Reich asked people to share….. Hence I’m sharing – and as usual it demonstrates Trump’s neoliberal priorities – Benefit his own class of people first, and stomp on everyone else.
The bill is over a thousand pages long, it is almost certain that there are pork-barrel sections in it for particular Republicans.
No sensible bill should be that long, Congress should know what it is voting on.
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Reich says:
The old professor in me thinks the best way to convey to you how utterly awful the so-called “one big beautiful bill” passed by the House last night actually is would be to give you this short ten-question exam. (Answers are in parenthesis, but first try to answer without looking at them.)
1. Does the House’s “one big beautiful bill” cut Medicare?
- (Answer: Yes, by an estimated $500 billion.)
2. Because the bill cuts Medicaid, how many Americans are expected to lose Medicaid coverage?
- (At least 8.6 million.)
3. Will the tax cut in the bill benefit the rich or the poor or everyone?
- (Overwhelmingly, the rich.)
4. How much will the top 0.1 percent of earners stand to gain from it?
- (Nearly $390,000 per year).
5. If you figure in the benefit cuts and the tax cuts, will Americans making between about $17,000 and $51,000 gain or lose?
- (They’ll lose about $700 a year).
6. How about Americans with incomes less than $17,000?
- (They’ll lose more than $1,000 per year on average).
7. How much will the bill add to the federal debt?
- ($3.8 trillion over 10 years.)
8. Who will pay the interest on this extra debt?
- (All of us, in both our tax payments and higher interest rates for mortgages, car loans, and all other longer-term borrowing.)
9. Who collects this interest?
- (People who lend to the U.S. government, 70 percent of whom are American and most of whom are wealthy.)
10. Bonus question: Is the $400 million airplane from Qatar a gift to the United States for every future president to use, or a gift to Trump for his own personal use?
- (It’s a personal gift because he’ll get to use it after he leaves the presidency.)
11. [In another email Reich argues that: the courts are now without ability to enforce judgements against Trump and his coterie in government.]
The courts have one power to make their orders stick: holding federal officials in contempt and enforcing such contempt citations against them. [However the big bill states]
“No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued….”
As U.C. Berkeley School of Law Dean and Distinguished Professor of Law Erwin Chemerinsky notes, this provision would eliminate any restraint on Trump.
‘Without the contempt power, judicial orders are meaningless and can be ignored. There is no way to understand this except as a way to keep the Trump administration from being restrained when it violates the Constitution or otherwise breaks the law. …
‘This would be a stunning restriction on the power of the federal courts. The Supreme Court has long recognized that the contempt power is integral to the authority of the federal courts. Without the ability to enforce judicial orders, they are rendered mere advisory opinions which parties are free to disregard.”
With this single provision, in other words, Trump will have crowned himself king.
[12. Another source states that the US government’s authority to borrow, known as the debt limit, will increase by $4tn. Anyone who has followed American Politics knows that Republicans try to stop debt limit expansion when there is a Democrat President. It also admits that Trump will hugely increase the deficit despite the chaos generated by Doge. This is usually considered bad.]
[If you didn’t know this,] that’s because of
(1) distortions and cover-ups emanating from Trump and magnified by Fox News and other rightwing outlets.
(2) A public that’s overwhelmed with the blitzkrieg of everything Trump is doing, and can’t focus on this. [“Flood the zone with shit” as Bannon says]
(3) Outright silencing of many in the media who fear retaliation from the Trump regime if they reveal things that Trump doesn’t want revealed, [and the ownership of Media by Billionaires and corporations, who will benefit in the short term from Trump’s policies.]
Tags: Disinformation, neoliberalism, trump
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