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Putting the Reconciliation Resolution in Context-2025-03-11

“For context, a $2.8 trillion reconciliation bill – with nearly all the borrowing between 2026 and 2034 – would:

Equal more than all spending programs except for the Social Security retirement program, Medicare, Medicaid, net interest, veterans’ and defense spending.
Equal two times as much as Medicare Part D, almost three times as much as the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit, and five times as much as foreign aid from USAID and the State Department.
Add more to the deficit than any legislation enacted in the past decade, including 50 percent more than the American Rescue Plan Act, twice as much as the original Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and seven times as much as the bipartisan infrastructure law”

#economy #taxes #finance #govt #govt/bills #people/Trump #trump-admin-actions #news #stats

·crfb.org·Mar 15, 2025

Putting the Reconciliation Resolution in Context-2025-03-11

One last look at why Harris lost the 2024 election.

"The fog of war" is an expression that describes uncertainty about your adversary's capabilities and intentions while in the middle of battle. But it's also an appropriate way to describe our knowledge and understanding of history while living through it.

Everyone in the media seems to want this election to be about the issue they care most about, or to find a way to answer “why Trump won” or “what happened to the Democratic party” in a few sentences. I think that kind of quick summation is impossible. Elections are always decided by a confluence of several factors, some more important than others, and today I’m trying to lay out those factors I suspect were most relevant. That’s the goal: not to give a single, definitive answer, but a holistic and overarching one.

A lot of people, including Democratic strategists, have tried to explain to voters why they shouldn’t feel this way. They've pointed to low unemployment, inflation dissipating, and GDP growth — traditional metrics for measuring economic success — as proof that Bidenomics was working. But these macro numbers didn’t soothe the reality of what was happening at the granular level. Very few Democrats, and very few pundits, seem to have grasped this.

it turned out that Trump's 2020 performance (even in a loss) was the beginning of a new trend, not a fluke. While Democrats were focused on winning back white working-class voters, they actually lost support among their traditionally more multiethnic base.