Former U.S. House Speaker, Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), won that position as the 55th House Speaker on the 15th ballot, during January 2023, after House Republicans won a narrow majority during President Joe Biden's 2022 midterm elections. McCarthy, a well-regarded House member since 2007 and solid fundraiser from California made a fatal concession in cobbling his majority together by allowing a change in House rules that any one dissatisfied member of the body could move to Vacate the Office of Speaker, opening a new contest for the job. When the body has 435 members, keeping everybody happy is no easy task.
While wrangling over raising the U.S. debt ceiling again in 2023, McCarthy had to make concessions to House Democrats to put together a passing vote on the House floor. GOP budget hawks pounced and by October of 2023, McCarthy was out as Speaker, with the third shortest tenure in U.S. History.
It's telling that President Donald Trump wanted a substantial increase in the current U.S. debt ceiling, before even beginning discussions about his Big Beautiful Budget Bill. That unfortunately for him and the Trump agenda, did not occur.
While running on fiscal conservatism, DOGE and shrinking the size of the federal government, the Big Beautiful Bill, a budget by continuing resolution, does not actually do that. Yes, there are massive grant reductions, spending cuts and federal government layoffs, but those are offset by deep and permanent tax cuts, a shrinking of Medicare rolls and our social safety net, significant cuts in medical research and R&D spending as well as some ideologically driven budget hikes, such as $350-billion more for Immigration Reform and Border Security. The great “Golden Dome” Space Shield which Trump also wants, is not even a part of this act.
I am not here to debate the merits of the bill, more its structure and the process. After the departure of McCarthy, House and Senate Republicans agreed that the American people and even their own colleagues deserved more budget transparency. To return to fiscal sanity, the budget should be divided up into large segments, such as healthcare, national defense spending, discretionary domestic spending...and the like. This would better allow the committee structures on the Hill to scrutinize and review existing efficiencies and waste as well as perhaps reduce the nearly automatic annual increases in agency spending which tended to exceed inflation.
That also didn't happen. Current House Speaker Mike Johnson, a five-term incumbent from Louisiana, was elected to succeed McCarthy in part based on an agenda of breaking up the massive federal budget into chunks, and passing those across the course of the calendar and fiscal years...versus the seemingly endless mad rush to the cliffs of omnibus Reconciliation Bills or again raising the U.S. debt ceiling, which always seem to occur at the 11th hour and just make it to the President's desk, before another potential bond rating downgrade.
Yet, despite the work of DOGE and after passing the U.S. House with only one vote to spare...the Senate version of the Big Beautiful Bill is estimated by the Congressional Budget Office to add an additional $1-trillion in debt ($3.3 trillion total) over the next decade to the U.S. budget.
It remains difficult to wrap my brain around the concept of $1-trillion, but to put that in understandable terms ALL federal government spending from 1776, until the first term of President Ronald Reagan, added up to ONE trillion. We are now forecast with the current budget to have a deficit of roughly $1.7 TRILLION for just the next fiscal year.
This spending path is not sustainable. The Senate bill will likely receive a vote by week's end, and on track to meet Trump's agenda and Reconciliation Budget deadline of July 4th. I am certain the D.C. fireworks budget will be spectacular. But the Senate version will need to return to the House, due to some substantial revisions and 3-5 House members, including some strong and vocal Trump allies, are wavering.
Former First Bro, Elon Musk, is again public calling the monster reconciliation bill, including NUMEROUS non-budget items, 'political suicide.' Perhaps it will be for future White House visits by Musk. This President takes his arm twisting and enemies list pretty seriously. And with one of the largest budget gaps forecasts in history, things are about to get pretty ugly around that one Big Beautiful Bill.
