THE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL

The House Republicans spent this past weekend at Motel-A-Lardo, strategizing with ConvictedFelon34 how to enact his plans to destroy the United States.

If you look around, Trump has been going from loss to loss since Election Day. His demand that Democrats vote to raise the debt ceiling as part of the government funding bill was rejected. Matt Gaetz, who was his first attorney general nominee crashed and burned. His idea to rename the Gulf of Mexico was laughed at. Now he has lost his appeal to block being sentenced for the 34 felonies he was convicted of committing, and has lost his appeal to block Jack Smith’s report on his conspiracy to overthrow the government on January 6,2021.

To all that throw in the fact that Republicans in Congress can’t agree on how to move forward with his agenda, and you have quite the string of defeats before Felon34 has taken office

In the real world of governing, despite his proclamation at the Bonkers Press Conference that he won by “millions and millions, they don’t know how many millions” of votes, Republicans are “having issues” stemming from their incompetence at being a governing party.

They are really the Circus of Broken Toys. Even as Felon34 returns to office with full Republican control of government, unrivaled attentional powers, and Oval Office experience under his belt, Trump simply doesn’t have the time to push all his campaign promises through Congress before his presidency starts to give off the stench of lame duck. The midterm season arrives in 18 months or so, and Democrats could easily flip the House.

According to Semafor:

“Republicans are already behind their 2017 pace when it comes to preparing for party-line legislation that can dodge a filibuster.

“We still need a plan,” said Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, the top tax writer in his chamber, who is doing as much advance legwork as he can to prepare for debate over extending the GOP’s 2017 tax cuts.

“At the moment, party leaders are plotting out different scenarios, quietly tinkering with potential legislation and preparing for a laborious effort. And unless one path can win the day, Trump will take office with Congress still stuck in the mud,” Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso said Republicans will meet soon with Trump to hash out the matter. Senate Majority Leader John Thune is pushing back on Trump demanding MAGA Mike put the entire legislative agenda into one massive Reconciliation package, saying he wants to stick with the original plan of separating out the tax cuts from the rest of his priorities.

Speaker The Right Reverend Mike Johnson (R-MAGA) said congressional Republicans will try to push through a “big, beautiful bill” - as Felon34 called it - that will enshrine the core tenets of the hardline MAGA agenda in one fell legislative swoop.

During an appearance on Faux Snooze Sunday before last, MAGA Mike tacked on an aggressive pledge to pass the mammoth legislation -which he said could touch on taxes, federal spending, energy, the border, regulations and “dismantling the deep state” - by Memorial Day.

“I think at the end of the day, President Trump is going to prefer, as he likes to say, one big, beautiful bill,” Johnson told Sunday Morning Futures host Maria Bartiromo. “And there’s a lot of merit to that, because we can put it all together, one big up or down vote, which can save the country.”

The Speaker’s ambitions will be tested by the fact that Republicans have the smallest House majority in nearly a century, meaning it will take just one or two dissenting Republicans to tank a bill’s prospects.

The challenge for a large, comprehensive mega-bill is that, over time, such things collapse under their own weight. With it finally in the end becoming necessary to get it done under pressure, because everyone’s political livelihood depends on it. This means time is not on MAGA Mike’s side. The funny thing about a unified Congress with a very small majority is that everyone’s priority becomes a top priority. Every committee chairman has a priority that they think is the most important. House and Senate leadership have theirs.

Some Republicans have already made clear they’re against a “big, beautiful bill.” The House Freedom Caucus sent Johnson a letter in December insisting on two bills, one to deal with border security and a “larger reconciliation bill covering taxes, spending, energy, bureaucracy, and more.”

It’s becoming clear that a debt limit increase won’t be part of a budget reconciliation package being plotted out to move much of Trump’s legislative agenda.

CNN is reporting that many Republican members of Congress are prepared to fight Trump on his attempt to raise the debt limit, and are demanding at least $1 trillion in spending cuts since he promised $2 trillion in cuts during his campaign. Tim Burchett was asked if he would vote for a reconciliation bill that raises the debt limit: “I don’t know that I ever would” vote for that.

Senate Republicans say it looks increasingly unlikely Thune and Johnson will attempt to include debt limit legislation in any package used to move Trump’s agenda. GOP senators say Thune and Johnson at this point have two viable options: They can either attempt to negotiate a debt limit increase with Democrats, which would likely entail agreeing to more spending, or they can simply bring a stand-alone debt limit increase to the floor, without concessions, and dare Democrats to vote against it.

There’s little confidence Johnson would be able to unify enough of his conference to raise the debt limit without Democratic help, given that he can only afford to lose one or two Republican votes. Congress will need to raise the debt limit no later than midsummer, but there’s no guarantee Republicans will be able to sort out their disagreements on tax policy and spending cuts over the next six months.

MAGA Mike said that House Republicans will pass some incremental border legislation addressing “low-hanging fruit” before Trump is inaugurated. Republicans in the Senate, namely leader John Thune, have variously suggested their preference for multiple bills dealing with major issues one by one.

Johnson may also have to contend with persistent headaches from outside the Chamber, namely the antics of Elmo. The Unreconstructed Afrikaner billionaire has said he is “almost always” sober while blowing up the news by late-night activity on X, has already blown up a bipartisan spending bill Johnson negotiated with Democrats to keep the government running last month.

That kicked off a MAGA civil war that has since rippled out into a bitter feud over immigration policy between Elmo and Rama-Rama-Ding-Dong versus the Real Loonies, Laura Loomer and Steve Bannon.

The Republicans also have to deal with the debt ceiling by April. With Democrats deciding that MAGA Mike can go jump in a lake when it comes to helping him out, this will be a major indication of what the Big Beautiful Bill negotiations will look like.

In addition to the Fweedumbers, Senator Ron Johnson said he does not agree with Trump that the debt ceiling should be eliminated during his administration and he won’t vote for any bill that includes that: "We absolutely need a debt ceiling limit. Now, I'll negotiate in terms of how far we increase that. But we absolutely need that debt limit, or there's no control over out-of-control government spending.”

Senator Adam Schiff says he is confident Trump will screw up, stir up public opposition with this issue or that, and generally do the work of making himself unpopular. “We obviously can’t wait for years to solve the problems we have, and we should work with Republicans where we can, and stand up to him where we can, especially when he wants to give big tax cuts to cronies,” Schiff told me. “But look, it will be no time at all before the Republicans are at each other’s throats, before people in the White House are at each other’s throats. The last four years? That was them throwing each other under the bus all the time. The question is, who gets thrown under the bus this time? And when they try to pick fights, they will overreach on certain issues. That will inevitably come.”

House Democratic leader Richie Torres: “Not only is Trump ill-fated to be a one-term president for four years, he has a Republican Congress with only the illusion of control. The Republican majority in the House of Representatives is so vanishingly small that nothing of consequence can happen without the buy-in of House Democrats. Trump might feel more emboldened than ever before, but he will find himself more constrained in his second presidency than he was in his first. The realities of divided government will trump any delusions of grandeur on Trump’s part.”

These are the same House Republicans who could not pass any significant legislation without Democratic help for the last two years, and now they don’t have any likelihood of getting that help again, with the kind of looney-tunes baloney they’re going to be sticking in the legislation they put forth.

Republicans have been in power a whole week and are already being swallowed up by their own dysfunction. Their inability to govern may take Trump and his agenda down with them.

Thank goodness we’re dealing with the fucking ignoramus who was stupid enough he managed to tank a casino, and the crew of Misfit Toys all flunked the IQ test low enough to qualify for memberhip in the Circus of Broken Toys that is MAGA.

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