“Forcing states to cover some of the cost of food stamps would be a big change for how the program operates, and one that is long overdue. “The federal government pays for 100 percent of the benefits, so state administrators have little incentive to crack down on theft,” Chris Edwards, chair of fiscal policy for the Cato Institute, and a longtime advocate of food stamp reform, tells Reason. While most states are not swindling federal taxpayers as often as Alaska does, more than $1 in every $10 spent through the food stamp program last year was paid out in error.
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to get Murkowski and Sullivan on board with the bill, the Senate added a sweetener: Any state with a food stamp error rate of more than 13.3 percent will be exempt from the federal-state cost-sharing measure for two years.
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Imagine that you’re administering the food stamp program in a state like Delaware, which last year had an error rate of 12.37 percent. If the Senate version of the tax bill becomes law, you’d have a pretty strong incentive to simply let that error rate rise a bit for the rest of this year, thus buying you two more years of a fully federally funded SNAP program with no mandatory state spending.”
“Our findings indicate that individuals from
both political affiliations are prone to believing and disseminating politically aligned fake news via social media. Despite
employing a stronger reflection manipulation in contrast to past research, we failed to replicate the mitigating effect of
the reflection on the acceptance of fake news. We observed that reflection reduced Democrats’ willingness to spread fake
news, yet it did not affect Republicans.”
A common Republican response to a school shooting is mental health is the problem. A few years ago, members of both parties passed a mental health bill and school therapists were paid for. The Trump administration cut that funding because of a line about diversity hiring; Republicans who voted for this funding are silent.
“Republicans once talked seriously about aligning taxes and spending. They cared about economic distortion, simplicity, and broadening the tax base. Now, too many just want the sugar rush of tax cuts without fiscal discipline. Meanwhile, Democrats want to vastly expand the state and pretend that billionaires alone can foot the bill. Both sides are wrong. The math doesn’t work, and the morality of the reckless spending is worse.
Those who want to frame this bill as pro-growth are dreaming. They’re relying on unrealistic economic assumptions about a short-run bump to justify the consequences of long-term debt increases—and banking on cost-disguising budget gimmicks that nobody takes seriously.”
Repeated Republican presidents and Congresses have told us that tax cuts will pay for themselves, and they repeatedly have not paid for themselves. Tax cuts like these are budget busters.
Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill is horrible policy and greatly adds to the debt and deficit.
Trump’s superpower is his ability to threaten members of congress with primary challenges. Republican members of congress know the bill is a bunch of shit shoved together, but they voted for it anyways because they are weak cowards.
Congress is broken and has been broken for some time. Regular order where Congress members debate and understand bills is dead.
States like Alaska got a sweet deal by avoiding some of the bad policy coming from the bill. This was done to convince senators to vote for it.
Huge debt, bad policy, and sweetheart deals…where’s the tea party!?
“Special tax breaks for venture capitalists, Alaskan fisheries, spaceports, private schools, rum makers and others — together costing tens of billions of dollars — quietly caught a ride on Republicans’ sprawling domestic policy megabill.”
“These reversals may be surprising, but they were not remarkable. It was par for the course for congressional Republicans who, in recent years, have shown a proclivity for taking bold, theatrical stands before meekly capitulating in the face of political pressure — particularly from President Donald Trump.”