‘Big and Beautiful’ but Not Nearly Enough of Either
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IN THIS ISSUE:
‘Big and Beautiful’ but Not Nearly Enough of Either
Video of the Week: LIARS! How the Legacy Media is Destroying America – In The Tank #496
Supreme Court: No to Christians, Yes to the Fed
Noem Tackles Harvard
Cartoon
Bonus Video of the Week: “Grok is this true?”
‘Big and Beautiful’ but Not Nearly Enough of Either
The U.S. House of Representatives passed the 1,118-page “Big Beautiful Bill” to extend the 2017 tax cuts and implement a variety of other tax and government policy changes by a 215-214 vote on Thursday.
The closeness of the vote indicates the intransigence of Democrat opposition to reform and explains why the bill could not achieve much more than an urgently necessary first step in a rescue of the nation’s economy and the viability of the federal government.
“The multi-trillion dollar tax break package contains numerous elements of Trump’s far-reaching agenda and has been delivered via an all-night session,” Breitbart reports. “These include extending tax cuts passed in 2017, eliminating taxes on tips, spending more on defence and border security, while making government health care programs more accountable.”
The stock markets fell in response to fears about a big increase in the federal deficit the Congressional Budget Office predicted the legislation would cause.
The bill now goes back to the Senate for adjustments to bring the two chambers’ versions into alignment so that both houses can vote on a final version.
The “big beautiful bill” was an absolute necessity. It averts a $4 trillion federal tax increase that was scheduled to arrive on the first day of 2026. That would have been catastrophic, as siphoning an additional $4 trillion from the productive sectors of the economy would have to be.
Notice that the $4 trillion was a measure of the expected effect of the higher tax rates, which would have been a dead loss for the economy by transferring that money from productive people to the government. Expiration of the 2017 cuts would have added about $2,500 to the annual tax bill for middle-income households. The higher rates, moreover, would not have raised the expected revenues. They never do, because higher tax rates discourage people from doing the things that would raise those revenues. People work less, invest less, and produce less when the government taxes a greater share of the fruits of their efforts.
Every Democrat voted against the bill, which meant that each and every one of them voted for a brutal tax increase, the largest in the nation’s history, which would have placed an appallingly costly new burden on families across the country. The House Democrats relied on Republicans to bail them out of the catastrophic consequences of their irresponsible performative opposition to a desperately needed tax reform.
Democrats argued that the bill would increase the federal debt by $4.6 trillion between 2026 and 2034, averaging a deficit increase of $463 billion per year, citing estimates by the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO always vastly overestimates the take from tax increases and underestimates the positive economic effects of tax cuts. “That forecast borders on economic malpractice,” write the good people at the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. They provide a chart showing how poor a forecaster the CBO is:
We know CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation are wrong, because this same model overestimated the revenue loss of the 2017 Trump tax cut by $1.5 trillion in the first five years of the bill. That’s a gross error.
After decades of complaining about the [Joint Committee on Taxation] and CBO’s erroneous models, which ALWAYS overestimate the “cost” of tax cuts, they still refuse to fully take account of the economic benefits of lowering tax rates. It’s like a doctor tapping a patient’s knee and not expecting the leg to kick up.
The CBO is wrong this time too. There is no way that the biggest tax increase in history would cut the deficit; it would slam the brakes on the economy. Averting that tax increase will have the opposite effect: a booming economy and higher federal revenues from that bigger pie. The Big Beautiful Bill will decrease the federal deficit, not increase it—provided that Congress does not increase spending in the meantime, which, alas, is more likely than not. We can trust Trump to continue reducing regulation and cut restrictions on energy production, which will further increase economic growth.
In any case, the Democrats’ complaints would have more credibility had they not increased the federal deficit by one-third, or $450 billion per year, between 2022 and 2024.
That is almost exactly the same as the highly implausible $463 billion per year increase the CBO projects for the Big Beautiful tax cut extensions. It is obvious that the Democrats’ opposition to the bill is not based on a sudden onset of fiscal probity. The Democrats’ effect on debt payments was brutal, notes Heritage Foundation Research Fellow E. J. Antoni in a commentary at TownHall:
When Trump left office, interest on the debt cost about $600 billion a year. Biden managed to nearly double that, with interest payments exceeding an annualized $1.1 trillion by the end of his term—exceeding all defense spending combined.
It is tempting to see the Democrats’ opposition to the Big Beautiful Bill as based on a determination not to let President Trump get a legislative victory. It is likewise possible that they acted on the belief that sticking Trump and the Republicans with the consequences of the largest tax hike in history would benefit the Democrats politically in next year’s elections. Inflicting great harm on the American people as a political ploy is an obviously awful thing, yet it is entirely believable based on the left’s delight in and history of Cloward-Piven destruction, as evidenced vividly by the Covid lockdowns, mass riots, and election chaos in 2020.
The worst possibility is that the congressional Democrats actually believe imposing the biggest tax increase in history would not harm the economy or the American people. Such a gross delusion seems to me to be even more dangerous than a cynical political calculation would be. Any way you look at it, however, the party’s unanimous support for the biggest tax increase in history is grievous, irresponsible, and unforgivable.
Even though the Big Beautiful Bill is absolutely necessary in averting the biggest tax hike ever, it is far from sufficient to repair the fiscal damage of recent years. While averting a tax disaster, the Big Beautiful Bill fails completely on the spending side. QTR’s Fringe Finance outlines the problem:
GOP opponents of Trump’s new spending bill argue that it adds too much to the national debt and doesn’t include enough spending cuts to balance it out. They’re concerned it could worsen inflation and say the government is trying to take on too much instead of leaving things to the states or private sector. Some also believe the bill is filled with unnecessary items and lacks clear focus. Overall, they see it as fiscally irresponsible and a step away from conservative principles of limited government and careful budgeting.
Last night Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) opposed Trump’s bill, calling it fiscally reckless due to its mix of tax cuts and increased spending. He warned it would add trillions to the debt and criticized the rushed vote on a still-unfinished bill. Despite pressure from GOP leaders and Trump, Massie voted no, underscoring deep divisions in the party over fiscal policy.
Massie correctly pointed out that investors continue to demand higher yields on U.S. bonds, signaling a loss of faith in the creditworthiness of the United States.
The unusually low prices of U.S. government bonds are a very ominous sign of federal fiscal disarray, Fringe Finance notes:
For lack of more complicated jargon, the bond market has recently been “out of whack”. Yields are rising despite the Federal Reserve being in the middle of a cutting cycle, and bonds sold off at the same time risk assets sold off after Liberation Day (they would usually catch a bid in a ‘flight to safety’ selloff). If it feels like the magnetic poles of the bond market have reversed, it could be because they have.
Bond buyers value reliability, Fringe Finance notes. A drop in bond prices increases interest rates and signals concerns about the stability of the bond issuer, in this case the U.S. Treasury:
The bond market has traditionally been comprised of far more sophisticated and sizable investors than the equity market: foreign governments, giant institutions, and extremely wealthy investors, to name a few.
As bonds sell off with risk assets and as yields rise despite the Fed cutting rates, these influential and sizable investing world powers that be are sending the message that things are not OK the way they are going. The rising yield indicates a desire to be compensated more for holding U.S. debt—sending the signal that it is riskier than people think it is—and it also sends a message to our Treasury and the Federal Reserve that the country’s fiscal house is not in order.
The bond market is, in essence, a collection of investors so sharp that they can’t help but realize exactly how precarious the country’s financial situation has gotten, no matter how much of a polish or gloss politicians and government officials try to put on it. In other words, the bond market can’t be fooled—and by the looks of it, isn’t.
The U.S. government’s fiscal house is certainly not in order; far from it. Federal spending is much, much too high, so high that no plausible amount of economic growth can undue the damage of the decision of President Joe Biden (or whoever was wielding his autopen) and the Democrat-controlled Congress of 2021 and 2022 to increase federal spending rapidly after the Covid lockdowns instead of returning expenditures to the 2019 trend line:
The federal government is now spending about $1.4 trillion more per year than it would be if the Congress and president had reduced spending back to the pre-Covid trend line, which was already excessive. Now it seems that no one has any stomach for a return to the previous decade’s level of fiscal insanity, much less to the 1980-2001 trendline that fiscal conservatives rightly considered imprudent at the time:
Unlike Congress, President Trump has been doing whatever he can to reduce the size of the federal government and the damage it does. The first-quarter 2025 GDP report demonstrates that, Antoni notes:
[T]he best part of the GDP report was this showstopper: investment (the impetus of long-run real economic growth) is skyrocketing, up 21.9 percent at a seasonally adjusted annualized rate.
Under Biden, investment lagged badly below its pre-pandemic trend, even turning negative by the end of his term.
Trump has managed to reverse that in short order, partly by promising the world that he will transform America into the most business-friendly country on the planet via tax and regulatory cuts and boosts in energy production. Those promises incentivize reshoring of manufacturing and the industrial base.
The only way to attack the federal debt and the damage it is doing is to cut spending. Any truly meaningful cuts, however, will require action by Congress. Although I support the Big Beautiful Bill as absolutely necessary, I see it as only the first step. The nation’s economy needs a serious cut in federal spending. Nothing else will do. Fringe Finance outlines what will happen without those cuts:
And no matter what side of the argument you’re on for Trump’s big, beautiful bill, there’s no doubt that the bond market is going to settle this dispute. If the bill passes and bond yields continue to rise, it will continue to tighten the fiscal screws for the United States.
The bond market blowing up has no silver lining either. As yields rise, so will the amount of interest we pay on the national debt, and it’ll publicly broadcast a lack of confidence in U.S. paper. And if the likely scenario occurs where the Fed somehow steps in with printed money and utilizes big banks to steady the Treasury market (sometimes called yield curve control, or a version of it)—that could thrust the United States further down the stagflationary path it’s already on.
Look at those two charts above. Politicians, academics, and journalists can complain all they want about how tax cuts and spending cuts will help the wealthy the most and make things tougher for low-income people dependent on taxpayer handouts, but the rise above those trendlines shows waste and excess, not better treatment of the needy. The higher spending is a result of increasing government programs to include millions more higher-income people, as with the Medicaid expansion, which has tilted the program from helping the truly needy into a replacement for private insurance.
The nation cannot sustain that kind of spending. It will end, either by choice or by necessity as the result of an economic crash. As Fringe Finance notes, the bond markets are telling us that the most careful investors are losing trust in the U.S. government’s ability to pay its bills. We should listen to them. The government must act now to cut spending back at least down to the 2019 trendline.
I cannot see that happening. Half the Congress is willing to destroy the national economy in hopes the disaster will prompt voters to return them to power. The other half is terrified of being held responsible for doing the right thing and making more people who can earn their keep do so. This bill is beautiful, as far as it goes. Unfortunately, it tackles only half the problem—the easy part. That is how governments fall and nations decay.
The legacy media that half this country relies on to inform them about the world is irrevocably broken. For the past five years, they’ve lied constantly to cover up the biggest political scandal of the century: that Joe Biden has been in accelerating cognitive decline since before he was sworn in as president.
Of course, it’s worse than that. The media attacked anyone who merely stated that obvious fact, calling what you saw with your own eyes and heard with your own ears “misinformation,” “disinformation,” or even “Russian propaganda.” CNN’s Jake Tapper is now promoting his new book Original Sin and pretending that he and the rest of the legacy media innocently missed Biden’s decline until his disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump last summer.
This, like everything else the media peddles these days, is a lie. Tapper—now serving as an avatar for the entire corrupt media—says he looks back on his coverage of Biden with “humility.” That simply won’t do. The word he must use is “regret,” or “embarrassment,” or even “horror.” And that must be coupled with a pledge to stop lying and a promise to be held accountable every single day. This, of course, will not happen.
The media has brainwashed half the country into believing things that aren’t true and told them to ignore truths staring them in the face. Their corrupt complicity in the cover-up of the century is more dangerous and societally destabilizing than any of the hundreds of fake scares the media peddles about Donald Trump being a “threat to our democracy.”
Supreme Court: No to Christians, Yes to the Fed
The U.S. Supreme Court issued two important decisions on Thursday, neither of them permanent and only one of them good.
The Court was deadlocked 4-4 over Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board et al. v. Gentner Drummond, Attorney General of Oklahoma, releasing a one-sentence decision upholding a lower court’s ruling against Oklahoma’s authorization of the nation’s first publicly funded religious charter school. The decision included no further information other than a notice that Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself.
The case considered rights of equal access to government programs and the definition of state action, notes Tyler O’Neill at The Daily Signal:
The U.S. Supreme Court had taken up the case to examine two questions: whether the education decisions of a privately owned and operated school constitute state action because the school has a contract with the state, and whether the First Amendment’s free exercise cause prohibits—or the establishment clause requires—a state to exclude religious schools from its charter school program.
The decision does not answer either of those questions explicitly, merely reflecting a failure to come to agreement on them. The ruling, however, contradicts the Court’s movement in recent years to require states to allow religious organizations equal access to general state benefits that non-religious individuals and organizations enjoy. The decision sets no precedent, so these issues will remain in contention.
Based on the justices’ comments during oral arguments last month, it is probable that either Chief Justice John Roberts or Justice Neil Gorsuch sided with the three liberal judges to halt the charter authorization. It is a bad decision that reverses the Court’s recent trend toward protecting equal government treatment of religious and non-religious people and institutions.
The Court issued a much better decision on that same day, indicating that it will affirm the president’s authority to fire members of independent boards created by federal law. Ruling in Trump v. Wilcox, the Court granted “a stay of orders from the District Court for the District of Columbia enjoining the President’s removal of a member of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and a member of the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), respectively.”
Trump dismissed Gwynne Wilcox from her position as chair of the NLRB on January 27 of this year, and he removed Cathy Harris from her Merit Systems Protection Board position on February 10.
The Court’s unsigned order granting the stay reflected the majority justices’ opinion that the Trump administration is likely to win the case and restoration of executive power to someone the president fired would do more harm to the country than any good it would accomplish for the individual who had been dismissed:
Because the Constitution vests the executive power in the President, see Art. II, §1, cl. 1, he may remove without cause executive officers who exercise that power on his behalf, subject to narrow exceptions recognized by our precedents, see Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 591 U. S. 197, 215−218 (2020). The stay reflects our judgment that the Government is likely to show that both the NLRB and MSPB exercise considerable executive power. But we do not ultimately decide in this posture whether the NLRB or MSPB falls within such a recognized exception; that question is better left for resolution after full briefing and argument. The stay also reflects our judgment that the Government faces greater risk of harm from an order allowing a removed officer to continue exercising the executive power than a wrongfully removed officer faces from being unable to perform her statutory duty.
Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from the ruling. In the lengthy dissent, Kagan states that the decision contradicts the Court’s longstanding precedent in its 1935 ruling in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States. In that decision, the Court established that a president could not “remove an officer from a classic independent agency—a multi-member, bipartisan commission exercising regulatory power whose governing statute contains a for-cause provision,” Kagan writes. In addition to the NLRB and MPSB, Kagan argues,
… there are many others—among them, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and Federal Reserve Board. Congress created them all, though at different times, out of one basic vision. It thought that in certain spheres of government, a group of knowledgeable people from both parties—none of whom a President could remove without cause—would make decisions likely to advance the long-term public good.
Far from “advancing the long-term public good,” Humphrey’s Executor unleashed the growth of an unaccountable administrative state by making these agencies independent of the president. In Humphrey’s Executor, the Court ruled against President Franklin Roosevelt’s firing of Republican-appointed (twice) Federal Trade Commission member William Humphrey. The Court cited agency independence as its aim in establishing the rule: “For it is quite evident that one who holds his office only during the pleasure of another cannot be depended upon to maintain an attitude of independence against the latter’s will,” the Court stated.
Agency independence may or may not be a good thing, but the Constitution gives the president full authority over the Executive Branch regardless of Kagan’s or the 1930s Court’s assessment of the costs and benefits of that choice, as the decision in Trump v. Wilcox notes.
Kagan observes that the majority decision makes a point of excepting the Federal Reserve from executive oversight of this sort: “The majority closes today’s order by stating, out of the blue, that it has no bearing on ‘the constitutionality of for-cause removal protections’ for members of the Federal Reserve Board or Open Market Committee.”
Kagan correctly criticizes the majority’s reasoning for that conclusion:
[T]he Federal Reserve’s independence rests on the same constitutional and analytic foundations as that of the NLRB, MSPB, FTC, FCC, and so on—which is to say it rests largely on Humphrey’s. So the majority has to offer a different story: The Federal Reserve, it submits, is a ‘uniquely structured’ entity with a ‘distinct historical tradition’—and it cites for that proposition footnote 8 of this Court’s opinion in Seila Law. Ante, at 2 (citing 591 U. S., at 222, n. 8). But—sorry—footnote 8 provides no support. Its only relevant sentence rejects an argument made in the dissenting opinion “even assuming [that] financial institutions like the Second Bank and Federal Reserve can claim a special historical status.” And so an assumption made to humor a dissent gets turned into some kind of holding. Because one way of making new law on the emergency docket (the deprecation of Humphrey’s) turns out to require yet another (the creation of a bespoke Federal Reserve exception). If the idea is to reassure the markets, a simpler—and more judicial—approach would have been to deny the President’s application for a stay on the continued authority of Humphrey’s.
As she does throughout her dissent, Kagan’s shows that her main concern is to get the consequence she wants: Court affirmation of the administrative state. Her reference to the majority’s proffered exception for the Federal Reserve indicates, correctly, that it shows the majority justices are doing so in pursuit of real-world consequences, not fidelity to the Constitution, which motivates the rest of their decision.
The majority may be contemplating an argument that shows the Federal Reserve is completely different from these other agencies and is not essentially part of the Executive Branch. A reluctance to scare the markets, however, does not justify the majority’s decision to carve out an exception without stating a good reason for it.
In addition, the notion that the Federal Reserve should be free of constitutional scrutiny is laughable. The U.S. dollar has lost 97 percent of its value since 1913. That does not sound like much of a “long-term public good” to me.
An article by the Constitutional Accountability Center quotes Catholic University Law Professor Chad Squitieri as saying, “It’s not as scary as it might sound. If the Fed is politically accountable to the president, well, we trust the president with the nuclear codes. We can also trust the president with managing the Fed.”
A constitutionalist decision requiring reforms to the Federal Reserve, or even having to end it altogether, might well be another great public benefit showing the wisdom of the nation’s founders.
‘The CSDDD is the greatest threat to America’s sovereignty since the fall of the Soviet Union.’
Noem Tackles Harvard
The Trump administration has “revoked Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students in its escalating battle with the Ivy League school, saying thousands of current students must transfer to other schools or leave the country,” AP reports. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem cited violence, potential espionage, and antisemitism among the reasons for the action:
The Department of Homeland Security announced the action Thursday, saying Harvard has created an unsafe campus environment by allowing “anti-American, pro-terrorist agitators” to assault Jewish students on campus. It also accused Harvard of coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party, saying it hosted and trained members of a Chinese paramilitary group as recently as 2024.
“This means Harvard can no longer enroll foreign students and existing foreign students must transfer or lose their legal status,” the agency said in a statement.
More than one-quarter of Harvard’s students are not American-born, AP notes:
Harvard enrolls almost 6,800 foreign students at its campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, accounting for more than a quarter of its student body. Most are graduate students, coming from more than 100 countries.
Nearly all of those students pay full tuition.
The federal government certainly has no authority to tell universities whom they may enroll—though it did exactly that for more than a half-century through affirmative action rules. The Constitution, however, grants Congress the authority to manage immigration and naturalization, and current federal law requires institutions of higher education to have certification by the federal Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) in order to enroll such students.
Noem is removing that certification from Harvard, which is within the scope of the government’s authority, though a federal judge immediately blocked the ban (of course). The SEVP was established in 2002, and Homeland Security has the authority to manage it, as CNN reports:
Guidelines set by ICE say that SEVP-certified schools have “serious legal obligations” to the student and the US government.
“SEVP will exercise the full authority of the U.S. government to protect you and to institute sanctions against any school that disregards its responsibilities,” according to the ICE fact sheet.
The law requires colleges and universities to supply certain information about their international students, and that is what Homeland Security has asked Harvard to do. CNN reports,
As of now, the only way Harvard can regain its ability to enroll international students would be to submit detailed records of such students participating in activities deemed “illegal,” “dangerous” and threatening from over the past five years to DHS. The school will have 72 hours to do so, Noem warned in her letter Thursday.
Noem specified that records should include any disciplinary actions, as well as audio and video footage of “any protest activity” involving foreign students on campus.
“Providing materially false, fictitious or fraudulent information may subject you to criminal prosecution,” the secretary wrote. “Other criminal and civil sanctions may also apply.”
Another CNN story notes Noem and Harvard disagree on whether the university complied with Homeland Security’s request:
Noem said she ordered her department to terminate Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) certification, citing the university’s refusal to turn over the conduct records of foreign students requested by the DHS last month.
Harvard’s suit says it did provide requested information to the department, but “DHS deemed Harvard’s responses ‘insufficient’—without explaining why or citing any regulation with which Harvard failed to comply.”
Harvard’s lawsuit against the order calls for a court to interfere in an Executive Branch decision, a Homeland Security official argues. CNN reports:
“This lawsuit seeks to kneecap the President’s constitutionally vested powers under Article II. It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments,” said Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin in a statement.
“The Trump administration is committed to restoring common sense to our student visa system; no lawsuit, this or any other, is going to change that. We have the law, the facts, and common sense on our side.”
It may be unfair of Noem and Trump to single out Harvard for this sanction, but it is within their legal authority. Noem can refute university officials’ and supporters’ claims that the decision is “unlawful” “extortion” and a “retaliatory action” toward Harvard by showing that the administration is not singling Harvard out and the university is simply the first in what will be an ongoing effort to execute the SEVP program properly.
That is exactly what the Trump administration is doing, CNN reports:
The Trump administration appears poised to make an example of Harvard as it threatens similar punishment to other institutions if they don’t cooperate.
“This should be a warning to every other university to get your act together,” Noem said on Fox News.
Like seemingly everything in America these days, this will play out in the courts.
The Heartland Institute and Rasmussen just completed another polling study—this one asking people how worried they are about AI and what should be done about it legislatively. To no one’s surprise, people are worried and think the government has a responsibility to get ahead of it. We’ll also cover the way people can fool even themselves with AI, how some are totally outsourcing their thinking to it, what effect that has (or seems to have), and what the mass expansion of AI is going to do to the economy—especially in terms of energy demand and white-collar jobs.
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