The Senate has passed its version of the Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 reconciliation bill – the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates the deficit impact , with interest, over the next 10 years will be $4.1 trillion. It would add $5.5 trillion to the nation’s debt if made permanent.
The Committee says the bill is littered with special interest giveaways and new tax and spending entitlements, relies on numerous budget gimmicks, makes the tax code more complicated and less fair and explodes interest costs to nearly $2 trillion per year – including by adding to the debt and pushing up interest rates throughout the economy.
“The Senate took a bill that already borrowed way too much, and took it from bad to worse,” the Committee said. “The Senate expanded the House’s tax breaks, watered down its offsets, introduced new special interest giveaways, and added another trillion dollars onto the price tag.”
DonaldTrump and the Republican Party say the Committee and the Democrats who agree with it are wrong. The White House says the measure will actually cut the deficit by $1.4 trillion.
According to Factcheck.org, the Senate bill includes $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, extending lower rates passed in 2017 and adding new tax cuts. But Senate Republicans have taken steps to remove consideration of the 2017 tax cuts in determining the bill’s impact on the deficit. Republican Sen. Bill Hagerty, who was presiding over the Senate in April, ruled that Sen. Lindsey Graham, the Senate Budget Committee chair, had the sole authority to decide whether extending the 2017 tax cuts officially adds to the deficit.
Graham and like-minded Senate Republicans have said that because the tax cuts have been in effect and are “current policy,” they are not new and do not add to future deficits.
The U.S. government announces its annual deficit and national debt each year, and often more frequently, such as monthly. The U.S. Treasury Department provides detailed information on the figures.
The national debt is the total amount of money the U.S. government owes from past and present borrowing, while the deficit is the difference between the government’s spending and revenue in a single year.
The TreasuryDirect website publishes data on the national debt, and the U.S. Treasury Fiscal Data website provides information on both the deficit and the debt. Additionally, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) releases monthly budget reviews that include the deficit or surplus for that month.
My question – If the Republicans are right, how are they going to explain the increase in the deficit and national debt that likely will be announced down the road if The One Big Beautiful Bill Act eventually gets Trump’s signature? Hmmm. Tis a conundrum.
Maybe they will just mimic Gilda Radner’s character, Emily Litella, on Saturday Night Live. When her misguided rants were challenged she just said, “Never mind”?
In another example of Donald Trump’s pay-to-play presidency, the Trump administration plans to accept a luxurious $400 million Boeing 747-8 plane as a donation from the Qatari royal family that will be upgraded to serve as Air Force One. Hopefully it won’t be loaded with ultra-sophisticated eavesdropping equipment. The plane will ultimately go to the Trump presidential library, ensuring Trump could continue to use it.. “This isn’t a good idea even if the plane was being donated to the US govt.”, said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT). “But Trump GETS TO KEEP THE PLANE???”
“…the issue with Donald Trump is he does not believe in rules and laws and norms,” David Axelrod, a former senior advisor to President Barack Obama, said on CNN. “The issue with Donald Trump is he does not believe in rules and laws and norms. He thinks they’re for suckers. And he thinks if you can get a free plane, as he said today, why wouldn’t you do it? You wouldn’t do it because it’s a bribe.” The Free Press observed, “Just consider the plain matter of our national security. A plane handed to the president by a foreign government? Let alone a government that hosts the leaders of Hamas; cooperates with Iran; fuels popular antisemitism throughout the Arab world through its government mouthpiece, Al Jazeera; and has poured nearly more than $2 billion into American universities since 2021, as these campuses express solidarity with Palestinian terrorism?”
The opulent gold interior of the Qatari plane echoes the aesthetic of Trump Tower and Trump’s gold-centered redecoration of the Oval Office.
President Trump was asked on “Meet the Press” whether every person on U.S. soil was entitled to due process. “I don’t know,” he replied. “I’m not a lawyer.”
On May 27, 2025, Trump pardoned Virginia Sheriff Scott Jenkins. Jenkins had been found guilty of 1 count of conspiracy, 4 counts of honest services fraud and 7 counts of bribery concerning programs receiving fed funds. Prosecutors said he accepted bribes from 8 people, including 2 undercover FBI agents. The men who bribed Jenkins paid for auxiliary deputy sheriff positions so they could avoid traffic tickets and carry concealed firearms without a permit. U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin, appointed by Trump, posted the comment “No MAGA left behind” about his decision to recommend a pardon for Jenkins.
Sheriff Scott Jenkins
Trump also announced on May 27 that he would be pardoning TV celebrities, Todd and Julie Chrisley, famous for the reality show, “Chrisley Knows Best”. The Chrisleys were convicted in 2022 of tax evasion and conspiring to defraud banks in the Atlanta area out of more than $30 million in loans by submitting false documents. Prosecutors said the couple walked away from their responsibility for repayment when Todd Chrisley declared bankruptcy and left $20-plus million in unpaid loans. Julie Chrisley was sentenced to seven years in federal prison, and Todd Chrisley got 12 years behind bars. The couple was also ordered to pay $17.8 million in restitution, which will now be forgiven.
Todd and Julie Chrisley
The United States used to be a reliable trade partner with established policies, procedures and tariff rates so businesses could plan ahead. The Washington Post reported on May 15 that since Trump took office, he changed his tariff policies at least 50 times. Some didn’t last a day. “It’s been completely insane,” economist Michael Strain, with the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) think tank, told the Post.
In with the gold, out with the old. President Trump has loaded down the historic Oval Office with gaudy gold decorations everywhere. “Gold has always been the color of absolute power and those who aspire to it,” says Kimberly Chrisman -Campbell. “But in more recent history, its meaning has become more complex: Its association with dictators, celebrities, and artists has also transformed it into a sign of excess, corruption, and cultural domination.”
Trump’s Oval Office/Biden’s Oval Office
On January 10, 2025, Trump released an “ethics agreement” that prohibited the Trump Organization from making deals with foreign governments. The Trump Organization subsequently cut a deal with Qatari Diar, a company established by Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund in 2005 to “coordinate the country’s real estate development priorities.” Together with Saudi Arabian company Dar Global, which has close ties to the Saudi government, the Qatari company plans to build a $5.5 billion Trump International Golf Club in Qatar.
Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University student on a valid F-1 student visa ,was arrested on March 25, 2025, by six masked plainclothes agents from the US Department of Homeland Security and transported to a detention facility in Louisiana.
The arrest of Rumeysa Ozturk
The only evidence cited against her was an op-ed she co-authored in the university newspaper a year earlier critical of Tufts response to the war in Gaza. She spent six weeks in detention before being freed after US District Judge William K. Sessions III ordered her immediate release.
On April 8, 2026, Trump said countries were “kissing my ass” to secure trade deals before increased tariffs were levied.
While ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Afghans who came to the United States after our chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, exposing them to possible deportation, the Trump administration is using taxpayer dollars to fly white Afrikaner South Africans to the U.S. on chanter flights. Earlier this month, Trump said on Truth Social that “any Farmer (with family!) from South Africa, seeking to flee that country for reasons of safety, will be invited into the United States of America with a rapid pathway to Citizenship.” Christopher Landau, Deputy Secretary of State, and Troy Edgar, Deputy Homeland Security Secretary, greeted dozens of Afrikaners at Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia on Monday, May 12.
The first group of Afrikaner refugees from South Africa arrived on May 12, 2025, at Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Va. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson).
On May 4, 2025, Trump said he decided to announce he was reopening the Alcatraz prison. His reasoning? “It represents something very strong, very powerful in terms of law and order,“ he said. “Our country needs law and order. Alcatraz is uh, I would say the ultimate, right? Alcatraz. Sing Sing and Alcatraz, the movies…. Nobody’s ever escaped from Alcatraz and just represented something, uh, strong having to do with law and order… but it sort of represents something that’s both horrible and beautiful and strong and miserable, weak.
Alcatraz Island today.
Trump launched a $TRUMP meme coin on January 17, 2025, just before he took office. In promoting the meme coin, there coin’s website says “Celebrate Our Win & Have Fun!” The website selling the tokens says the coins “are not intended to be, or to be the subject of, an investment opportunity, investment contract, or security of any type”. By late April 2025, it had fallen 88% from its high. Just 58 wallets cashed in over $10 million each on the coin, while a staggering 764,000 wallets were sitting on losses as of May 7, 2025, according to a report from Chainalysis. Trump offered an “intimate private dinner” with him for the 220 top holders of the meme coin, along with a private reception and White House tour for the top 25 investors. The promotion bumped up sales and generated an estimated $900,000 in trading fees. “With this meme coin dinner, Trump is giving the highest bidders access to the president while lining his own pockets,” MSNBC reported. Buying the meme coin allows investors to make an end-run around U.S. ethics laws: While noncitizens can’t donate to political campaigns, they can invest in those assets. “It looks very corrupt,” Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) told the New York Times.
Where’s the public outrage? As Kyle Chayka wrote in The New Yorker, “The American public has been inundated with news of the Trump family’s self-enrichment for so long that many of their dealings now barely create a stir.”
The U.S. is stepping up its intelligence-gathering efforts regarding Greenland, drawing America’s spying apparatus into President Trump’s campaign to take over the island, the Wall Street Journal reported on May 6, 2025. Greenland is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, a NATO ally, “The Wall Street Journal should be ashamed of aiding deep state actors who seek to undermine the President by politicizing and leaking classified information, said Director of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. “They are breaking the law and undermining our nation’s security and democracy.”
“As the stock markets crashed on Friday April 4, Donald Trump left Washington,” Anne Applebaum wrote in The Atlantic. “He did not go to New York to consult with Wall Street. He did not go to Dover, Delaware, to receive the bodies of four American servicemen, killed in an accident while serving in Lithuania. Instead, he went to Florida, where he visited his Doral golf resort, which was hosting the Saudi-backed LIV golf tournament, and stayed at his Mar-a-Lago club, where many tournament fans and sponsors were staying, too. His private businesses took precedence over the business of the nation.”
On May 8, 2025, the Trump administration fired the head of the Library of Congress, Carla Hayden, the first Black woman and the first woman to hold the job, with a blunt two- sentence email, “”Carla, On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as the Librarian of Congress is terminated effective immediately. Thank you for your service.” Confirmed by the Senate to the job in 2016, her 10-year term was set to expire next year. On May 12, Trump named Todd Blanche, the lead defense lawyer in hTrump’s criminal trial in Manhattan last year, to replace Hayden, but encountered resistance when staff members at the Library refused to give two Justice Department officials access to the Library’s headquarters on Capitol Hill, insisting that Congress must have input on Hayden’s replacement.
Carla Hayden
On May 6, 2025, Kari Lake, asenior adviser to the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), the government body that oversees Voice of America, said the far-right news coverage of the One America News (OAN) Network will fuel the Voice of America. Since World War II, the Voice of America has provided news coverage and cultural programming to people around the world who don’t have access to a free press. Its weekly audience is about 360 million. OAN is “a conspiracy-boosting outlet with a far fringier voice than right-leaning outlets like Newsmax and Fox News.,” reported CNN.
White House deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, said on May 9, 2025, the White House was considering suspending habeas corpus for illegal immigrants in the United States. “The Constitution is clear, and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in time of invasion.” he said. “So, I would say that’s an option we’re actively looking at.”
Stephen Miller
President Trump has nominated Fox News personality Jeanine Pirro, who has a reputation as a strong Trump defender on “The Five” talk show, the interim U.S. attorney for Washington, DC. Pirro is the 23rd Fox employee Trump has appointed so far to his administration this term. Pirro was named in a lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems for questioning the validity of ballot tabulations on Fox’s broadcasts. Fox settled the case and was forced to acknowledge that statements by Ms. Pirro and others were false. In 2021, Trump pardoned Ms. Pirro’s former husband, Albert J. Pirro Jr., who was convicted of conspiracy and tax evasion charges in 2000.
Jeanine Pirro
House and Senate Republicans under Trump have come up with plans to pass tax cuts and defense and border security spending increases without requiring equal amounts of offsets. They would allow $3 to $7 trillion in new debt—making it one of the largest deficit increases in history. “At this moment—when the national debt is skyrocketing, we spend more on interest than national defense, and trust funds are on the brink of insolvency—if there is one thing that should be clear from a fiscal perspective, it is that we should not be passing new policies that add more to the national debt.,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. By 2027, under a reconciliation bill, debt would exceed the previous record of 106 percent of GDP set just after World War II.
Unfortunately, there is a risk that the bill could get even worse, according to the Committee.. Already, some members are trying to add to the bill’s costs – and the Senate reconciliation instructions allow for twice as much borrowing as the House’s.
In his second term, Donald Trump has been generous in issuing pardons. Early in his term, he issued about 1,500 pardons and commuted the sentences of 14 Jan. 6 criminals, including people convicted of violently assaulting police, then pardoned 23 anti-abortion activists and former Illinois Governor Rob Blagojevich. In late March, he pardoned Nikola Corp. founder Trevor Milton for his October 2022 conviction of federal crimes related to defrauding investors with false claims about the success of the electric and hydrogen-powered truck maker. CNBC reported that after his criminal sentencing, Milton had “made significant political donations to Trump and his allies” including $920,000 to the Trump 47 Committee in October of 2024. The Trump administration also terminated the Justice Department’s pardon attorney, Elizabeth G. Oyer, after she opposed restoring actor Mel Gibson’s rights to carry a gun, her spokesperson and two Justice Department officials familiar with the matter told NBC News.
Shortly after being sworn in, Trump signed an executive order that pardoned roughly 1,500 people who were involved in the January 6 Capitol riot. Anna Moneymaker via Getty Images
By Peter L. Steiner, “Hopeless but not Serious”, Jan. 25, 2025
NBC’s Kristen Welker asked Trump, “Don’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States, as president?” His reply: “I don’t know.”
Before President Biden signed the 630 page $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, Democrats focused most of their public messaging on the $1400 checks that would be going out to everybody and their brother (and sister). Who doesn’t like free money, the Democrats figured. After President Biden signed the bill, Democrats shifted some of their messaging to highlighting an expansion of the child tax credit (CTC).
Before the new law, the CTC allowed qualifying families to reduce their income tax bills by up to $2,000 for each child through age 16. The new law increases the credit to $3,000 a child and makes parents of 17-year-olds eligible to for the 2021 tax year. The credit rises to $3,600 for children under the age of 6 as of the end of 2021.
For a qualifying family with one child, the previous credit would have cut a $5,000 tax bill to $3,000. Under the new law, the credit will cut the tax bill to $2,000, and to $1,400 if the child is under age 6. The benefit amount will gradually diminish for single filers earning more than $75,000 per year, or married couples making more than $150,000 a year.
Though framed as an expansion of the current tax credit, it is essentially a guaranteed income for families with children, because it will provide most parents a monthly check of up to $300 per child. That’s because unlike the current program, where the money is distributed annually as a tax reduction or check, the new program will send out monthly checks to provide a more stable cash flow.
Kiplinger illustrated the program by assuming a family of five with three children ages 12, 7 and 5. Assuming the family qualifies for the higher child credit and doesn’t opt out of the advance payments, they could get $800 per month from the IRS from July through December 2021, for a total of $4,800. They would then claim the additional $4,800 in child tax credits when they file their 2021 return next year.
But neither the Democrats nor the media are talking about how much the benefit will cost. You have to be a very aggressive, persistent searcher to find a number.
According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, the CTC expansion in President Biden’s rescue bill will cost a whopping $110 billion just in 2021.
But that probably won’t be the final cost because Democrats want to make the new CTC program permanent. Left-leaning groups are already lobbying for permanency.
“Substantially increasing the CTC on a permanent basis would help secure economic stability for working families, reduce inequality, and sustainably boost economic growth,” says one such organization, the Center for American Progress. “It would be one of the most effective investments we can make as a society.”
Democrats have already introduced bills in the House and Senate to make the CTC changes permanent.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget figures the ultimate price tag of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act could be twice as high if some of the policies in the bill are extended beyond their presumed expiration dates, substantially increasing deficits and debt.
As Jared Bernstein, a top economic advisor to Biden told the Wall Street Journal last month, “When you’re worried about fiscal sustainability, the things that hurt you are not the temporary measures,” Mr. Bernstein said in an interview late last month. “It’s the things that are permanent [and] that aren’t paid for.”
On March 22, 2021, the New York Times reported that President Biden’s advisers were expected to present a proposal to him recommending a series of bills that would propose a $3 trillion economic package. This would be in addition to extension of the so-called temporary tax cuts meant to cut poverty that are already on the books, which could cost an additional billions of dollars.
Since neither the Democrats nor Republicans seem much concerned about exploding deficits and debt, it’s doubtful that policies in the American Rescue Plan Act that lawmakers decide to make permanent or the cost of the $3 trillion package will be fully offset with tax increases or spending restraint.
“In addition to trying to make permanent some of the temporary provisions in the package, Democrats hope to spend trillions of dollars to upgrade infrastructure, reduce the emissions that drive climate change, reduce the cost of college and child care, expand health coverage and guarantee paid leave and higher wages for workers,” The New York Times reported.
Hang on. It’s going to be a rough, and expensive, ride.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,” Charles Dickens wrote in A Tale of Two Cities. Thousands of Oregon college graduates in the class of 2019 probably felt the same way.
After years of hard work, they had finally earned their degrees. But 54% graduated with student loan debt. The average debt – $27,542. If it was any consolation, they were not alone. About 45 million Americans (13.7% of the U.S. population) are dealing with federal and/or student loan debt that totals about $1.7 billion.
But fear not, debtors, liberal politicians have been falling all over themselves with plans to help bail you out.
In May 2020, Reps. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) and Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) called upon House Speaker Pelosi and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to prioritize long- term relief in any future COVID-19 response in the form of at least $30,000 in one-time student loan debt cancellation for all federal student loan borrowers
In September 2020, U.S. Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) introduced a resolution outlining a plan for the next president to use existing authority under the Higher Education Act to cancel up to $50,000 in individual federal student loan debt for Federal student loan borrowers.
Before the Nov. 3, 2020 election, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris called for student loan forgiveness of up to $10,000, and if a student found a job that paid less than $125,000 after graduation, all their student loan debt would be forgiven.
And then there are all the progressive think tanks, unions and special interest groups lined up behind the debt cancellation idea.
In November, a coalition of 236 mostly progressive groups, including the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, sent a letter to President-elect Biden calling on him to cancel student debt using his executive powers on the first day he takes office. Casting their lobbying as a racial justice issue, the letter said, “The disproportionate impact of student debt on borrowers of color exacerbates existing systemic inequities and widens the racial wealth gap.”
The progressive Roosevelt Institute, adopting the “No crisis should go to waste” philosophy, is calling for the cancellation of student, housing, and medical debt as part of a massive covid-recovery plan. Framing student debt as “a product of and a contributor to our country’s shameful racial wealth gap,” the Institute wants student loan forgiveness to go hand in hand with a commitment to funding tuition-free public colleges and universities.
That’s what the most ardent advocates of student loan cancellation are really pushing for – free college, with somebody else, usually simply called “rich people,” covering the cost.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) argued on Nov. 17, 2020 that forgiving student loans would be the “single biggest stimulus we could add to the economy” in these difficult times. And the New York Times said, “Both sides of the debate acknowledge that tackling the $1.7 trillion in student debt nationwide, which is spread among more than 43 million borrowers, would go far toward jump-starting the economy.” But a lot of economists don’t agree.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says the stimulus benefits would be minimal and aimed at those who least need the help. Total student loan debt may be atrociously high, but borrowers often pay back their loans over 10, 15, or even 30 years, so debt cancellation would increase their available cash for injection back into the economy by only a fraction of the total loan forgiveness. “Stimulus dollars that are spent rather than saved provide a stronger boost to near-term economic output,” the Committee has said.
Continuing current student debt relief policies, including deferring payments and interest, are preferable, as well as income-driven repayment programs under which monthly payments are determined based on a borrower’s income, not the amount of debt. After 20 to 25 years, the remaining debt is forgiven.
Recently released data from the U.S. Department of Education shows that the national default rate (A federal student loan is considered to be in default if payment is late by 270 days) for FY2017 was 9.70%. Massachusetts had the lowest loan default rate – 5.83%; Mississippi had the highest – 15.19%.
Oregon had 6,477 borrowers, 10.71% of the total, in default. The Oregon schools with the highest default rate, 7.80%, were Eastern Oregon University and the Pacific Northwest College of Art. The Brookings Institute is predicting a “looming student loan default crisis” that could see 40% of student loan borrowers nationally in default by 2023.
Yes, some of this debt has accrued because of lax government lending standards. As the Wall Street Journal reported on Nov. 23, 2020. “The government lends more than $100 billion each year to students to cover tuition at more than 6,000 colleges and universities. It ignores factors such as credit scores and field of study, and it doesn’t analyze whether students will earn enough after graduating to cover their debt.”
But subsidizing people who run up large college loan debts penalizes those who took their responsibility seriously and acted responsibly, James B. Meigs wrote in City Journal, a publication of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a free-market think tank. That leaves a lot of people feeling like chumps, he says. “…the chumps of modern America feel that the life choices they’re most proud of—working hard, taking care of their families, being good citizens—aren’t just undervalued, but scorned,” Meigs wrote. As Jeff Jacoby, a Boston Globe columnist put it, “…a massive bailout of borrowers would be unfair to countless families that saved and worked to pay for college, to say nothing of those who responsibly repaid their loans.”
Then there’s the “moral hazard” of cancelling student debt. It might encourage students to continue running up risky big loan balances on the assumption that their debts will be forgiven at some point. That would cause a distortion of borrowing decisions, making them insensitive to the ability to repay.
Of course, what if higher education institutions see that it makes sense to continually raise prices because the government will absorb any losses down the road. But that’s another problem.
Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) tried to pull a fast one last month to help out the United Mine Workers of America union.
While Congress, the country and the media were fixated on the twists and turns of efforts to rescue the Highway Trust Fund, Wyden and some other members of Congress pursued an entirely different agenda, using the Trust Fund legislation to bail out the underfunded United Mine Workers of America’s pension plan.
Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR)
When the Senate Finance Committee, which Wyden chairs, first reported out a Highway Trust Fund bill it slipped in a provision advocated by Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va). The provision called for $2.7 billion of the funds to be raised to be diverted to help bail out the underfunded pension plan for retired coal miners.
Congressional efforts to bail out the United Mine Workers health and pension plans have been going on for decades.
A 1992 law authorized the transfer of interest accruing to the unspent balance of the Abandoned Mine Reclamation Fund to help for the United Mine Workers health care fund. That was followed by 2006 amendments to the Abandoned Mine Reclamation Program, which provided transfers of general funds to insure the solvency of the Mine Workers health care plans.
This time, however, Wyden’s committee proposed paying for the union rescue with a gimmick called “pension smoothing” that has been roundly criticized by liberals and conservatives alike as nothing more than a sham.
Pension smoothing lets corporations delay contributions to their employee pension plans. Because pension deposits are tax-deductible, postponing them raises corporations’ taxable income and, therefore, increases tax payments to the government.
The problem is the increased revenues from the smoothing period will be largely offset later when corporations will pay less in taxes in years when they rebuild their pension plans to make up for the underfunding period.
In other words, Wyden’s committee proposed using illusory revenue from a corporate pension gimmick to save a failing union pension plan.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget excorciated both the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways & Means Committee for using the ruse.
But there was little public debate on the $2.7 billion union rescue plan. Compare that with the furor surrounding President Obama’s request for $3.7 billion to deal with the surge of children from Central America crossing the southwest border into the United States.
Maybe Wyden, Rockefeller and the measure’s other supporters thought their union bail-out would succeed because it was in a must-pass bill.
Maybe Wyden acceded to adding the bail-out money because he knows his seat is safe no matter what.
Maybe Wyden did it as a going-away-gift to Rockefeller, who’s retiring from the senate at the end of this term.
Or maybe, even though Wyden knows pension smoothing is a farce, he could, as a liberal, care less about the growing national debt when there are favors to be granted.
Thankfully, though, his gambit failed. A Highway Trust Fund bill that transfers $10.8 billion to the Fund finally passed on July 31st after the Senate accepted a House version without the miners’ pension provision. Obama signed the law on August 8th.
But don‘t think that means the end of attempts to bail out the union miners’ pension plan. Members of Congress surely have other tricks up their sleeve.
ThinkingOregon 