Big beautiful bill

With Congress back in their districts for the August recess, GOP members will undoubtedly be bragging to their base about the Medicaid abuses they stopped by passing President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill. These reforms include enrollment reductions and new work requirements for enrollees. However, many Members are hoping that no one calls them out for failing to address an intergovernmental transfer grift. This little-known accounting trick has turned this basic entitlement program into a bloated scam that enriches public agencies while squeezing out private providers. In theory, many of the services Medicaid covers, such as emergency ambulance rides, officially known as Ground Emergency Medical Transport (GEMT), should be straightforward.

This month, Congress put school-choice funding on offer to the states as part of the Big Beautiful Bill. Progressives have bashed the provision for the harm they claim school choice will do to under-resourced school districts. But the program saps not a dollar from public schools, which shows the protest for what it is: elitist bluster. The same progressives who fumbled their schools’ Covid responses, instituted woke curriculum and pushed adolescent gender transitioning should not decree to parents which school is best for their children. Public schools have not earned Americans’ trust over these past few years; many private schools have. Under the new measure, families can receive a tax credit for donations to an approved scholarship-granting nonprofit organization.

President Trump’s criticism of Jay Powell has increasingly triggered calls for the Federal Reserve’s independence. But those defending Powell’s autonomy are making ahistorical claims about the Fed’s relationship to the executive and legislative branches of government: the Fed has never been independent. The president appoints the Fed’s chairman. The bank enjoys broad authority to implement the policies necessary to achieve its mandates of stable prices, full employment and interest-rate stability, but these objectives are defined by Congress and could be altered by Congress. Congress created the Federal Reserve in 1913 and has amended the Federal Reserve Act more than 200 times. It could do so again.

This week, a lone federal district court judge in Boston, Massachusetts, with nary a citation to the Constitution, statutes or the applicable Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, entered a temporary restraining order prohibiting the federal defunding of Planned Parenthood. The basis for Judge Indira Talwani’s order is left for the public to surmise. Perhaps the good judge will fill in the blanks before the next hearing planned in the case, within two weeks; or perhaps not, since TROs are generally not appealable. Either way, the judge’s barren two-page order, as it stands, is a textbook example of a lawless judiciary engaged in policymaking from the bench.

In the early hours of this morning, Donald Trump must have been thinking that, compared to passing legislation through Congress, Middle Eastern diplomacy was a doddle. "FOR REPUBLICANS THIS SHOULD BE AN EASY YES VOTE!" he Truth-Socialled at about 1 a.m., as a small band of conservative rebels threatened to block the passage of his big, beautiful bill in the House of Representatives. "RIDICULOUS!!" Trump desperately wants to celebrate Independence Day at the White House tomorrow with a flamboyant signing ceremony for his domestic spending mega-bill. It would mark, in his mind, another week of winning bigly. Of course, the rule of Republican politics in the 2020s is simple: what Donald wants, Donald gets.

The electoral risk to politicians involved in passing a dog's breakfast of a "big, beautiful bill" – and there have been too many of this century to count – is often overstated. Once bills this large and unwieldy are passed there are a litany of problems that emerge as Americans, dulled into frustration by the same old swamp, discover only too late which specific policies negatively affect their lives and businesses. But then there are also things they like about it too, and even measures that are initially unpopular find purchase. And I do mean purchase in both senses, as in literally bribing voters with their own money, as Barack Obama's Medicaid expansion did.

The passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” early Thursday morning by the slimmest of margins in the House of Representatives is a clear victory for Donald Trump, but even more so for Speaker Mike Johnson, who managed to buy off both blue-state SALT Republicans and Freedom Caucus fiscal hawks, moving closer to their demands by just enough to thread the needle. This was by far the biggest challenge Johnson had yet to face, and the question if “Deacon Mike” was up to the challenge was back of mind for many in the GOP conference. Had Johnson failed to deliver, his speakership might not have ended immediately, but he would effectively be a dead man walking – and the next time someone decided to pick a leadership fight, Trump might not have his back.