Originally published at: Johnson Preps To Hold Vote On His And Trump’s Gov’t Funding Bill - TPM – Talking Points Memo
With just days to go until government funding expires, the House is set to vote this afternoon on a stopgap bill that has President Trump’s stamp of approval. It’s unclear if Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and the House Republican leadership have the votes. There are still, reportedly, several holdouts — including Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY),…
“I have so much stupid in this one little space.”
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Toady Mike Johnson is dweeby, and a phony Christian!
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Punchbowl is reporting as many as five Democrats might miss today’s vote.
I may have to invent a few new curse words to adequately encompass the full extent of the wrath this occasions.
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Is this why 22 or so Dem senators don’t have a position on the CR? Are they hoping that MAGA Mike can’t pass it in the House?
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The Shite Parade.
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Meanwhile, in the American economy:
But having ignorant men with poor impulse control running things has to be bad for business. And you really have to question the judgment of people — including, alas, many voters — who imagined otherwise.
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Bipartisan agreement…
Haw Haw Haw.
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Also from Krugman:
The Economic Excuse Industry is Booming
No, we don’t need an economic “detox”
Paul Krugman
Mar 11, 2025
First, we got big promises. Now we’re getting lame excuses. However, one thing has been consistent about Donald Trump’s economic rhetoric: rank dishonesty.
Trump made a lot of extravagant economic promises during the campaign, without any plans or even concepts of plans to deliver on those promises. Remember how he was going to bring grocery prices down on Day One? Now his agriculture secretary is suggesting that people save money on eggs by raising their own chickens.
So things aren’t going well, although I’d warn everyone not to get too excited by talk of a “Trumpcession.” That may happen, but it’s not yet visible in the data.
You may have seen people citing the Atlanta Fed’s “nowcast” that attempts to infer GDP far in advance of the official numbers, and which is currently showing a sharp decline in the first quarter. But that’s almost certainly a statistical red herring: It’s mostly about a surge of gold imports in anticipation of Trump’s tariffs, which is screwing up the usually helpful Atlanta model.
But while talk of recession is premature, there’s already a palpable sense of disappointment in the Trump economy. The New York Fed’s consumer survey is the latest to find a serious deterioration in consumer confidence:
Consumers’ year-ahead expectations about their households’ financial situations deteriorated considerably in February. The share of households expecting a worse financial situation one year from now rose to 27.4 percent, its highest level since November 2023.
And then there’s that plunging stock market.
So the Trumpers are responding in their usual fashion: blaming other people. Yesterday I wrote about the proliferation of conspiracy theories, with a special focus on “globalists,” which, let’s face it, usually ends up meaning Jews.
The Trump economic team seems, however, to be pushing a different kind of excuse: The claim that Biden left behind a terrible economy, and that we’ll need to go through a painful period of “detox.”
Now, you may wonder how anyone could characterize the economy when Trump took office, with 2.5 percent growth, low unemployment and inflation only slightly above the Fed’s 2 percent target, as terrible. But the Trumpist position, coming from multiple officials, seems to be that the prosperity was fake, that the numbers were exaggerated by bloated government spending and employment. Hence the need for a costly transition to an economy where workers are doing useful things.
As usual, one has to ask: Are they ignorant or are they lying? And as usual, the answer is: Why not both?
Someone like Elon Musk, who gets what he imagines to be information from random posts on X, may actually believe that useless government spending has been the only thing driving economic growth. But Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, has to have people working for him who both understand how GDP is measured and know how to look up data on FRED. So when Bessent says
“Look, there’s going to be a natural adjustment as we move away from public spending to private spending. The market and the economy have just become hooked, and we’ve become addicted to this government spending, and there’s going to be a detox period.”
I actually hope that he’s deliberately trying to bamboozle his audience. For the alternative is that the nation’s top economic official doesn’t understand basic economics, which will be a problem when — not if — something goes wrong.
People may imagine that government is a bigger part of the economy than it is because of all the money we spend supporting retired Americans, covering their health bills, and so on. But that kind of spending isn’t counted as part of GDP — the total value of goods and services produced in America — because Social Security and other benefits are simply transfers of income between Americans. Only spending by Social Security recipients counts toward GDP. The only government spending that directly affects GDP — the spending Bessent says needs to fall — is spending that directly buys goods and services.
So here’s the share of that kind of government spending in GDP over time:
See the big surge under Biden? Neither do I. Government purchases are a smaller share of GDP now than they were under Reagan, mainly because we spend less on defense. Government transfers, mainly for retirement and health care, are up, but they aren’t part of GDP.
What about government jobs? Did public employment surge under Biden? No:
Oh, and are large numbers of those government workers useless? Most government workers are employed by state and local governments, among whom the biggest categories are education and law enforcement. Do you consider schoolteachers and police officers unnecessary?
Back to Bessent: Basically, he’s making excuses in advance for poor economic performance under Trump by saying that the U.S. economy needs to recover from an addiction to government that only exists in his mind.
And the addiction to government isn’t the only thing that only exists in his imagination — so are the big cuts to government spending he claims are taking place. Musk’s DOGE claims to have found $105 billion in savings, but the “receipts” it has offered are riddled with errors and account for only a fraction of that total. And even if DOGE’s claims were true, which there is no reason to believe, they would amount to less than half a percent of GDP — hardly the massive “detox” Bessent claims justifies poor economic performance.
While Musk hasn’t saved a significant amount of money, however, he has done a lot of damage to government operations, crippling crucial agencies, firing crucial workers and undermining morale and confidence. This is a detox? It looks more like a poisoning.
The thing is, the kind of economic problem Bessent is falsely claiming we face — adjusting to a rapid change in the mix of spending — can happen. In fact, it did happen … under Biden. In the aftermath of Covid there was a big shift of spending away from services, many of which must be delivered face-to-face, toward physical goods:
This created temporary problems with supply chains, which weren’t prepared to handle that many goods in transit. Remember all those container ships sailing back and forth off the coast of California, waiting for a chance to unload? And these supply chain problems were the main reason for the inflationary surge of 2021-22.
But nothing like that is happening now. The whole “detox” thing is just a cover story for policy failure.
MUSICAL CODA
To be fated / To telling only lies
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5 Democratic absences? That can’t help.
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And how are the couple hundred thousand former public employees going to add to that private spending?
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As usual, one has to ask: Are they ignorant or are they lying? And as usual, the answer is: Why not both?
The question I have is when are we going to stop taking these ignorant liars seriously. There excuses remind me of the time when I was working for the Government and caught a company charging a double declining balance for depreciation when they had contractually agreed to use straight line depreciation.
I shit you not but the company’s Controller looked me in the eye and with a straight face and said, “its cause were saving the Government money”. I responded by quoting an old CPA’s (my father) favorite ditty, “figures don’t lie but liars can figure”.
When are we, Democrats, which is a start to getting the media, going to stop taking this nonsense seriously by giving it credibility by responding to it. Rather, what we need to do is call it what it is, liars figuring, and get to the facts.
This is what Krugman does in his article with:
As usual, one has to ask: Are they ignorant or are they lying? And as usual, the answer is: Why not both?
Someone like Elon Musk, who gets what he imagines to be information from random posts on X, may actually believe that useless government spending has been the only thing driving economic growth. But Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, has to have people working for him who both understand how GDP is measured and know how to look up data on FRED. So when Bessent says
“Look, there’s going to be a natural adjustment as we move away from public spending to private spending. The market and the economy have just become hooked, and we’ve become addicted to this government spending, and there’s going to be a detox period.”
I actually hope that he’s deliberately trying to bamboozle his audience. For the alternative is that the nation’s top economic official doesn’t understand basic economics, which will be a problem when — not if — something goes wrong.
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“If Congressional Democrats refuse to support this clean CR, they will be responsible for every troop who misses a paycheck,…"
I’ve got their clean CR right here …
Er, here:
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Why is it the Democrats’ fault if weak-assed Speaker Johnson can’t even get the votes from his own caucus? They do have the majority and, if it’s good legislation, they should be able to pass it without the help of the minority. Or if it was good legislation, the legislation would have broad bipartisan support and they wouldn’t need to browbeat the minority with threats. But it’s shit legislation, and everybody knows it
And when is the fucking media going to stop taking Republican bullshit at face value? A sense of credulity would be nice.
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Democrats have been asking for a simple guarantee to be added to the legislation: The promise that the President and Musk will stop unilaterally blocking congressionally approved funding.
Creating anything – a budget, the outline of a budget, a plan for thinking about a budget, a continuing resolution, a hesitant resolution, a stop-gap, a go-gap – even giving consent is meaningless when Elon Musk is just going to spend whatever he or Trump wants wherever they want it.
Let Johnson hand his power over to Trump, but he should be man enough to admit it then. Democrats aren’t going do it for him.
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Trump and Vance are lobbying Republicans in the House to support their funding bill arguing:
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If you don’t do it, the Trump regime will impound the money and spend it as they see fit;
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Regardless of what they appropriate, the Trump regime will spend the money as it sees fit anyway: and
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Congress will lose its constitutional right to appropriate money.
In short, the Trump regime is telling members of Congress it plans to eliminate their power and establish a dictatorship regardless of how they vote.
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The nerve of those Democrats! They have the impudence to beg for almighty Trump to subject himself to mere laws passed by Congress.
Meanwhile out here in the real world we are wondering how far this can go. The only way to stop Musk and Trump is by a government shutdown.
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It really bears asking – what the hell is this yellow all around his mouth? None of the mental images it conjures are tolerable.
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This should be a non-starter for any Democratic vote for the CRs. As long as Elon is in, Democrats should be out.
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It’s their Bill, they are the majority, if it’s so great, they can vote for it and pass it. Dems know their bill is evil and irresponsible, so we vote “no.” That’s all Dems need to say, and then LET THEM FAIL. Do not push them to vote for an alternative Dem Bill. That is a trap! It will allow them to put the blame for the coming economic collapse on Dems. Dems need to be a real opposition party and just oppose what they are doing. (Honestly, who invented this stupid notion of being “bipartisan” -that only applies to Dems?) Just say the evil and irresponsible Trump/Republican Bill destroys healthcare and is killing jobs, so we Dems vote no. It should not be difficult. Don’t we have any smart politicians on our side? Why is it so hard for them to learn how to be an opposition party?
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