Dem
47
GOP
53
As we have noted a couple of times in the past week, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is trying desperately to get the "big, beautiful bill" over the finish line as rapidly as is possible. He's actually got a self-imposed deadline, which is Friday of this week. If the members of the House leave for the Memorial Day recess, they will be exposed to lots of coverage of the bill from news media, and lots of complaining from constituents. Johnson desperately wants to bank the 217 votes he needs before that can happen, which means that by the time you read this, he has maybe 36 hours (or less) left.
In service of that deadline, the House Rules Committee held a 22-hour markup session, ultimately voting 8-4 to advance the bill to the floor of the House for a vote. In theory, the Speaker planned to start debate last night, and then to vote today. We will see if that happens. The bill is 1,000+ pages, was cobbled together at breakneck speed, and then was amended substantially during the Rules Committee hearing. So, you can't really be sure what's in it, and you definitely can't be sure what's been hidden deep within the bowels, in some subsection on page 433, or some other sub-subsection on page 801. That said, here are a dozen things that are apparently included, based on reporting from various outlets:
Moderate Republicans are grumbling, conservative Republicans are grumbling, but nobody has come out and said they are a "no" vote, except for Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who is pretty much always a "no" vote. So, Johnson might just get this thing across the finish line.
That said, there's still a little thing called the United States Senate. If Johnson does herd the cats, his message to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), et al., will be: "This is the bill I got through the House, and I'm not going to be able to do better. So, you can take it, or you can leave it." We haven't the faintest idea what the 53 Republican senators might do, though we do know that several of them, including Lisa Murkowski (AK) and Susan Collins (ME) have expressed opposition to the Medicaid changes.
The other thing we know is that the bill is not yet law, but the financial sector has already kindly shared its opinion. Earlier this week, Moody's became the last of the three major credit raters to yank the United States' perfect credit rating. This means that, in the judgment of the experts, U.S. Treasury bonds are more risky, and so the federal government should pay higher interest to investors. If so, that makes it more expensive for the government to borrow, and so to make budgets—like the one Mike Johnson is trying to move—work.
And then yesterday, as details of the latest budget bill were trickling out, the Treasury Department's regular bond auction produced worrying results. The average rate demanded by the investors, who bought $16 billion in bonds, was 5.047% on a 20-year note. The last six auctions saw an average rate of 4.613%, which implies that the Moody's rating and/or the GOP budget increased rates by about half a percent. Usually, things don't move that fast. And the news spooked Wall Street, with the result that all the major indices were down yesterday, between 1.4% and 2%.
We don't write too much about the budgetary sausage-making, because things are so fungible. But now, it looks like the House is at a denouement, one way or another. We'll probably know, by the time we write tomorrow's posting, if we were right in thinking that.
Last minute update: At 7 a.m. this morning, the bill passed the House 215-214. If Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) hadn't died yesterday (see below), it would have failed. There will be writeups of the bill all over the place today. Here is the Washington Post's. (Z)