THE DEEPER DIVE: Big Beautiful BULL!

Even Trump boasts that his “Big Beautiful Bill” surpasses the scale of anything in history. In fact, if this Bill were a man, he’d have to be transported on doubled pallet boards, across which his exposed fat would sprawl in bruised ponds of blubber like Jabba the Hutt.

Therefore, I want to lead off with a quote I found on A Havenstein Moment that sums up the total irresponsibility of the US president and the congress that he owns for pushing this Big Bill forward at a time when US credit has been downgraded by every agency that matters and when US Treasury interest is climbing into dangerous zones:

Justin Amash

“The usual suspects in the “conservative” influencer griftosphere are shouting, “What’s the practical alternative? Trump’s hands are tied by Congress!”

The idea that Trump is somehow hamstrung by a GOP Congress that treats him like a deity is beyond ludicrous.

Trump has been demanding passage of precisely this bill, the one he nicknamed the Big, Beautiful Bill. He has threatened to primary anyone who opposes it.

The practical alternative is for a Republican president to use his position of considerable influence to actually get spending under control. Just once, maybe, he could demand real spending cuts.

Trump had every political advantage this term—a Republican Congress, Elon Musk and DOGE, and post-election momentum. Yet he chose the most impractical route of all: insisting that Congress continue its massive overspending, pushing the United States further down the path of a debt crisis.”

A Havenstein Moment.

If it's such a great trade, why are you offering it to me?

“In 1925, Britain was the richest, most powerful country in the world. Fifty years later they were bankrupt. That's not a typo. In 1976 the IMF had to bail out Britain, because they went bankrupt. They literally couldn't pay their bills…

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4 days ago · 42 likes · 2 comments · Rudy Havenstein

Now let’s look at just HOW irresponsible Big Beautiful Bill is.

First, let’s encapsulate how bad this really is.

As Gregory Mannarino said,

Borrowing costs are surging on the back of the US debt downgrade… So they pile on another $3.8 TRILLION MORE DEBT? (Go ahead, make it up). This is systemic euthanasia and it’s not going to stop. (The US is being destroyed from within).

Or as Dan Denning wrote on Bill Bonner’s site,

When I heard Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent say that the important thing now is to grow the economy faster than the debt, it made me wonder if it’s time to write an obituary for MAGA.

Any Republicans that ever actually stood for lowering debt have clearly all died, given how enormous their failure is with the present bill at a time when US debt has never exhibited more obvious signs of deep duress.

One of my readers wondered if this bill was our last possible off-ramp, and we just missed it. I would say it definitely was because, beyond this point, thar be nothing but dragons now that the US debt is already cracking under its own weight with soaring interest and falling credit ratings and poor Treasury auctions. You can see that in the market’s reactions to the US debt rising under the new proposed bill:

Worryingly, rising U.S. Treasury yields offered no support to the dollar and finally started to weigh on Wall Street. Indeed, the slump in U.S. stocks immediately after Wednesday's 20-year note auction was the third-worst market reaction to a bond auction ever, according to Kevin Gordon at Charles Schwab.

Third worst stock reaction to the bond market ever! And what was the bond market, itself, responding to, except “Big Beautiful Bill.” Big Bounteous Bill is even taking down the dollar with the help of the Trump Tariff Wars, which are also helping to take down Treasury bond prices, raising interest rates on the national debt because the global market is not as hungry for US Treasuries as a vehicle of foreign exchange between central banks when there is so much less trade happening:

The dollar's slide is remarkable. I wrote this week that while there are many valid long-term reasons to be bearish on the dollar - fiscal woes, policy credibility, end of 'U.S. exceptionalism', de-dollarization, to name a few - the pace of selling was unsustainable.

Between sky-high tariffs and Big Fat Bill, a one-two-punch in the United States’ big fat gut, Treasury interest is rising as the US bond market begins to crater, which is now showing in all US credit ratings and the slide of the trade dollar. This crumbling of US credit is happening right when Republicans own the entire government more than they likely ever will after this, making this their last chance to actually do something to turn it around. Instead, they chose to blow the debt up with the richest high-calorie feast of a budget we’ve ever seen! The senate, of course, may still pull the emergency brake and do a 180 and rush back for the missed final exit, but that looks unlikely unless the MAGA crowd screams their lungs out against what Trump and the House just did, and I don’t hear much screaming because, well … Trump.

We’re now starting to actually go over a debt cliff. Our feet are sliding on the sandy rock of the rounding ledge of the cliff. We’re about to slide off, and the Republicans propose their luniest, most out-of-touch bloated budget ever, rather than applying the promised DOGE SAVINGS. Those, of course, never actually materialized, being down from the promised $2-trillion to less than $200-million so far—just off by a factor of 1000%! One might argue it is too soon to expect DOGE savings to show up; but if the Republicans truly believe it is going to happen savings certainly ought to show up in a 5-year budget.

I suppose that is the basis for Republicans arguing the budget will trim the deficit years from now; but we’ve heard that worn argument every time the Republicans have passed a budget. The tomorrow savings never come. So, make the spending cuts now and hold off on any tax cuts until we see your savings from the spending cuts actually materialize. They always do it the other way around, which is just plain dumb. (Even if they achieved actual spending cuts, instead of these budgeted increases, they have no basis for tax cuts because we don’t need diminished deficits, we need surpluses to start diminishing the enormity of the total US debt that is weighing so heavily on us; but let’s not even think of facing that monstrosity! Let’s just give even greater tax cuts than the ones that enlarged the deficits during Trump 1.0 and pretend those results from round one never actually happened.)

So, if the senate doesn’t stomp this fantasy budget into the dust right now, then, as far as I’m concerned, Republicans can own the entire US financial collapse for having so flagrantly blown past the last exit at this critical juncture with such an irresponsible expansion of spending coupled to more tax cuts when they control both houses of congress and the presidency and had a strong public mandate plus a long history of grumbling about overspending (even as they always chose to overspend … and now do so again). They can just own the whole dang failure!

Moreover, when you look at the incredible amount of extra money they have decided to pump into the US military, making Ronald Reagan look like a toddler, you know they’ve lost their minds and are now almost infinitely far from the president’s promise of toning things down on the military front.

They can also own the collapse that starts on their watch because, as I’ve showed with data many times over the past years, Republican congresses and Republican presidencies have done every bit as much when they were in power to add to the debt as Democrats. In fact, I’ve shown in the distant past that deficit expansion looks a little worse on balance in the post-Nixon days under Repubs than under Dems.

The only time we EVER moved in the right direction was when Clinton was president and Gingrich was head of the House of Representatives. In their tug-o-war between slightly increasing taxes and lowering expenses, we actually achieved something close to a balanced budget. By some measures, it was even a surplus budget. It was, at least, the best we ever achieved, and Bush blew that out of the water with his Bush Tax Cuts.

I said in anger back then (over getting a bigger tax refund), “There goes our last chance to ever see a balanced budget,” and we have never seen one since! Instead, the US teetered into the Great Recession, which then blew up the biggest deficits in recovery bailouts ever known to all of mankind. And those were approved by Bush, too, and then carried out by Obama and eventually expanded by Obama; but is there any serious doubt that Bush would have expanded them, too, if he remained in office and his first bailouts still had not finished the job? Bush, you may recall was the Republican who said he “gave up [his] capitalist principles to save capitalism,” by which he really meant he have up his principles to save capitalist pigs (banksters) who broke the system with their deregulated greed.

That was when I couldn’t stand it anymore and started writing with great dedication on economics because CLEARLY both parties were fully in league with expanding US debt beyond a survivable level and with never having to balance their budgets and with making our kids or grandkids pay for their “generosity.”

We will know the Republicans have fully opiated their own masses if they marry themselves to “Big Beautiful Bill” without a major MAGA meltdown because, if the MAGA crowd doesn’t care about the debt at a time like this enough to rebel against their own chosen leaders who are expanding the debt at a time like this, then no one cares. 

How about one step further: “There is no problem, and we’re busting our brains and blowing our political capital over how we can deal with it as irresponsibly as possible.”

Thanks for reading The Daily Doom! Spread this wakeup call into the opiated Nut-o-sphere:

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For just a moment two weeks ago, there was the faintest breath of hope from the budget committee as the dying number of actual fiscal conservatives left in the Republican Party—a minute minority—voted not to let Big Beautiful Bill escape the budget committee for a full congressional vote:

The GOP-led House Budget Committee voted to reject a sweeping package for President Donald Trump's agenda, dealing an embarrassing setback to Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Republican leaders.

The vote in the Budget Committee was 16-21, with a band of conservative hard-liners who are pushing for steeper spending cuts joining all Democrats in voting against the multitrillion-dollar legislation, leaving its fate uncertain.

The Republicans who voted "no" were Reps. Chip Roy of Texas, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Andrew Clyde of Georgia and Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma.

Three people! That’s it. Just three people, but they were enough to keep the bill in committee a wee bit longer.

During the hearing, Roy fired a warning shot at Republican leaders, saying he opposes the bill as written because it will increase the deficit.

“I have to now admonish my colleagues on this side of the aisle. This bill falls profoundly short. It does not do what we say it does with respect to deficits,” Roy said. “That’s the truth. Deficits will go up in the first half of the 10-year budget window and we all know it’s true. And we shouldn’t do that. We shouldn’t say that we’re doing something we’re not doing.”

“This bill has back-loaded savings and has front-loaded spending,” Roy added. “I am a no on this bill unless serious reforms are made today, tomorrow, Sunday. Something needs to change or you’re not gonna get my support.”

Well, one guy was an actual conservative who displayed some sensibility over fantasy, but the Republicans ultimately voted to run roughshod over any sensibility with Big Bountiful Bill.

Ed Mills, Washington Policy Analyst at Raymond James, says “This is the most expensive bill in the history of the United States!” So, good job, Repubs. If we ever needed the most bloated budget in history, it must surely be when the national debt looks ready to blowup! The fact is Trump hasn’t got a conservative budgeting bone in his body. He’s thrived on debts and bankruptcy as a way to clear them when they go bad all of his life. Fact. Trump championed this bill all the way through:

“Republicans MUST UNITE behind, ‘THE ONE, BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL!’” Trump wrote.

“We don’t need ‘GRANDSTANDERS’ in the Republican Party. STOP TALKING, AND GET IT DONE!” he added.

Said Mills about the weak Republican battle against Big Bill,

This is about do you allow for these kind of permanent extensions of the Trump Tax Cuts, or do you allow for the largest increase in taxes in the history of the United States…. As I look at that Moody’s downgrade, a lot of this comes down to that cost I talked about, being the most expensive bill….

I think most people anticipated the extension of the Trump Tax Cuts to be about a $1.5-trillion expense. We’re talking something in the five, six, seven-trillion dollars. A lot of these tax provisions are front-end loaded. They are supercharging fiscal stimulus here, and the cuts are back-end loaded. So, the actual cost of this bill could be even higher.

So, if the concern of Moody’s is the fiscal trajectory of the United States, this bill adds to the debt and the deficit greater than, I think, what they had anticipated; and so they will move that [rating].

Of course they are putting the actual cuts far to the rear. As I wrote toward the end of the past week, every congress places the cuts in their budget in years well beyond the present congress, and when that time comes, the next congress always ignores them. It’s just a game! So, deliver the spending cuts, and when you prove their real for a couple of years, the MAYBE we can consider giving ourselves modest tax cuts, so long as we maintain a surplus to apply to paying down the debt; but let’s see what you really achieve in spending cuts first! Get real!

I noted earlier in the week that Representative Thomas Massey (R) of Kentucky, delivered a stark warning that Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” was a time bomb:

I’m here to deliver a dose of reality. This bill dramatically increases deficits in the near term, but promises our government will be fiscally responsible five years from now. Where have we heard that before?

Answer: every time congress passes a budget they claim reduces the deficit.

How do you bind future congresses to these promises? This bill is a debt bomb ticking….

You can’t bind future congresses. They wouldn’t be congress if you could. They’d be a rubber-stamp committee. That, of course, is Massey’s point. Everyone in congress knows that! So, back-end cuts are always completely meaningless. You can only make cuts in the year you control.

This week [bond investors] sent us a message. Moody’s downgraded our credit rating, and the bond investors who buy our debt … demanded higher interest rates on the ten-year note, twenty-year note, and the thirty-year note.

All for a $1,600 tax break for the average Joe or Jolene.

Under the taxing and spending levels in this bill, we’re going to rack up, the authors say, $20-trillion of new debt over the next ten years. I’m telling you, it’s closer to $30-trillion….

Mr. Speaker, we’re not rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic tonight. We’re putting coal into boilers and setting a course for the iceberg.

Speaker Johnson says he got it passed “through a lot of prayer.”

Was he praying for the fiscal destruction of the United States?

ABC reports,

Trump celebrated the passage of what he called "THE ONE, BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL" in a social media post, calling it the "most significant piece of Legislation that will ever be signed in the History of our Country!"

That’s for sure! But it’s nothing to be happy about.

If they were praying for God to assure that God’s human wrecking ball blows up the nation’s debt in order the knock the US down to size, then I can see both points. Mission accomplished. Big Beautiful Bill will be historic as an accelerant to the nation’s demise.

The devil is in the details

[Trump] said it fulfilled his campaign promise of "No Tax on Tips and No Tax on Overtime."

Well, I’m all for that little bit, but you have to balance it with things like taking away the extreme privilege of the 10% who benefit from a special capital-gains tax rate just for playing in the world’s biggest casino—the stock market—while largely producing and accomplishing nothing more than a highly rigged market. After, all that would still leave them the enormous benefit of being able to defer capital gains until they are actually realized by the sale of said capital. That’s benefit enough.

Then you need to save Social Security very simply by just removing the cap that shields trillions of dollars in personal income from paying any Social Security tax. If I pay the tax on all of my income. They can pay the same rate on all of theirs! Social Security completely saved as easily as that! Same thing with Medicaid. In fact, if they did that, then all of us could pay lower taxes on each of those things, and get better benefits!

You’ll never hear them talk about that simple answer! It’s always “What benefits do we have to cut from the middle class to keep this thing afloat? How do we understate inflation so SS doesn’t have to try so hard to keep up with it? And how do we extend the retirement age so people are almost dead before they start collecting the money that was theirs until we took it away from them?”

They look at the those who receive Social Security as entitled brats just because those retirees or disabled people think they should get their own money back. It was insurance they paid for! Should I feel lazy if I collect from State Farm when I get in a car wreck? That’s what I bought the insurance for in the first place!

You see, the answers to those supposedly huge problems ARE that easy. It’s just those answers are the elephant in the room no Republican or Democrat wants to talk about, so solving the problem while avoiding the easy and obvious answers becomes a lot trickier.

Neither Repubs nor Dems want to solve those big problems with simple answers that their rich donors don’t want you to hear or think about because, then how would they remain the 1% if they had to pay the same tax rate you do on the same percentage of their total income…. Instead of doing with Big Bill, they figure out how to enormously expand the US military budget to put more money in corporate coffers at a time when the president has said he wants to stop fighting other people’s wars. ‘Cause that makes sense!

And we’re going to have “Trump Savings Accounts.” Do I really need the US government taxing me in order to give me a savings account? I thought we already had a program like that and named it “Social Security” where people complained they would rather just invest their own money than turn it over to the US government for security.

"Now, it’s time for our friends in the United States Senate to get to work, and send this Bill to my desk AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!" Trump added, before slamming Democrats.

And, so, you see, Trump really does fully own Big-Bellied Bill.

During the final House vote, Republican lawmakers approached the speaker with congratulatory handshakes and back slaps. Someone also played Queen's "We Are The Champions" off a phone for about 10 seconds while the vote was underway.

Sad. Truly pathetic. Singing and dancing over how fat they managed to make Bloated Bill.

Republicans cheered, whistled and applauded when the threshold for passage was achieved at 6:54 a.m.

As Representative Massey said,

If something is beautiful, you don’t do it after midnight.

Ultimately, only two Republicans voted against Big Fat Bill, Massey and Warren Davidson of Ohio.

"It's finally Morning in America again," Johnson beamed as he repeated his earlier comment. "The media and the Democrats have consistently dismissed any possibility that House Republicans could get this stuff. They did not believe that we could succeed in our mission to enact President Trump's America first agenda, but this is a big one, and once again, they have been proven wrong."

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