I found this useful in clarifying my thinking on a fraught subject.
[PJMedia] The Big Beautiful Bill continues to be confusing, and, frankly, I think it’s become confusing because a whole lot of people think it being confusing is to their advantage. So let’s try to drill down into the details and try to sort out the facts.
Now, Stephen Miller has tweeted an explanation a couple of times, apparently to little avail, but let’s look at it again, and work out the details.
I’ve seen a few claims making the rounds on the Big Beautiful Bill that require correction.
The first is that it doesn’t “codify the DOGE cuts.” A reconciliation bill, which is a budget bill that passes with 50 votes, is limited by senate rules to “mandatory” spending only — eg…
…rules to “mandatory” spending only — eg Medicaid and Food Stamps. The senate rules prevent it from cutting “discretionary” spending — eg the Department of Education or federal grants. The DOGE cuts are overwhelmingly discretionary, not mandatory. The bill saves more than 1.6 TRILLION in mandatory spending, including the largest-ever welfare reform. A remarkable achievement.
I’ve also seen claims the bill increases the deficit. This lie is based on a CBO accounting gimmick. Income tax rates from the 2017 tax cut are set to expire in September. They were always planned to be permanent. CBO says maintaining *current* rates adds to the deficit, but by definition leaving these income tax rates unchanged cannot add one penny to the deficit. The bill’s spending cuts REDUCE the deficit against the current law baseline, which is the only correct baseline to use.
Another fantastically false claim is that the bill spends trillions of dollars. This is just completely invented out of whole cloth. This is not a ten year budget bill—it doesn’t “fund” almost any operations of government, which are funded in the annual budget bills (which this is not). In other words, if this bill passed, but the annual budget bill did not, there would be no government funding. Under the math that critics are using, if we passed a one paragraph reconciliation bill that cut simply 50 billion in food stamp spending, they would say the bill “added” trillions in spending and debt because they are counting ALL the projected federal spending that exists entirely outside the scope of this legislation, which is of course preposterous. The only funding in the bill is for the President’s border and defense priorities, while enacting a net spending cut of over 1.6 TRILLION dollars.
The bill has two fiscal components: a massive tax cut and a massive spending cut.
There are some facts of life that he tries to explain but doesn’t go into detail about, because, well, it’s just a tweet.
So here are the facts of life:
The Big Beautiful Bill is a reconciliation bill
Reconciliation bills have the advantage that they can’t be filibustered — a simple majority does the job
...but that doesn’t mean filibusters aren’t an issue in the whole process
One of the biggest restrictions on reconciliation is that the reconciliation bill cannot, by law, affect anything except mandatory spending, and what constitutes mandatory spending is also established by law.
Reconciliation bills are not spending bills. They establish a budget, or propose a budget, but the actual spending must be established in a bill that starts in the House. A separate bill.
Reconciliation bills are scored by the Congressional Budget Office, which imposes other restrictions
Both the limits on a reconciliation bill and on CBO’s scoring are established by law, so if you want to change them, you run into that filibuster monster again.
So, a lot of the people screaming about the BBB not codifying the DOGE cuts are either ignorant or gaslighting you. The BBB doesn’t codify the DOGE cuts because by law it can’t. Keep that in mind as we go through the details.
I think the first thing is probably to look at the CBO scoring, because a lot of the more blatant gaslighting on all sides comes from people conveniently not understanding what the CBO is required by law to do. You can expect that phrase to show up a lot, and, by God, it’s going to be in boldface every time, because it seems to be the hardest thing to understand — or the easiest thing to ignore.
So, let’s dive in. I’m going to be quoting my research assistant Grok fairly heavily, because this is buried in probably a hundred different laws, rules, and accounting terms of art that don’t mean quite what you think they mean.
CBO SCORING:
The Congressional Budget Office — which is going to be “the CBO” from here on out — was established by law. (That link is to Grok’s summary, and feel free to argue that there’s something wrong with the summary. But be prepared to provide citations.)
[The] Congressional Budget Office (CBO) was established by the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (Public Law 93-344). The Act created the CBO to provide Congress with objective, nonpartisan analysis of budgetary and economic issues, including cost estimates and deficit projections for legislation like the Big Beautiful Bill (#BBB).
There are a lot of little details to that, and we’ll look at them, I promise. But one of them is this: By law — the same law —the CBO must make their baseline budget projections based on the law as it stands; it may not change the baseline to suit coming changes to the law — like the ones in the BBB.
So Miller’s first point is generally correct — the BBB doesn’t codify most of the DOGE cuts, because by law it cannot. The DOGE cuts are almost exclusively to discretionary spending, and the distinction between mandatory and discretionary spending is established, you guessed it, by law. That same law, in fact.
What’s the difference, you ask? Simply, mandatory spending is spending that is required by law under separate legislation — think Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Discretionary spending is, well, everything else: everything that is funded by the annual budgetary process. Now, at this point, Miller slips a little bit in his discussion because he says, “The senate rules prevent it from cutting ‘discretionary’ spending.” It’s a tiny quibble, perhaps, but this is a discussion that is characterized on all sides by tiny quibbles made to emphasize someone’s own goals and interests.
The tiny quibble is this: You can’t do it in the BBB, because that’s not germane to the purpose of the bill. That runs into a Senate rule called the “Byrd Rule,” named for the former lion — or rather Exalted Cyclops — of the Senate, the late Robert C. Byrd (D-W.V.). That link will lead to a full summary of the Byrd Rule, but the important point right now is that to do anything that the Byrd Rule would forbid, you have to get 60 votes in the Senate. But what is mandatory is fixed by law. The Byrd Rule is how that law is enforced in the Senate.
Now, let’s just answer the inevitable comments: “Well, duh, just change the law.” You’re right, that is possibly desirable — but you can’t change the law without getting past a filibuster. You can’t do it in the BBB, because that’s not germane to the purpose of the bill.
Skipping down to the end:
MILLER'S CONCLUSION:
The bill has two fiscal components: a massive tax cut and a massive spending cut.
And that’s the bottom line, and it’s correct. The BBB does reduce taxes versus the CBO’s expectation and current law, or, more honestly, it prevents taxes — your taxes. The “tax cuts on billionaires” line is errant nonsense. Actual spending in the actual next year is actually cut.
The problem here — an ongoing problem — is that a lot of the gaslighting is coming from both sides, and it’s all built around ignorance or duplicity. Yes, Rand, I’m looking at you. Chip Roy, you too. And include all the Senate Democrats in this as well. I’ll cut Elon a little slack, because he’s made himself the richest man in the world by ignoring people who tell him something can’t be done. But sometimes, they’re telling you something can’t be done because it just can’t be done.
But what the Big Beautiful Bill does do is cut spending this year by $1.6 trillion.
Now, there’s a final point here. To do any of this stuff, the Big Beautiful Bill must pass! Maybe it does increase the SALT deduction for now. But that gains some important votes — and remember, the final House vote was 215-214.
Continued on Page 47
Got to start someplace and $1.6 TRILLION is a good start.
Next is cutting NGO waste and arresting those abusing it, w/o concern to the "status of the person" caught abusing the system for personal or political gains.
Heartwarming journey to a double Happily Ever After. Read the second half at the link.
[Substack] A petition against Israel I refused to sign lit the fuse of anger in my peers at Columbia.
When I began studying at Barnard College of Columbia University in 2015, I was on a full-ride scholarship. Coming from a foster-care type upbringing, I had no family. No friends in NYC. And no support system. But I was full of hope, excitement and dreams to study.
But when a student knocked on my door my after I moved in with a Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) petition against Israel, I paused. Was this a friend or foe? What was this about?
I had only vaguely heard of Israel and Paleostine, and I didn’t feel comfortable signing the petition. Geopolitics wasn’t my strong suit. And I barely heard about Israel or Paleostine before. So, I told the girl that I couldn’t sign it till I did more research, and she left, seemingly ok with that response.
Days later, she again asked me to sign the BDS petition.
I still hadn’t researched the conflict, so I declined again. Then next day, I recall that the girl had tagged me in the Barnard and Columbia Class of 2018 Facebook pages, which had each hundreds of members, that "Toni Airaksinen is an apartheid supporting Zionist who doesn’t care about Paleostinians and people of color." I was aghast.
I never said any of that. What’s a Zionist?
Suddenly, new acquaintances turned into vicious enemies. In searching for help, I learned that to Barnard students, Israel and Zionism was antithetical to the social justice orthodoxy they fought for.
Paleostine and Hamas ..a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",...
..a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",...
supporters and their allies targeted me, banged on my door at night, sent me thinly veiled death threats through Tumblr and Facebook, and stalked me through the campus grocery store, often hurling slurs under their lips.
I was forced to stop eating at the Barnard dining hall because students would "accidentally" bump into me, making me drop my tray. Instead, I found refuge at Columbia University’s dining halls and began taking all my classes at Columbia instead, where the students didn’t know me and it was easier to blend in, at least for a few months.
By not agreeing with students on Paleostine, I was branded a hater of people of color, a supporter of "apartheid" and "segregation" — basically, evil.
It was the late 2010s, and the activist zeitgeist revolved around "trigger warnings", decrying the "wage gap" and "microaggressions", the #MeToo movement, and fighting "apartheid" in Israel — mostly through petitions to ban Sabra Hummus and calls to divest the endowment from Israeli-related stocks such as Raytheon.
The campus zeitgeist had no place for me.
At some point during my freshman year, I made a Facebook post about the harassment I was getting. An SOS. A desperate plea for help. I was terrified.
I didn’t know what help I needed.
But after that post, I woke up to dozens of messages and friend requests. Who were these people? I wondered. Since I had grown up atheist in a small town, I had only a vague idea of who Jewish people were. But in droves, they came to my rescue.
One Jewish Upper West Side mom literally came to my dorm the same day with a care package. She gave me her phone number for emergencies. She was a Barnard alumna, and was shocked at what I told her.
Other Jewish strangers soon invited me to Shabbat dinners on the Upper West Side and in Brooklyn. They gave me advice — mostly, "Stay quiet" and "The college is not on your side."
Many texted me occasionally, to check in. Many of them, and my peers, assumed I was Jewish. But I wasn’t.
Not yet.
My new Jewish acquaintances brought me into their circles. Soon after, I started schlepping to Brooklyn every weekend, hanging out with Jewish college students, lighting shabbat candles, studying for exams and trying not to worry about school.
But things took a turn for the worse in my sophomore year.
Residential Life admins assigned me to live in the "Social Justice House" at Barnard. Why? I don’t exactly remember.
The Social Justice House was built on kindness and respect, but I didn’t realize it was a political hotbed until I began meeting my housemates. My folly.
My roommate, Fatimah, was Paleostinian and a member of SJP. My other suitemate was a leader of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), a Barnard anti-Israel club that works in lockstep with SJP. A Lebanese-Paleostinian girl was down the hall. I shuddered as every other weekend, they and other pro-Paleostine students from Barnard and Columbia held activist style meetings in my dorm’s kitchen while smoking reefer and hookah, giggling about me in hushed tones.
I had no clue how I got placed with them. Perhaps Barnard officials thought I would change my mind on Israel?
But when I asked my resident assistant if I could change dorms, I recall her asking something along the lines of: "Have you considered learning more about Israel’s apartheid?"
I later learned she too was an SJP supporter.
Slowly, I learned more about Israel and Paleostine. As a student journalist covering campus politics nationwide for websites like USA TODAY and PJ Media, I covered stories about Jewish college students and antisemitism across the country. I thought I was doing something helpful. But the harassment continued.
Again, I appealed on Facebook. What should I do? Help?
Over the next week, more Jewish students, New Yorkers and Columbia alumni reached out. This time not by the dozens, but by the hundreds. They were appalled at what I was facing, but nobody had the power to do anything.
Nevertheless, they became almost like a family to me. During the weekends, summer, and winter breaks, Jewish rabbis and moms in Brooklyn graciously opened their homes to me when I had nowhere else I felt safe to stay.
They drove me to doctor appointments, connected me to journalism opportunities at Jewish-allied media companies, taught me about Halacha, how to cook meals for large parties and so much more. For all that, they asked me to sign nothing.
Once, while staying with a rabbi during my sophomore year in the summer, after a year of living with Paleostinian activists, I asked whether I should convert to Judaism.
I was already learning the basics of keeping kosher, some of the Shabbat prayers, and bits and pieces of Halacha (Jewish law). So why not convert? Plus, wouldn’t this make my "landlords" happy?
Nay, the rabbi’s wife said. "We adore you.. You don’t have to convert to stay here. There’s no pressure." Phew.
But that was less of a deterrent as it was an inspiration. I continued studying Judaism anyway, hanging out in shuls in Crown Heights and Midwood with my friends to study Torah and Yiddish words, and observing the Jewish holidays in a rudimentary way.
Over at Barnard — during the school week — I joined the school newspaper.
But one night, after I published a column in The Columbia Spectator, the Columbia University newspaper, a young man named Benjamin reached out to applaud one of my articles. I was excited. He was cute. Over on Twitter, I had built up over 18,000 followers, and my articles were going viral. That’s how he found me: Twitter. Of all places. I had pledged not to meet my fans, but something was different about him. But eventually, we fell in love.
I soon arranged my Columbia classes so that I could leave campus on Thursday night to see Benjamin in New Jersey, and come back Monday or Tuesday morning. The less time I spent on campus, the less I was harassed. The less I was seen, the less harassment I heard. The less I said about the harassment, the less bullies felt empowered to intimidate me.
Sometimes, the most gracious thing you can do in the face of hate: is to stay silent.
At one point during junior year: I had read enough. I didn’t support the chants of "to the river to the sea", the catchphrases about "globalizing the intifada" and knew I didn’t support Paleostinian’s vision of "Israel" without Jewish people.
I continued publishing stories about Jewish students and antisemitism. Meanwhile,
...back at the abandoned silver mine, there was another explosion...
...back at the pond, the radioactive tadpoles grown into frogs. Really big frogs, in fact...
I mostly kept quiet about my own harassment, not wanting to invite extra attention, scared that I would anger more hate to descend on me.
My senior year, I skipped the keffiyah-fest known as graduation, scared to be seen on campus. When I got my 2018 graduation yearbook in the mail: my name was suspiciously absent. But I’m cautious to point the finger: it could have been a mistake. But I doubt it.
Later, when Benjamin and I moved to Boca Raton in 2023 after the October 7th attack on Israel, I felt ready: I felt called to Judaism. To me, converting wasn’t a choice. It was my destiny. There’s absolutely no other way I felt I could live my life without Judaism. By then, Jews were more of my family than the "family" I had grown up with.
Summary written by @NorthernFront_NATO on their Telegram channel:
[ColonelCassad] The RAND Corporation report, Dispersed, Disguised, and Degradable, is an analysis of new approaches to warfare based on the experience of the conflict in Ukraine.
It emphasizes that modern warfare is no longer limited to traditional fronts and territorial gains, but is becoming a process in which not only tactical decisions are important, but also the ability to adapt to changing conditions. Ukraine is viewed as a testing ground for new strategies that can be applied in future conflicts, especially against countries such as Russia and China.
The report focuses on the concepts of decentralization, camouflage, and flexibility. RAND argues that traditional centralized military structures are becoming vulnerable, and the emphasis is shifting to the use of small autonomous groups and technologies such as drones.
War is now perceived as controlled chaos, where success depends not on the outright destruction of the enemy, but on the ability to disorient him and control the narrative. This leads to the need for constant adaptation and rethinking of approaches to warfare.
In conclusion, the report emphasizes that the West must prepare for long-term conflicts, where victory is not the end goal, but rather a process of managing the adversary's vulnerabilities. The conflict in Ukraine has become not just a temporary incident, but a new standard for future wars, where control over the perception and interpretation of events becomes a key element of strategy.
Thus, RAND offers a new architecture for understanding and waging war in conditions of global instability, where chaos becomes a resource of power.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
