May 23, 2025

Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.

 

Senate GOP Won’t Pass One Big Beautiful Bill Without More Spending Cuts. That’s Not A Bad Thing.

By Robert Romano

Following the historic passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act by just one vote — 215 to 214 with two House Republicans voting no, U.S. Reps. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) — the legislation is proceeding to the Senate where new objections are being raised over the bill including not doing enough to rein in deficit-spending in the current fiscal year.

For example, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said the bill needed to reduce the deficit: “There should be a goal of this Republican Senate budget resolution to reduce the deficit, not increase it. We’re increasing it. It’s a nonstarter from my standpoint… I actually want to reduce the deficit.” Johnson said there were at least four Senate Republicans who were no votes because of the near-term impacts on the deficit.

That’s not a bad thing. Both of the no votes in the House were because of the deficit — currently projected at $1.87 trillion for the current fiscal year according to the latest U.S. Treasury statement for April — as was the single vote for present by U.S. Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) who stated “There is still a lot of work to be done in deficit reduction…”

Two members not voting were U.S. Reps. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) and Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.) who were both late to the floor but had intended to support the legislation. So ,there’s a bit more of a cushion in the House than the final 215 to 214 final vote would indicate.

And, if the objecting Senate Republicans get what they want, which are more spending cuts, that might be viewed favorably by Harris and Davidson, at least. 

The key for Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) is to know where all of the red lines are that have already been drawn. 

For example, President Donald Trump long ago on the campaign trail declared Social Security and Medicare benefits off limits. Budget reconciliation rules also take care of that, since nothing that would remove funds from the trust funds is not allowed. 

But more recently, in his May 20 meeting with House Republicans, Trump also sent a message not to mess around with Medicaid benefits on behalf of blue state Republicans who are getting hammered over the issue.

Additionally, members like U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), also representing blue state Republicans, got to yes because a cap on the state and local tax (SALT) deduction was increased to $40,000. A key thing to note there is simply by doing nothing, not only will the 2017 Trump tax cuts expire but so too will the current cap on SALT will go away completely on Dec. 31. This too creates a limit in terms of how much the cap on the SALT deduction can be pared back without losing support in the House, since members concerned about SALT could just let the 2017 law expire and there would be no cap on the SALT deduction.

And, it’s important to note that historically, tax cuts are not scored favorably towards the deficit by the Congressional Budget Office, marking them as increases in the deficit. So, to get any tax relief whatsoever requires either offsetting spending cuts or tax increases. That favors the fiscal hawks insofar as those seeking tax relief need them to get the largest possible spending cuts in order to justify the adjustments to tax rates from a deficit standpoint once it’s scored by the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation. 

On the other hand, there also has to be an acknowledgment about what can actually be cut in the current baseline spending. This might be the most intractable part of the problem. Currently, without making any changes to the law, and allowing the Trump tax cuts to expire at the end of the year, and the annual deficit will increase from $1.87 trillion in 2025 to $2.2 trillion by 2034, according to the last full budget published by the White House Office of Management and Budget in 2024. 

The biggest drivers are Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Social Security will increase from $1.5 trillion of spending in 2025 to $2.4 trillion in 2034. Medicare will increase from $936 billion in 2025 to $1.76 trillion in 2034. And Medicaid will increase from $587 billion in 2025 to $996 billion in 2034. And Trump already said not to touch those.

Voting against the One Big Beautiful Bill will do nothing to impact those numbers, with perhaps the exception of Medicaid, where the legislation increases enforcement to remove 1.4 million illegal aliens from the rolls as a cost savings. So, if anything, blocking the bill could make things a bit worse if illegal aliens continue collecting benefits. 

Nor will it do anything to shore up the trust Social Security and Medicare trust funds, which are set to go dry in 2035 and 2036, respectively, regardless if the tax legislation passes. That is because the current proposal impacts income tax rates, not payroll tax rates that pay for Social Security and Medicare, which in turn is because budget reconciliation cannot be utilized to cut payroll taxes plus nobody is trying to cut those. 

More broadly, the $36.2 trillion national debt has been increasing on average 8 percent a year since 1980 once wars and recessions are factored in. If it continues growing at that rate, it will top $74 trillion by 2034, and $100 trillion by 2038. In the meantime, the U.S. economy will not nearly keep pace, only growing nominally by 5.5 percent, maybe getting to $50 trillion, with the debt-to-GDP ratio surpassing 200 percent.

Again, that could very well happen whether or not the current legislation is passed, just by factoring in a recession or two and/or another war.

The problem is not that taxes are not high enough — they’re plenty high — it’s that with declining fertility from 3.65 babies per woman in 1960 down to 1.6 babies per woman in 2024, the tax pool is not nearly as large as it would have been had marriage and birth rates remained as high as they were 65 years ago. The House bill offers some incentives including baby savings accounts with $1,000 deposited, but that seems very unlikely to boost fertility back to replacement. 

As it is, more than 900,000 Baby Boomer are retiring every single year, with no ready offset to replace them, and so the tax pool will keep dwindling and deficits keep increasing. 

So, those are some of the limits to the current debate. The members who are asking for more spending cuts are not wrong, but something like entitlement reform that could impact the spending trajectory cannot really be attempted on a mostly partisan budget reconciliation package that is attempting to extend and expand the 2017 Trump tax cuts. 

Meaning, the spending cuts will have to come from someplace else, for example by enacting the $170 billion of savings identified by the White House Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), thereby reducing agency budgets accordingly. Or find cuts someplace else. 

Overall, Senate Majority Leader Thune will have his work cut out for him just as House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) did, who will be watching the Senate process closely to ensure it does not make it impossible to pass back in the House when the process is done. 

At the end of the day, both chambers will have to realize that nothing will be perfect, and that barring a bipartisan breakthrough on entitlements or incentivizing larger family formations by Americans, long term deficits will keep increasing. Making more spending cuts, depending on where they occur, doesn’t appear to hurt the math in the House, it might help it. As usual, compromise will be needed. 

The real question facing Congress is whether on Dec. 31, tax rates are going to increase. Can Republicans keep their promise to extend and expand the 2017 Trump tax cuts, and somehow rein in the deficit? Stay tuned.

Robert Romano is the Executive Director at Americans for Limited Government. 

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2025/05/senate-gop-wont-pass-one-big-beautiful-bill-without-more-spending-cuts-thats-not-a-bad-thing/

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Democrats Face Steep Losses by Ignoring Less Politically Engaged Americans and Doing so Could Seal Their Fate 

By Manzanita Miller 

A grim new report for Democrats just emerged, with the Democratic data firm Catalist releasing  its autopsy of the 2024 election and proving conservatives are right about the strong political realignment taking place under President Donald Trump. 

The report provides strong evidence that the so-called Obama Coalition – a unified group of working-class, young and minority voters — has moved to the right and less politically active Americans are at the heart of this shift.  

The DNC’s neglect of less politically active voters, and subsequent losses with the working-class, young, and minority voters in the last election are part of the same thread. The modern Democratic Party has crafted its radical message with a small, highly politically active group of liberals in mind and alienated everyone else.  

Kamala Harris significantly underperformed Joe Biden’s modest 2020 numbers with moderate and low propensity voters according to Catalist’s data, locking in her loss, considering low and moderate activity voters are the majority.  

Harris underperformed Joe Biden by 7 points — 48 percent to 55 percent — among moderately active voters who had voted in only one or two recent elections. She also underperformed Joe Biden by 6 points among the lowest propensity voters who had voted in no recent elections, taking just 48 percent of their vote compared to Biden’s 54 percent. 

Harris’s numbers approached Biden’s with higher activity voters who had voted in three of the four most recent elections — she fell short of Biden’s numbers by 3 points, 50 percent to 53 percent. However, the only group Harris narrowly surpassed Biden with was highly active voters who had voted in every single recent election for the past four cycles. In this group, Harris outperformed Biden by a single point, 50 percent to 49 percent.       

The fact that Harris lost so substantially with less active voters compared to Joe Biden, not to mention how meager her returns were compared to President Trump, speaks to a greater issue for the Democratic Party. Instead of representing a set of priorities that could conceivably be sold as benefiting the majority of voters, the Democratic Party is focused on catering to a dwindling share of the population — highly engaged die-hard leftists.      

The issue is that this is a group that is shrinking rapidly, and the radical policy priorities that were crafted to appeal to die-hard leftists are turning off virtually everyone else. According to Catalist, less than half of voters in the 2024 election were highly active. 

The Democratic Party’s issues with less politically engaged voters are directly correlated to the party’s losses among lower-propensity groups like young voters, minorities, and non-college voters. Democrats’ coalition of highly active voters skew older, whiter, and more educated. According to Catalist’s numbers, a full 78 percent of highly active voters are white and just 23 percent are non-white. 81 percent of highly active voters are over age 45 while 19 percent are younger. On the flip side, minorities make up 37 percent of moderately active voters, and voters under age 45 make up two-thirds — 64 percent — of moderately active voters. 

The Democratic Party’s inability to court lower propensity voters has been on the rise since 2016 when President Donald Trump began to successfully reinvolve Americans who had given up on the political system. Trump made great strides with less active voters in all three recent presidential elections, and he is drawing in less politically engaged, young, and minority voters to an America First set or priorities. Democrats appear to believe they can get by without less active voters — but the data tells a different story.  

Manzanita Miller is the senior political analyst at Americans for Limited Government Foundation. 

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2025/05/democrats-face-steep-losses-by-ignoring-less-politically-engaged-americans-and-doing-so-could-seal-their-fate/