Photo courtesy of Allison Silberberg
Former Alexandria Mayor Allison Silberberg
With a tie vote today, all but three of the Republicans in the Senate voted aye and then needed Vice President JD Vance to cast the tie-breaking vote that pushed the massive and destructive Big, Beautiful Bill (BBB) over the top, but barely. Now the BBB will go back to the House. The BBB is anything but beautiful. It is misnamed and not what it seems at all. BBB is the ultimate hat trick.
Friends keep texting to ask about the real story behind the sausage making. I had the honor of working on the Hill for Senator Lloyd M. Bentsen (D-TX) in the early 1990s when he was the Chair of the Senate Finance Committee. I was on his personal staff and oversaw his research assistants. My official title was Chief Research Assistant/Chief Editor. I was hired to help explain complex legislation and positions in a plainspoken way.
At the time, there was some kind of unwritten honor code among many members of Congress, and it was basically: do what is in the best interest of our country. This code connected them all as Americans and was in large part why those on both sides of the aisle were able to find a compromise regarding many issues such as immigration reform in 1986. There were huge disagreements for sure, but that honor code was a powerful force.
They found common ground many times and should be able to do so now. For decades, our nation has done outstanding, breakthrough medical research on every disease. It would be tragic to slash the funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in particular the National Cancer Institute. All of us have known those who have suffered from these illnesses. The NIH budget is miniscule in comparison to so many parts of the budget. We should actually increase their budget rather than chop it.
A brilliant, young friend at NIH told me that many co-workers have been let go or are leaving and that many of the top young researchers who were planning or hoping to go to NIH can see the writing on the wall and are heading to consulting. The nation and the world will suffer. Medical breakthroughs are not going to happen or not nearly as fast. Medical research is a strong example of where our dollars have made things far better for tens of millions of Americans and countless millions around the world, and NIH is on the cusp of incredible breakthroughs. This is not red or blue, just a smart investment.
Here are the bare bones facts for the current BBB; it is unfair and dangerous.
Like a doctor, an elected official must first do no harm. Better yet, an elected should strive to make things better in the country.
Second, an elected wants to leave things better than the way they found the situation, and in terms of the budget, you don’t want to put the bond rating at risk. A poor bond rating or a drop in your rating (at the city, state, or federal level) can mean millions of dollars lost. As a mayor of Alexandria, Virginia, maintaining our AAA bond rating was always a top priority for me. I wanted to make my city even stronger financially. At the federal level, it needs to be the same.
Over a decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the BBB would add about $3.5 trillion to our debt, plus the interest on the debt. That would set our nation on a financial death spiral. We are going in the wrong direction.
In 1990, Senator Bentsen as Chair of the Senate Finance Committee and his colleagues had a Pay-Go Rule, which meant basically that our country should pay as it goes. Bentsen was a huge advocate of the Pay-Go Rule. If the Senate Finance Committee cut a tax, they had to find a way to pay for it. Perhaps they increased a “sin tax,” as they called it regarding a tax on cigarettes or liquor. But they had to find a way to pay for the tax cut or it didn’t make it out of committee. We all use such basic budgeting in our lives.
Today, there are still rules that guide the Senate and House, but their leadership needs to actually follow the rules, not crush them. The Republicans in the Senate literally just changed how the accounting is handled. It’s a new way of counting! That is absurd and now part of the hat trick.
A hat trick makes you look at something and see it differently than what it is. It is like a shell game at the carnival. It’s a trick, and the BBB is a bad hat trick.
The proponents of the BBB act like everyone will get a historic tax cut, but that is so highly unlikely unless everyone is at the very top income tier. And that is laughable at best. The vast majority of Americans are not in that top tier. Remember as Warren Buffet likes to say, why should he pay less in tax than his secretary? He is saying it’s not fair and he has called it out.
We the people need to call out the BBB for what it is. Like in baseball, we need our leaders to call balls and strikes for what these proposals in the BBB really are and not what the proponents want us to believe. We need the truth, not gimmicks. So here is some straight talk.
Let’s say your brother is a waiter and he is thrilled about not having to pay taxes on his tips, which is one of the BBB’s proposals. But does he realize that the BBB will cause him and a lot of his friends and millions of others to lose their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act (ACA)? The BBB will slash Medicaid as well as the moneys that go toward subsidizing the health insurance for millions through the ACA. As the BBB teases folks with a “no tax on tips” proposal (a pittance compared to the very top income tier which will see a sizable drop in tax liability), the BBB will also stab low- and middle-income folks in the gut in terms of their ACA health insurance. That is a classic hat trick.
The BBB means in the real world that millions of Americans will lose their health insurance and won’t get proper, timely medical treatment. As a result, they will inundate our emergency rooms, which will then increase costs for all of us. Most importantly, people without health insurance won’t be diagnosed as early. Diseases, if caught early, give a patient a far better chance of survival. With the BBB, at least 17 million Americans will lose their health insurance coverage.
The ACA is a phenomenal success and very popular. Remember what it was like before the ACA when an insurance company would discuss your pre-existing conditions and then deny coverage? Have we forgotten how horrible that was?
To pay for those top tier tax cuts, the BBB also slashes funding for SNAP, which provides much-needed food assistance to tens of millions of Americans every day. We will see a huge increase in food insecurity at a time of rising grocery bills, affecting millions of American children and families. Children need consistent nutrition to learn and grow. We have one chance to help our nation’s kids reach their potential. What a short-sighted way to pay for those tax cuts for the top tier folks. And the BBB will slash funding for CHIP, a crucial program that for decades has provided health insurance for our must vulnerable children.
But wait, there’s more!
The BBB is terribly irresponsible because it will blow up the national debt while slashing Medicaid, the ACA, SNAP, CHIP, and NIH, to name a few. Here is the icing on the cake. The tax cuts for the top tier will be so massive and cause such a financial death spiral in terms of the debt that there will be what is known as a trigger. No one is talking about this.
A trigger is a fancy term used on the Hill and basically means that the Congress will be forced to cut Medicare (one of the entitlements) in order to handle the massive debt. Medicaid is for our very low income and most vulnerable. Medicare is health care for ALL Americans age 65 or older. All of us pay into Medicare. We earn it. It is critical for our nation’s seniors.
Before Medicare, we know that our seniors suffered horribly if they got sick. Please show me an older American without any health challenges. Sadly, all of us or a loved one will get sick someday. Medicare and Medicaid are a significant part of our nation’s social safety net, paid in large part by all of us with our FICA contributions that we pay with taxes. Knowing that the BBB will trigger automatic cuts to Medicare is part of the hat trick because no one is talking about it. That is particularly shameful. The public, especially the elderly, will never see it coming until it’s too late.
The BBB is being sold as one thing, but at every turn, it is in fact a ruse, a lie, a hat trick that is dangerous. People will suffer. Many will die.
Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) said over the weekend that he could not in good conscience support the BBB and then shared the truth on the Senate floor when he said bravely, “What do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years, when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding is not there anymore?”
The BBB is already extremely unpopular in all polling of the public. Imagine the reaction after the public finds out what the BBB really means for themselves, their kids, and elderly parents. Spread the word about this hat trick.
All electeds from all sides in the Senate needed to do what is in the best interest of the people of our country. What a disaster. Now in the House, here is the rallying cry. Don’t slash those critical programs and don’t balloon the debt. Stop with the gimmicks, clever lines, and funny math. Let’s tell the truth. Stop the madness. Leave the hat trick at the circus. Future generations will thank you. Let’s redo this BBB before it’s too late. Serve with compassion, a conscience, and a calculator.
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Allison Silberberg is a writer, advocate, and public affairs/public policy consultant. She served as mayor of Alexandria, Virginia, 2016-2019. Her work includes working on staff on Capitol Hill for Senator Lloyd M. Bentsen (D-TX). She is the author of “Visionaries In Our Midst: Ordinary People who are Changing our World,” which hit #1 on Amazon’s List for Philanthropy & Charity. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Dallas Morning News, on PBS.org.
