Byrd baths and other things

 It’s Byrd bath time for Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” In reality, the GOP is really hoping that the Senate Parliamentarian throws them a lifeline and makes the more controversial provisions not eligible to be passed under reconciliation. I believe that the Senate GOP has the votes to pass whatever version of the bill emerges from the process. Majority Leader Thune would have to lose four votes for it to fail. I don’t see that happening. The real test, and in reality, this has always been the case, will be can it pass the House again? It’s back in the House that it faces its most perilous moment. In the House, two very different factions could sink the bill. You have the House Freedom Caucus; these are the most unrealistic conservatives. It took a lot of whipping to get these members on board to pass the legislation the first time around. And now that a much more trimmed-down version of the bill will be coming back, it’s questionable if Speaker Johnson can get to 218. In the end, with regards to HFC, it’s going to come to what gets cut. The members all have particular peculiarities that they consider red lines in the bill. The other faction that could sink the bill is the so-called moderate Republicans. Now, look, I don’t believe in this mythical creature because I have never seen actual evidence that it exists. This group of members is another group that it took a lot of heavy lifting to get on board the first time. The issue for this group is going to be do State and Local Tax Deductions (SALT) stay in their current form? Republicans in the House face a different reality than Senate Republicans. In the Senate, no Republican represents a state where this is really an issue. In the House, many of the majority makers do represent seats in those states. Without California Republicans or New York Republicans, the Democrats have the majority. These members represent very competitive districts and would be easier targets if they vote for this bill without these deductions in the bill. Senate Republicans have been signaling they intend to axe these deductions. So what is my overall mood on “Big Beautiful Bill”? I think that it passes the Senate and at the moment give it a 40/60 chance of passing the House. It’s going to be very close. The numbers are just very tight in the House, and Johnson has to please a lot of different shades of Republicans to get things done. I, of course, want to see the legislation fail because it’s bad policy, and it would be very beneficial politically for Democrats for it to fail. 

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