Originally published at: Obscure But Painful Reconciliation Package Cuts You May Have Missed - TPM – Talking Points Memo
There are a lot of well-documented ways the alliterative Senate reconciliation package, passed Tuesday with a tie-breaking vote from Vice President JD Vance, will mess over lower-income Americans in order to subsidize tax cuts for the wealthiest. But the Senate GOP has also tucked some less prominent policies into the tax cut legislation that stand…
I did my part. Contributed. Voted.
Those who didn’t vote or bought into the lies have consequences.
It’s a bad day in a bad year.
My bases are covered for now.
We’ve become the worst possible version of ourselves.
What about Rum from Hawaii? Did they forget about that?
Wait a damn minute. There are a LOT of entries in the NYT list that read like this:
Clean energy electricity investment credit
Phase down tax credits for investments in zero emissions electricty sources, starting in 2026. – Saves $179 bil
Senators negotiated changes to the bill that would delay this move. It is unclear how the changes will affect the provision’s savings.
How can they vote using reconciliation rules if they dont even known whats in the bill or know if its budget neutral after 10 years?!?!
+/- 100 bill is still a decent chunk of money…
Sorry, but this is why we’re fucked.
You voted and made a meager $100 contribution.
And now you’re done?
Seriously?
Yeah, we’re fucked. Until you and the rest of the overfed and comfortable get really angry, you’re next.
I live in Belize now after immigration to get away from the MAGAlytes. Belize’s rum producers won’t be affected but there will be a ripple affect. The Caribbean is awash in rum already, it is cheap and ubiquitous. Alcoholism is rampant here due to cheap rum and the distillers already are getting rich
Left out was the rancid Canadian blobfish Rafael Cruz stealing the space shuttle from the Smithsonian and forcing it to be moved to Houston (where they already sort-of have one - it’s a training mock-up) which will cost tens of millions of dollars to move then millions more to build a display facility - the 747s that used to carry them are retired, so they’ll have to either rebuild one or work out another way to move it - and if by sea that exposes it to more corrosion.
Though they had to not refer to it by name to avoid being slapped by the Parliamentarian, just “a human spaceship to be named later” so they could send the POS Boeing Starliner instead.
I hope those who intend to vote, assuming there will be an election, will take note that this monstrosity of a bill impacts them… personally…one way or another in very harmful ways. And it is a republican bill. That should be 'nuff said.
There are some allowances Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program recipients can claim that adjusts their income to more adequately reflect their household expenses and better determine their SNAP benefit amounts. Two of those allowances are for utilities and basic internet costs. The bill Vance just cast the tie-breaking vote to pass eliminates these allowances, saving the federal budget around $17 billion.
The words “saving the federal budget around $17 billion” sound so detached, mathematical, or indeed even like a good thing. I mean, we all want to save money, right?
How about a little rewrite:
The bill Vance just cast the tie-breaking vote to pass eliminates these allowances, yanking $17 billion worth of food aid out of the mouths of hungry children.
Every dollar “saved” comes from somewhere.
And it goes somewhere, too. Specifically, into the pockets of the oligarchs.
Do they want to end up getting eaten?
The extremely short-sighted hate caucus, that only thinks about who can I hurt today, does not think about future effects. Apparently neither do the oligarchs. Extreme inequality, obvious corruption and starvation always lead to insurrection and revolution. Sometimes it takes a while, but it always happens.
How much did you contribute to the Democrats?
Oh, you haven’t learned about “federalism” and who runs elections in this country? I blame our starved-out public education system.
Why is this article referencing the removal of a ban on AI regulation as a bad thing? That sounds like the one good thing to come out of the Senate on this.
As bad as it is that children will go hungry, think about it. That’s also $17B worth of food that won’t be sold, won’t be manufactured, won’t ever leave the farm and will probably rot. That’s $17B in income taken from grocery stores (“gro-cer-ies is a new word I just invented”), taken from food manufacturers, taken from farmers and ranchers. This entire bill is just fucking stupid in every possible way. And how can it “save money” when it’s gutting economic spending across the board, resulting in lower incomes and less tax revenue, setting off a downward spiral.
But I’m betting that’s the entire goal of Project 2025 - destroy the economy so the bilionaires can step in and buy whatever is left for 10¢ on the dollar while everyone is fighting among themselves so they don’t notice.
Yeah, there’s a reason that food assistance is (was) run by the Department of Agriculture.
I volunteer, when I can, at the local St. Vincent de Paul food bank. We received (past tense) a significant amount of much-appreciated, high-value food from a USDA program that the current bastardministration killed. Stuff like frozen fruit, fish, meat. All of it sourced from U.S. producers, of course.
But no worries – they don’t have the workers to harvest it any more anyway, so it was going to rot in the fields one way or another.