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CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – Congressman Tim Tiffany and Senator Ron Johnson are both right about the ‘big beautiful bill’ that will be a vessel for Donald Trump’s economic policies.
Rep. Tiffany correctly says that, in the end, Republicans will pass the bill. It contains Trump’s two biggest economic policies: making tax cuts from his first term permanent, and funding the deportation of those in the country illegally. Those parts of the bill are simply too big to fail.
But Republicans who are holding out for more spending cuts are the heroes, not the villains, in this debate. Senator Ron Johnson, writing in the Wall Street Journal earlier this month, noted that the COVID pandemic is almost 6-years in the rear view mirror… and we still can’t get federal spending back to pre-pandemic levels.
And, to make matters worse, Republicans are losing the messaging war. Democrats say the big beautiful bill includes cuts to medicaid, and that some people will lose their health insurance. And that’s correct. During COVID millions of people who didn’t otherwise qualify for free or discounted health insurance were let onto medicaid. Somehow going back to the old eligibility rules is being spun as a cut. That shouldn’t be a hard message to deliver to voters, and yet Republicans are failing at it.
Senator Johnson also explains that most of the cuts are backloaded into the 9th and 10th years of the bill. Donald Trump will be out of office then. Whoever is in the White House then will be under intense pressure to reverse these cuts. The next time the debt ceiling needs to be raised, these cuts will become a bargaining chip. The likelihood of savings this far our ever materializes is remote. Johnson’s suggestion, to frontload the savings, is correct.
Under the big beautiful bill, federal spending will be trimmed by about 1% over a decade. That’s a rounding error. The heroes in this debate are the brave Republicans who are insisting on more cuts, and sooner – not later.
Chris Conley
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