There is a Republican split in congress. Republicans can only pass bills when they are unified.
A split Republican Party means gridlock with no bills passing. There were some senators and some in the house who were wanting to go hardcore on the deficit. This also would mean no bills passed to harm Elon. It also means the no bill passage route means the 2017 tax cuts expire. No new tax cuts. No new military spending. Actually get the deficit down to about $1 trillion per year. The Deficit hawks negotiate from the default no bills as a baseline.
About 10-15 Republican senators align with this deficit-hawk philosophy. However, not all of them may oppose this specific bill if it includes provisions they support or if party pressure sways them. For now, let’s consider this range as the potential pool of like-minded senators.
Party leadership might pressure some senators to support the bill, reducing defections. Let’s adjust:
Suppose only 5 deficit hawks (e.g., Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and a few others) hold firm, and Musk sways 2 more, totaling 7 opposed.
Then, 51 – 7 = 44 Republicans for, with 49 Democrats against, plus 7 Republicans against = 56 against. The vote becomes 44-56, still failing.
A split likely prevents the current bill from passing. A vote of 47-53 reflects a plausible scenario where a handful of deficit hawks (like Rand Paul) and Musk-influenced senators defect, leaving Republicans short of the 50 votes needed.
The leadership might then:
Negotiate: Modify the bill with spending cuts or other concessions to win back deficit hawks.
Push Forward: Risk a failed vote to force party unity, though this seems unlikely to succeed.
Abandon: Shelve the bill if opposition grows, especially with Musk amplifying public dissent.
Given the “deficit-increasing” nature and Musk’s opposition, the bill’s fate hinges on Republican unity. With significant resistance, it’s unlikely to muster 50 votes without changes. Thus, it fails initially, prompting revisions or a strategic retreat by the party.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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The deficit is not a problem if the economy grows at a faster rate than the interest rate. This allows it to shrink relatively… Reducing government spending, on value added goods and services, shrinks the money supply which is historically bad long term. Steve Keen is a top economist that I trust because he has the best, most detailed and useful economy math models that provide great insights.
Interesting conversation with Perplexity.ai on this.
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/acting-as-an-inbiased-team-of-0nlSZRBHQremHhp5KEWJLA#5
Maybe the threat of making changes to the budget so Democrats will pass it, might get these hawks to change their mind
We might see the Democrats effectively in control if a handful of Republicans of the opposite wing from the deficit hawks decide to vote with them. More likely than the deficit hawks prevailing.
Well actually as person that knows a bit about deficits and our total debt. The total debt is right now on the edge of being nonviable so the deficit can only safely grow at the rate of inflation (it would better if it was a least a bit lower than that.) Therefore it’s a really good thing that the deficit hawks are trying to take this bill down.
I always hear about the deficits and debt and how we need to get them down but the actual situation is this is impossible. It’s pointless t talk about the debt or the deficits unless you put this in context of the system that created them. The system of creating money in this country is set up to be a failure from the beginning. ALL money, every penny, in the US, the West and most of the world, is created with debt. So if we try to pay off the debt then we have to borrow more money to pay the interest on the debt, which creates, more debt. It is mathematically impossible to pay it off. If we do not have huge deficits the rising amount of cash needed to pay the interest on ALL the money created before will collapse the money supply and cause deflation or even worse stagflation. Where ever higher amounts of the GNP go towards the debt with a corresponding tightening of the money supply. So we HAVE to keep high deficits or the money supply will collapse.
The simple solution is one of two actions. One, stop creating money with debt, tax the FED into bankruptcy and take over their assets or declare war on the FED and take their assets.
People know this who are managing things but the same people refuse to put the case simply before the people as above.
There was a guy who tracked all the documents put out by the central banks and he showed that their plans were to change the system to a money supply system based on GNP and that the quantity of cash would be linked to this. I think the reason they have not been able to pull it off is it’s just more of the same with the same results in the long run. A continuous shaving off of profits from the entire GNP of any countries that use there “services”.
As an aside the rest of the world can NEVER keep up with China and maybe Japan because they own their central banks so they can funnel cash into businesses and even if those companies go bankrupt they can quietly write these debts off at the central bank level. This is exactly how the Japanese grew their high tech industries. I suspect the real estate troubles in China that the west was bleating on about destroying China, but never did, that the Chinese quietly wrote those debts off. We don’t hear about this because it might give other countries ideas about getting rid of their corrupt banking system.
Never mind that the bill stops judges ability to enforce court orders.
There really is no practical negotiated settlement compared to the default of no bill, no tax cut extension. There isn’t enough discretionary budget to cut to make up for the lost revenue from the tax cuts compared to the default of simply no bill.
Ultimately, we have to accept that the entire budget, save payments on the debt, (Which are constitutionally mandated!) is “discretionary”. And stop this bs of putting a large part of the spending beyond normal budgetary control.
But I’m pessimistic. Nothing structurally has changed from the many decades we’ve run unrelenting deficits, mostly at a time when interest payments were much smaller relative to the budget. I don’t see why the deficit hawks would win at this time.