Today in Politics, Bulletin 163. 7/1/25

… The budget bill passed the Senate 51-50 today with VP JD Vance breaking the tie. Susan Collins, Rand Paul and Thom Tillis were the 3 Republicans who voted against it. Now it has to go back to the House since very significant changes were made by the Senate to the original bill passed by the House, which is why this is called “reconciliation.”

… Sen. Lisa Murkowski was the holdout vote that was going to decide this, and she continued to make deals as everyone waited in order to benefit Alaska while selling out the rest of the country. The bizarre thing is that after she voted for it, she said she wasn’t happy with the bill and hoped that the House would make significant changes. Pathetic.

… Punchbowl: “Murkowski tells reporters she wants the House to send OBBB back to the Senate to continue the work. She voted for it. ‘My hope is that the House is gonna look at this and recognize that we're not there yet,’ Murkowski said. Asked why she voted for the bill if it needs work, Murkowski said voting against would have killed OBBB ‘Kill it and it's gone. There is a tax impact coming forward. That's gonna hurt the people in my state.’”

… Murkowski was then asked about Rand Paul saying that she got a “bailout for Alaska” to buy her vote. She glared at the reporter for about 20 seconds before answering angrily: “I find that offensive. I advocated for my state’s interests and I make no excuses for doing that. Do I like this bill? No. I know that many parts of the country will not be advantaged by this bill. I don’t like that.”

Photo: Steve Dennis, Bloomberg

… WaPo’s chief economics reporter Jeff Stein: “It does seem worth asking why Sen. Murkowski will support health care provisions for the rest of the country that she thinks her state should be exempted from.”

… Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN): “Senate Republicans to our nation’s Governors: MAKE MORE ERRORS ON SNAP AND THEN YOU CAN AVOID SNAP CUTS FOR TWO YEARS. Are they actually going to pass a bill that favors the 10 states with the highest SNAP error rates just to help Alaska?”

… Paul Winfree, Economic Policy Innovation Center: “The SNAP carve out intended for Alaska that is coming together in the Big Beautiful Bill would literally reward all states who can get their payment error rates above 13% by delaying the work requirements. It would literally encourage waste, fraud, and abuse.”

… Rules Committee Ranking Member Jim McGovern (D-MA) then went off in a House hearing right after the vote in the Senate: “Listen to this quote from Murkowski who just caved and voted for this. ‘My hope is that the house is going to look at this and recognize we are not there yet.’ If you really believe that, why the hell did you vote for the bill?”

… McGovern: “The sad fact is that many of you will fold in a nanosecond. You will vote for this even though you know it is bad for your own constituents. You are absolutely terrified the guy in the WH will get mad and try to find someone to run against you in a primary. Sen. Tillis did the right thing, speaking truth to power. You should listen when he says the senate's version of the bill betrays Trump's promise not to take Medicaid away from its rightful recipients. He decided to retire because he wanted to put his constituents first.”

… “Truly I have never seen anything like this in my life, the kind of petrified fealty we see on the right. Scared by a man who called voting against the bill ‘the ultimate betrayal’. What kind of president talks like that? That’s the language of dictators, not the language of a president.”

… Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC): “The founders would be astounded that we are sitting here talking about something that we had not read fully or gotten a copy of it. They would be astounded we are adding debt to our children and grandchildren. It is a curse. What the senate did is unconscionable. I am against this because what the senate did, I will vote against it here and on the floor, until we get it right.”

… Trump was asked about House Republicans who said they are not inclined to vote for the Senate version of the bill: “If they don't do it, they’ll suffer the consequences.”

… Reporter: “Are you saying that the 11.8 million people who could lose their health coverage is waste, fraud, and abuse? Trump: I am saying it is a smaller number and that number will be waste, fraud, and abuse. Reporter: What number is that? What analysis are you seeing? Trump: I am not seeing a number, but it is much less than you gave.”

… In other words, he has absolutely no idea and doesn’t care.

… Jeff Stein: “Here is roughly how I'd try to break down the massive Senate tax bill to a friend:

1. Extending/increasing prior GOP tax cuts w/ broad reach (larger standard deduction; raises child benefit $2K->$2.2K per kid; rate cuts across income bracket) Cost: ~$2.5 trillion

2. Tax cuts that benefit the 1% (cut for top bracket; 199A changes; estate tax exemption lifted to $15M) Cost: ~$1 trillion

3. Trump 2024 campaign grab-bag (deduction for seniors; no tax on tips; car interest deduction) Cost: ~$500 billion

4. Business tax breaks (expensing, R&D, etc) Cost: ~$500 billion

5. Funding for immigration enforcement & military budget Cost: ~$400 billion

6. Major safety net cuts targeting Medicaid and food stamps (work requirements; new cost sharing; paperwork requirements) Savings: ~$1.3 trillion

7. Clean energy cuts (cuts subsidies for rooftop solars, EVs, heat pumps, tax credits for clean energy) Savings: -$500 billion

8. Total deficit hit of +$3 trillion

… Elon Musk spent most of the last 24 hours trashing different parts of the bill, urging House members to vote against it, threatening to back primary opponents against them, and launching his 3rd party which he is calling ‘The America Party.’ As you might expect, Trump was not amused and returned fire.

… Musk: “Removal of funding for enforcement of federal contempt of court orders is the actual crux of this spending bill. This is nominally aimed at removal of illegal immigrants, but obviously also enables many other abuses of power by the President. Should this be allowed?”

… Musk: “DOGE is destroyed by this insane spending bill. What good is DOGE saving $160B when this bill increases the debt ceiling by $5T? It makes mockery of the work. And how are we supposed to reach Mars if America goes de facto bankrupt?”

… Musk on the bill raising the debt ceiling by $5 trillion: “Hitting the debt ceiling is the only thing that will actually force the government to cut waste and fraud. That’s why the debt ceiling legislation exists!”

… One Musk follower responded: “Maybe you shouldn't have taken the chainsaw on stage and acted a fool. Maybe you could have gotten more done if you weren't so worried about looking cool.” Musk responded: “Valid point. Milei gave me the chainsaw backstage and I ran with it, but, in retrospect, it lacked empathy.”

… Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA): "Look, Elon Musk is right about this. He's got it exactly right. The idea of borrowing $3.5 trillion on the nation's credit card in order to be able to give tax breaks to the likes of Musk and Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg is financially nuts. It's terrible for our country."

… House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris: “Musk is right—we cannot sustain these deficits. He understands finance. He understands debt and deficits and we have to make further progress. We support the president's agenda. The president’s agenda was not to raise the deficit three quarters of a trillion dollars. The bottom line is the House will have its say and this will not sail through the House.”

… Harris will vote for it. These guys all talk a big game about debt and deficits - but ultimately they fear Trump more than debt or their principles. If they ever really actually had any in the first place.

… Musk then responded to a clip of Energy Sec Chris Wright where he argued that gutting renewable energy to rely on fossil fuels is a good thing. This is what Wright said: "Our biggest source of reliable power today by far is natural gas. Our second biggest source is nuclear. And our third biggest source, right behind that is coal. So those are the three keys to the future of our electricity grid."

… Musk’s response: “Everything else combined is like cave men throwing little sticks into the fire compared to the Sun.”

… Trump then posted on Truth Social after midnight: “Elon Musk knew, long before he so strongly Endorsed me for President, that I was strongly against the EV Mandate. It is ridiculous, and was always a major part of my campaign. Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far, and without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa. No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE. Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this? BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED!!!”

… A reporter then asked Trump this morning if he might consider deporting Musk: “We'll have to take a look. We might have to put DOGE on Elon. You know what DOGE is? The monster that might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn’t that be terrible? He gets a lot of subsidies.”

… Musk responded to that: “So tempting to escalate this. So, so tempting. But I will refrain for now.”

… Musk then posted that he made a donation to Trump nemesis Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who Trump is opposing in his upcoming primary. Trump responded to that: “Anybody I Endorse beats Thomas Massie of Kentucky by 25 points. Get ready. Massie is a very bad guy!”

… Former Republican Rep. Mo Brooks on the few Republicans standing up to Trump: “They're doing what their conscience tells them to do, and that's what we need. That's the kind of intimidation that the 800 pound gorilla in DC uses - and that's Trump. That's the kind of impact he has in Republican primaries. We don't need him interceding and forcing people or coercing people into voting poorly for America when we need people to stand tall and vote right for America.”

… Trump endorsed Brooks for Senate in Alabama in 2022. Then Brooks said at a Trump rally that Trump needed to stop talking about the 2020 election being stolen and move on. Trump then revoked his endorsement of Brooks and switched to Katie Britt a few months before the election, who then defeated Brooks. So Brooks is an expert on this topic.

… Treasury Sec Scott Bessent was asked on Fox about Musk’s comments that the bill explodes the deficit: “I admire Elon's leadership on rockets, but I will take care of the finances. I don't agree at all. This bill will set off growth like we have never seen before. And once you see the growth trajectory change to an upward bias, the bill more than pays for itself. We could be in surplus.”

… So with current economic projections the bill adds massive debt. But with Trump and Bessent’s fantastical projections of growth being off the charts due to Trump’s brilliance (despite tariffs and deportation of millions of workers) we will grow our way out of that. This is the same thing Ronald Reagan said in 1981. Which caused his budget director David Stockman to derisively refer to their budget as ‘Rosie Scenario’. (They were later forced to raise taxes).

… Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-PA): “If tax cuts paid for themselves, our national debt would not be $36 trillion. The bulk of the added debt since 2001 has actually come from 4 different rounds of major tax cuts. 2001, 2003, their extension about a decade later and then the 2017 TCJA, all told that combines for more than $10 trillion in missing revenue that would've been there had we just kept in place tax rates as they were.”

… Brooks was asked if this was going to hurt Republicans in the midterms: “Well, it absolutely ought to hurt everybody who votes to risk a national insolvency and bankruptcy.”

… Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer then posted his signature accomplishment for the year: “NEWS: I just got the name struck off this bill with a move on the floor of the Senate. It is no longer named ‘One Big Beautiful Bill.’

… I feel better now.

Reminder that there is no Bulletin on Wednesdays because I do my podcast Uncovered where we take a deep dive into the Top 10 stories of the day. I also do my Ask the Editor show with Ben where I choose 5 of your questions to answer. If you would like to submit a question about anything, post it in the comments to this Bulletin.

If you missed yesterday’s Bulletin, you can find it here. Thank you again for supporting everything that we do at Meidas.

… Politico said Dems are anxiously waiting on Roy Cooper’s decision whether to run in the NC Senate race after Tillis dropped out: “Dems haven’t won the state in nearly 2 decades, and for months, they’ve been waiting for the 2-term former governor to decide whether he’ll enter the race and immediately boost their prospects through his strong approval ratings and fundraising network. Cooper’s looming decision has effectively frozen recruitment in the state and no one else, many Dems privately concede, can match his chances.”

… One Dem operative: “The national money we could have here with Cooper in this race would be unprecedented. Cooper opens up donor money that could radically