Showtime

Congressional Democrats have some legislatin to do

This may be more obvious than I think, but this week's votes on a continuing resolution to keep the government going past Friday's debt ceiling deadline until September are a kind of confession of failure on the part of House Republicans, and Speaker Mike Johnson in particular, retreating from the effort to use reconciliation rules to put through the huge package of tax cuts and spending cuts they passed on February 25 for fiscal year 2025. Never mind, said Johnson: Elon and Donald can do it, or something like it.

But Johnson said those cuts would be reserved for legislation to fund the government in fiscal year 2026, which begins on October 1.

"We will actually be able to change the way this is done and incorporate all the extraordinary savings that DOGE is uncovering through fraud, waste and abuse, the other revenues that President Trump is bringing about because of his policies," Johnson told the Fox News program "Sunday Morning Futures."

Although as you know DOGE hasn't uncovered any fraud, waste, or abuse at all that they're able to publicly identify, and their own estimate of how much money they've managed to save so far—$105 billion—would be pretty pathetic as an attack on a $2 trillion deficit, if it were accurate, which it clearly isn't anywhere near. While the revenue that President Trump is "bringing about because of his policies" means tariffs, and it's pretty hard to estimate, what with Trump changing his mind up to three or four times in a given day (just announced he's doubling the tariffs on steel and aluminum he's landing on Canada on Wednesday, from 25% to 50%), but the best guesses seem to make it around $120 billion a year, which also isn't much, though the rise in consumer prices it will bring on, focused on the areas of electronics and clothing, motor vehicles and food, will cost us around $1600-$2000 a year per household. Not only a tax on Americans, whatever Trump may imagine, but a very regressive tax, mostly felt by those with lower incomes (the lower your income, the higher the proportion of it that you end up spending on stuff like food and clothing, or really anything).

Not to mention the effect of the retaliatory tariffs other countries are imposing on us, which will have a big effect on farmers (as Trump tariffs did in 2018-19, when they had to be massively bailed out and still haven't recovered). They will also hit workers in the manufacturing and energy sectors (where Trump has his "working-class base" to the extent he really has one) hard.

DOGE cuts will also cost a bunch of money, most notably those at the Internal Revenue Service, already seriously weakened by years of attacks from Republican Congresses:

---

Unlike with other federal agencies, cutting the IRS means the government collects less money and finds fewer tax abuses. Economic studies have shown that for every dollar spent by the IRS, the agency returns between $5 and $12, depending on how much income the taxpayer declared. A 2024 report by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found that the IRS found savings of $13,000 for every additional hour spent auditing the tax returns of very wealthy taxpayers — a return on investment that “would leave Wall Street hedge fund managers drooling,” in the words of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

A good example of where spending saves money in the long run by preventing harm would be the freezing of funds to combat wildfires, which is literally going to cause people's houses to burn down, but it's far from the only one. The money that the US spends on scientific research in health has a direct economic impact—$40 billion spent by the NIH immediately generates $94.18 billion in economic activity—before you even start considering the value of the lives saved and made more productive by medical progress. Even the exrtremely inexpensive USAID programs, especially the health and food initiatives (which also benefit US farmers and many thousands of nonprofit as well as for-profit contractors), have a dividend in terms of international good will which contributes to cooperation in questions of security and trade relations, which is why the Chinese work so hard to compete with us in their Belt and Road initiative. Building and repairing transportation infrastructure, improving energy efficiency and use of renewable fuels, subsidizing childcare and eldercare, all this stuff isn't merely virtuous: it pays off, big time, for the country as a whole, though perhaps not personally for Trump and Musk (as in, the encouragement of cheaper EVs makes competition for Tesla).

But cutting back the IRS budget takes away resources that could be used to audit Trump's and Musk's tax returns. I'm pretty sure that's all they're thinking about. If you're really so upset by waste-fraud-'n'-abuse, stop firing the inspectors snd investigators. And please spare me the talk about "efficiency".

Anyway, Johnson's failure brings us today to maybe the first really hopeful moment we've seen in a while, where congressional Democrats have some real power, as Josh Marshall (gift link) has been telling us. Because Johnson has been forced to give up on the reconciliation package (for now) in favor of the CR, which basically maintains the spending levels of the Schumer-Johnson budget deal of February 2024, he has no chance of getting it through the Senate without some Democratic votes (under reconciliation, a one-vote majority is enough, but the CR is under regular order and needs 60 Senate votes to defeat a so-called filibuster), and Democrats can make some demands. It's showtime!

The best, obviously, would be to disempower Musk and the DOGEboyz altogether, which I believe they have been talking about (in particular Rosa DeLauro in the House and Patty Murray in the Senate), but without letting out a lot of details. The activities of Trump's co-president or whatever he is are strictly illegal (violating the Impoundment Control Act and civil service employment protections that have been in effect for 140 years or so) and unconstitutional. They are failing in practically every court anyway, but doing irreparable damage before the judges quash them, as has obviously been the case with USAID, and who knows how much scientific research halted in mid-experiment had to be thrown away by NIH and CDC and NSF.

Marshall is very much focused on what the Senate might do, where there's a real probability that the current package will go down to defeat by five or six Democratic votes (at least one Democrat, the disappointing Fetterman, will vote for it), and he knows a lot more than I do, but I'm mindful of Johnson's incompetence and very hopeful it will fail in the House first (Musk is hugely unpopular, and members know it, and some people you might not expect are making some noises about him, including the abominable soft Democrat Tom Suozzi and House Appropriations chairman Tom Cole).

What Democrats seem to be offering at the moment is more of a compromise: a CR that comes to an end sometime in April, and more negotiation on a long-term solution:

“There is a very clear alternative to House Republicans’ plan: immediately passing a short-term patch to prevent a senseless shutdown and finishing work on serious, bipartisan funding bills that invest in working Americans, keep our country safe, and ensure our constituents have a say in how federal funding is spent,” Sen. Patty Murray (Wash.) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), top Democrats on the appropriations committees in the Senate and House, respectively, said in a joint statement.

“Today, we are introducing a short-term continuing resolution to do just that. Congress should work together in a bipartisan way to prevent a shutdown and invest in working families and communities in every part of the country,” they said.

If something like that comes out in the next day or two, it will be a sign that Project 2025 and the dictatorial project are in trouble, though obviously not that the war's over. In the meantime, check how your senators are planning to vote and give them a call if they're in any way reachable. (And the stock market's not finished dropping.)