Can someone give me the pros and cons so I don’t remain ignorant? I’m okay with my personal finances but I’m having trouble understanding the Big Beautiful Bill.

I my mind far from perfect. But give the president what he needs to move the country forward. The politicians got us here in the last 50 years. The Potus knows more about running a business and country than these buffoons in congress.
I am tired of Paul. And Musk has been a big help. But he is not in charge of anything other than his business'. So march ahead. My take.

It's not perfect and increases the debt, but it's better to increase the debt on things like border security, military spending, infrastructure than DEI and other nonsense like the previous administration.

Discussed in the Trump thread. P. 244

https://sigforum.com/eve/forum...5/m/1120081315/p/244

Heres' Charlie Kirks take.... 50 points, both are right, we need the tax cuts to be made permanent, Trump needs this passed for the wall, immigration, many things.

https://x.com/charliekirk11/st.../1930402626090479622



Then you have Musk's take on the spending in the bill.... and he's right, we need to cut out all discretionary spending, get the economy rolling, and get interest rates down, that part though is being held up by the Fed...

https://x.com/WallStreetApes/s.../1930440001877357023

HRK's post above does a good job of outlining the positive elements of both sides.

I like what he's trying to achieve, but it seems like a lot at once and I wish we had time to let the economy catch up a bit first. I know the President is working with a limited timeframe and has a huge mess to set straight. Hopefully some of these measures help further spur the economy down the road, but I've always been loathe to spend money before I actually have it.

Personally, I feel like inflation has been the biggest hurdle for me to overcome the last few years. My pay has stayed basically the same, and costs on everything have just about doubled so I've been forced to work a bunch of overtime just to make ends meet. I'm not looking for a handout or tax credits...I just want the unchecked price increases to stop so I can make it comfortably on my own like I could before Biden came along and screwed everything up. As such, I tend to lean towards Musk's point of view on the economy. But I also get that's only one piece of the whole puzzle.

quote:

Originally posted by 92fstech:
I know the President is working with a limited timeframe and has a huge mess to set straight.

That, IMO, is the key to the argument. Historically, the President's party is likely to lose control of the House or the Senate, or both, at the next mid-term election. Will that happen in 2026? I don't know but you've got to figure it's a possibility. And if it does happen then everything he's trying to do is pretty much dead in the water. So he has another 15 months or so to get all the good things cranked up and going. I don't like the huge spending cap either. But the bill contains so many other things that we do need, that given the short time frame I'd rather the bill not get scrapped and have to start over.

You Can Run From Fiscal Deficits, But You Can't Hide

The rise in longer-term US and developed-market bond yields risks becoming entrenched as fiscal largesse becomes a feature of economies, rather than a temporary bug.

I fully believe the Fed is trying to screw Trump by refusing to lower interest rates. They do it constantly to save Democrats asses but Trump gets in there and all of a sudden they're fiscal hawks and "We can't lower rates right now!"

Well I need to buy a new car soon and I'll be dammed if I'm financing at at 8-9%

This abomination is 1,038 pages filled with funds appropriated with Congress' having ZERO direct understanding of exactly what the funds are used to be for.

Take for example:

quote:

SEC. 20012. ENHANCEMENT OF MILITARY INTELLIGENCE PROGRAMS.
In addition to amounts otherwise available, there are appropriated to the Secretary of Defense for fiscal year 2025, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, to remain available until September 30, 2029, $2,000,000,000 for the enhancement of military intelligence programs.

What does this mean? Beats the hell outta me, but I do know there is a list of projects and their projected cost in the defense intel budget request. Why are we not listing each project (with a description) and the amount allocated to it? The information is already digital; converting it to a table should not be very hard since it is already is a big spreadsheet.

Failing to do so is why the incoming Trump Administration found $93B in bogus DOE loan guarantees, $20B in gold bars tossed of the Titanic called EPA, tranny comic books and operas, Sesame Street in Iraq, and shit like the corrupt warmongering "Institute of Peace".

Has anyone run it through an AI yet? I know some people run contracts through AI to loopholes or conflicts. Would be interesting to see the bill summed up and point out how bad we,the taxpayers, are getting screwed. Moreso than just the initial dollar value.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
I fully believe the Fed is trying to screw Trump by refusing to lower interest rates. They do it constantly to save Democrats asses but Trump gets in there and all of a sudden they're fiscal hawks and "We can't lower rates right now!"

Well I need to buy a new car soon and I'll be dammed if I'm financing at at 8-9%

That theory has been presented as a possibility. James O'Keefe with the Feds Reserve Economist interview... Powell doesn't like Trump.

Several posts on X from economists say the underlying economy looks good hard to tell since the CBO leaves out Tariff revenue, in the end, jmo Musk and Trump are right. Musk has to realize that Trump has 535 Board members, each with a vote, a little over half are "on Trumps side" and he can't remove problem board members, only we can.



https://x.com/wallstreetapes/s.../1930373479200858382

Understanding the big beautiful bill (B3) hurts my head as well. Many figures are misrepresented, like not counting the tariffs, or the wrong GDP growth. Others are quoted without telling us that it is over 10 years. The Atlanta fed has revised the resulting deficit downward from the CBO.

And why pray tell is no one picking on Speaker Johnson for not weeding out the easy spending cuts?? Is it because this bill is a reconciliation bill? What makes waiting for a recission bill better? Haven't heard why. Then there is the notion that the spending cuts and corrections only can come in a budget bill later this year.

So to summarize my confusion we have a problem with how to sequence solutions, a time frame problem, conflicting estimates on savings as well as deficits, and the friggin rules in congress for when this can happen. Did I miss something? 'splain it to me Lucy.

I don’t think there is one person who understands the big beautiful bill as a whole. Different people may understand specific parts and groups of people may even understand a whole section because they are the ones who created those parts and sections.

Everyone is trying to squeeze in their piece of the pie.

Huge bill. Lots going on. Many, many carve-outs for pet projects and special interests in an attempt to ge the votes to pass, but those items aren’t really the core goals that the party leadership is trying to accomplish. What is the party actually trying to do? This are some of the big things I’m seeing, but not an exhaustive list and I could be wrong:

- take away the democrats ability to block Trump using the debt ceiling before his term ends if control over either the house or senate is lost. It’s unclear if they really expect it to last longer than that, but they definitely don’t want anyone, on either side really, using the debt ceiling to throw a wrench in things while Trump is serving this term.

- include as many policy changes as possible while the party has control over both houses of congress, the presidency, and a favorable Supreme Court. This seems to have broadly taken priority over fiscal responsibility, meaning they gave up on getting the budget under control in favor of trying to make as many policy changes as possible, even if they are required to budget for these changes by running up the debt. Part of this is because of limitation on what they can get rid of in a reconciliation bill. It is harder to stop doing things that are already in place than to add new things that are not.

- get money spent as soon as possible. Part of the reason the plan is so expensive appears to be the vast amount of money it is spending quickly rather than over multiple years after Trump is out of office. They appear to be trying to race to get money actually spent before the Democrats have an opportunity to get back some power and slow them down. What things are they spending money on that are party goals rather than stuff to secure votes? Not sure. That gets real complicated, but it is pretty safe to say that tax cuts and the border are to big things that are party goals and they want to be hard to undo. beyond that, I’m not sure.

Whether this is good or bad is up to you and your own priorities. If you want Republicans to make rules their way more than you want them to save money, you probably like this bill. If you aren’t willing to run up the debt and spend more money to make those changes, you probably don’t like it. For better or worse, Republicans were not able to both spend less and still spend what they wanted to on their goals, so they mostly gave up on spending less.

Personally, I’m more of a small government, fiscal responsibility kind of guy so I’m not happy about the direction they took, but I will admit there are several things in the bill that I do really like from a policy perspective. Are they enough for me to put aside how much this is all going to cost? I’m not really sure yet

- Bret

quote:

Whether this is good or bad is up to you and your own priorities. If you want Republicans to make rules their way more than you want them to save money, you probably like this bill. If you aren’t willing to run up the debt and spend more money to make those changes, you probably don’t like it. For better or worse, Republicans were not able to both spend less and still spend what they wanted to on their goals, so they mostly gave up on spending less.

Personally, I’m more of a small government, fiscal responsibility kind of guy so I’m not happy about the direction they took, but I will admit there are several things in the bill that I do really like from a policy perspective. Are they enough for me to put aside how much this is all going to cost? I’m not really sure yet

I'm with you, Bret!

This bill is better by far than what we've had in the past. Let's take a win, and then let's primary out the RINOs with real MAGA fiscal conservatives next year.

The only reason any hill is done this way, is to hide the BS/get garbage through which would never pass a straight vote.

It’s disgusting.

The right approach is to try to push a single-subject enrolled bill amendment/a planned, laid out reform bill, without amendments - but that would take a willingness to actually go after the swamp, and threaten the garbage in both parties.

And, I’m not sure Trump has the timeline for that.

If MAGA fails to cut spending, I do think we will see the Tech Bros start a fiscal responsibility party

If Rand Paul, Thomas Massie, and Justin Amash are against it so am I.