Congress, The Fourth of July, 2025

This post is being written Thursday morning July 3, 2025, before I’ve watched, read or listened to any news from or about Congress and the Budget.  The last data I have is from before evening of July 2.

As a July 4 weekend suggestion, I’d like to recommend a long article in “The Weekly Sift” for June 19, 2025.   The Title” The Rot Goes Deeper than Trump”.  While you’re there, read the bio of the author, who I’ve followed for a long time.  Subscription is free, if you wish.  Always thoughtful.  Note: I’m just asking you to consider reading the most recent post, rather than the following ones also there.

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The June 30, 2025, New York Times Had a very long article: “The Upshot”, entitled “A List of Nearly Everything in the Senate G.O.P Bill, and How Much It Would Cost or Save“.  This is a very long article (prints out at 25 pages) but is worth your time to look.  On pages one and two of the article is the below graphic which summarizes the Bill, probably to be voted on today:

The Upshot, NYT, June 30, 2025

I emphasize, the chart is as of June 30.  The article is being updated.  Nobody knows what will be in the final bill, or when it will finally be enacted and signed into Law, whether July 4 or some other date.

Printing the graphic is editorial enough.You know who benefits, and who doesn’t, and what the long term implications are.

Everyone of us, whether we think this is wonderful, or awful, is the ultimate target for what results.  The huge beneficiaries are the already hugely rich, most specifically the billionaires and the biggest corporations.  The losers are the rest of us, which is the vast majority of Americans.

I have always considered my self to be a moderate, pragmatic democrat.  I’ve had no reason to change that over the years.  It sits on this page to the right side. I have only a single recommendation.  If you voted for Harris/Walz in 2024 you may consider yourself to have no role in the ultimate outcome, but keep in mind that you are not alone.  A few months ago, you and over 75,000,000 other citizens actually cast a ballot for the alternative.  You have over a year to impact one of the others who either didn’t vote at all, or voted the alternative.  What happens going forward is in YOUR hands, not in anyone else’s.

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I’ve given the vote totals before, as well as how I view the political ‘scrum’ that is the American citizenry.  Here are the numbers, as presented in this space before: Here is the “scrum” as I have seen it over the years.  I’ve indicated where I sit on the graphic.  Note for yourself, where you consider yourself to be.

The ball is in your court.  Period.

POSTNOTE July 3: Jennifer Rubin in the Contrarian has a very interesting perspective, which I just saw today.

POSTNOTE 2: The billionaires at Trumps Inauguration, per Forbes.

COMMENTS (more below):

from SAK in England:

Thanks for that – especially that chart which summarises the current “disaster’. It is a similar story in many lands.

I like this from a British politician, Aneurin Bevan, who is sadly no longer with us:

“The whole art of Conservative politics in the 20th century, is being deployed to enable wealth to persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power.”

Many have been swindled and/or bullied into supporting extremist policies that will hurt them. All we can do is wait for the enlightenment pendulum to swing & pray it happens sooner rather than later.

I enjoy your writings & feel that they are sort of left of centre – as my politics tend to be. There were decent centre-right politicians as well of course but where are they now?

Have a look at what is happening in the UK as well, not some illiterate backwater:

Reform by the way is basically the anti-immigration party supported by the Christian right.

Note how low the Conservatives have sunk. This is not peculiar to the UK, the centre-right is on the back foot, unexciting & too reasonable for these hooligan, (anti)social media, short-attention-span times.

How much chance has the Pope against a blustering buffoon issuing one-liners all day & night long!? The poor Pope issues an encyclical every few years – well studied & considered to withstand the test of time & scrutiny. Liars flood the zone constantly – as advised by Bannon & co of the Christian right.

According to Sam Freedman, this current trend is not exclusive to the UK:

“Just two G20 countries are led by representatives of their traditional centre-right parties: Friedrich Merz of Germany and Shigeru Ishiba of Japan. Neither has a majority, and Merz has already fallen behind the radical right AfD in some polls. Of course, Donald Trump is technically a Republican, but his takeover of the party has changed it completely. He and his entourage of comic-book villains are more extreme than most of Europe’s radical right parties.”

With the rise of the populists what was the centre-right to do? Shout against the populists as some did or take over some of the populists’s agenda as many have done? In either case the centre-right is diminished & moves away from its core principles or away from some (or many/most depending on the country & the situation) of its voters.

The centre-right cannot deliver economic prosperity & growth any longer it seems – there was Covid, there is the rise of China and others, there is global warming, there is the debt overhang, there seem to be limits on productivity & resources . . . Thus proclaiming free markets ad nauseum or promising lower taxes simply no longer works. People have seen the free markets wreck lives and no government can lower taxes while providing care & servicing the debt etc. So the centre-right is resorting to other ways of capturing votes: inflaming anti-immigrant passions (the same immigrants who brought prosperity & accepted lower salaries and did work that many will not do) or by declaring war on “woke” & “multiculturalism”. Then, surprise surprise, the centre-right discovered that voters concerned about these issues tended to go for the far right & the Christian right.

Of course there are many wise, principled & capable people on the centre-right. Unfortunately many of them, instead of insisting on their beliefs & ideas that differentiate them from the far right & the centre-left, have been bullied by one big bully or another. They have been bullied remarkably easily which makes me wonder how attached to their principles they were in the first place!? A bit too willing to render unto to Caesar it seems . . . & Caesar is only too willing to receive. About the corruption of Caesar a lot can be said but that’s for another day.

Sources:

Voter intentions, UK: here

The party’s over: the Tory slump is part of a global conservative comedown: here