you’re just thinking too far ahead, they look at the quarterly bottom line and how to make it grow for the next quarter, no matter what.
I wonder if the overall thinking is that people need to feel progress to feel good about their lot in life but they can’t constantly deliver that, so they need the political “heels” to come by make things feel worse and then cede to people to make it “better” to make people feel like progress is made
Kind of like how the net result is increased tariffs but because they were temporarily more severe, the general reaction is “the tariffs are gone, what a relief”
Rolling that boulder up the hill requires it roll back downhill so people can cheer it being rolled up the hill again.
Hunger and fear and great motivators. MAGA want to reduce US society to where the peasants have no choice but to accept what the Nobility gives them. Or be sent to for-profit prisons after becoming homeless, to labor for free.
Neo Feudalism, with MAGA as The Aristos.
Ideology does that.
I think this is exactly where the deepest crises of capitalism come from. What you describe is a natural consequence of unregulated capitalism. Either you start regulating (breaking up monopolies or nationalising them, high tax brackets on the very rich, etc.) before you hit a depression, or you risk a revolution by only enacting them after the shit has hit the fan. Then you can have a generation, maybe two, who reap the benefits of enforced redistribution. And then folks get complacent and start deregulation again.
So, they want to cut Medicaid, the US subsidy for healthcare for the poor, even harder then the mainstream of the party is willing to.
Democrats plot midterm comeback over GOP Medicaid cuts
https://apps.npr.org/2024-election-results/west-virginia.html?section=P
Trump won every county in West Virginia.
https://www.cookpolitical.com/vote-tracker/2024/electoral-college
He had the highest percentage share of the popular vote there in any state aside from Wyoming, the other big coal state, with a 41.9 percentage point lead over Harris in the popular vote.
And we already had one term of Trump:
https://qz.com/1960354/trumps-promise-to-put-coal-miners-back-to-work-was-a-failure
In 2016, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump made a promise to coal miners at a rally in West Virginia. “For those miners, get ready because you’re going to be working your asses off,” he told them, wearing a white hard hat. “We’ll be winning, winning, winning.”
After four years of the Trump administration, coal has been losing, losing, losing. Not that Trump can take the blame (or the credit). Dismal economics have been inexorably displacing coal as the fuel of choice in the US and around the world. Trump made some attempts to stop the bleeding—easing air pollution laws and propping up ailing plants—and in 2017, falsely claimed those efforts were working. “We are putting the coal miners back to work, just as I promised,” he said.
https://wvmetronews.com/2025/05/01/medicaid-cuts-would-hit-wv-harder-than-most-states/
West Virginia is heavily dependent on Medicaid. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 28 percent of the state’s population—about 500,000 individuals—are covered by Medicaid. That’s the fifth highest per capita rate in the nation.
“Not only did you not get your promised coal boom, but he took your healthcare away to boot.”
EDIT: The Guardian visits McDowell County, West Virginia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqceHviNBC4
I’ve come here because it has a unique status in 2016: During the primaries, a higher percentage of people here voted for Donald Trump than anywhere else in America. It’s also the poorest county in one of the poorest states in the country.
I remember another video — don’t think it’s this one, since it’d have to be recent — with the (Democratic) county supervisor of the place saying in an interview that he’d voted for Trump in three elections now, that you never knew, maybe Trump would change things.
I’m betting they’ll blame anyone else but Trump here. They’ll say someone else is blocking his genius. Victims of scams frequently double down on the scam to protect themselves emotionally.
In an alternate reality Trump would be selling used cars. “This one is a beaut. Better jump on it fast though, I had a guy from Kansas asking about it. Offered $10 grand for it…”
Whenever there’s something that might actually do some good, they’re like “we just don’t have time, maybe in six months” but they’ll work over the weekend to fuck people over
Fuck people over WHILE enriching themselves.
“The tax cuts alone would pile on the nation’s $36 trillion debt”
…So we will destroy beneficial programs and do the tax cuts anyway.It reads as:
“I stabbed myself in the stomach with a huge knife, but I realize that was not quite a good thing to do so I will shoot off my own knees to make it hurt somewhere else”.Right because if there’s one thing the rich need it’s more money. I hate fucking capitalism, I hate our government, and at this point I’m just tired of being alive.
Cutting taxes right now is like saying “We can’t pay our bills. I’m quitting my job.” How about raising taxes on the top 1% and capital gains on them too. Instead he shoves tariffs on us, essentially a federal sales tax.
