One Big Bloated Bull

Liam F.
Jul 3
14 min read

Just a few days ago, I was in the process of leaving for work. Shoes on, phone, wallet, keys, and earbuds accounted for, ready to go on my way. Just before stepping out the door, however, I remembered my tuna sandwich in my fridge. Wrapped in tin foil the night before, with a dash of celery salt, waiting to be eaten a few hours later.

I couldn’t leave my sandwich in the fridge. And getting takeout, again, was just the thing I was trying to avoid.

So I trekked back into the house, into the kitchen, grabbed my sandwich, and packed it away. But before I could even begin to walk back to the door, my phone buzzed. Famous last words.

One clickbait headline notification and a very abbreviated doom scroll later, FOUR minutes had passed since I turned around for the tuna. Four extremely valuable minutes for my already poorly timed departure for the train station.

A fast walk turned into a light jog, then into as much of a sprint as one with a backpack and poor fitness habits can do. From afar, I watched the train pull into the station. Saw the whole loading and unloading of passengers, and then, watched it slowly depart onto its next stop.

I missed the damn train.

Thankfully, due to one of Long Island’s only redeemable qualities, its railroad system, I was able to head over to another station within walking distance and arrive at work only a few minutes late. (Sorry, Russ.)

Point is, it’s easy to get distracted. In the age of amusement, a quick dopamine hit is always in your pocket. Whether that be in the form of a tiny supercomputer or a gift of American innovation, also known as a Geek Bar, these effortlessly accessible means of pleasure exist to feed your addictions.

One of the tradeoffs of having everything in the palm of your hand? Not having the ability to sift through everything that lands there. Who knew that rapidly introducing 74 GB of information a day to a homo sapien after three hundred thousand years of nothing would cause harm?

The easy thing is to stay distracted. The comfortable thing is to stay distracted. They are desperately hoping that we all stay distracted.

So with that being said, let’s all put on a display of oppositional defiance and focus up.

The Fake News

Let’s play a game, full honors system, how many of these headlines have you either forgotten about or didn’t even hear about:

In no particular order of timing or importance…

Sure, we can keep going but twenty-one felt like enough.

Churn out and burn out. Throw so much shit at the wall that none of it has any room to stick. That’s the playbook. The last five months have been all in preparation for Trump’s magnum opus. His biggest, most “beautiful” piece of bull yet.

The Real News

Don’t let these titles fool you. All of these stories are important and real. But these are all just headfakes for the big Hail Mary play. The one that essentially guarantees the full-scale Trumpification of Washington.

The Big Beautiful Bill.

It’s very hard to pay attention to what those old farts on Capitol Hill are up to when the National Guard was deployed to Los Angeles. Meanwhile the firefighting unit is down to 40% capacity after deployment to LA.

It’s very hard to pay attention to what those old farts on Capitol Hill are up to when a state representative and her husband were assassinated in their homes, while another state senator was shot nine times along with his wife at their front door.

It’s very hard to pay attention to what those old farts on Capitol Hill are up to when nuclear sites are bombed without congressional approval, only cementing the image of weakness in the face of authoritarianism.

Sidebar: Obama’s intervention in Libya, Clinton’s bombing of Yugoslavia and even Biden’s involvement in strikes on the Houthis are very similar cases. But optics matter, and this makes Democrats look weak and uninvolved in global affairs.

It’s also hard to get an accurate representation of where the markets feel the world is going. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq both closed at record highs for the first time since February, then clinched new records again. By that account, things are going well, right?

It’s actually just some early proof of what the Big Beautiful Bill will do, a few people—or in this case corporations—get a lot richer. Everyone else gets poorer, but since the few are doing so well, the overall value of the market grows.

The Magnificent 7, or Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla, represents about one third of the overall value of the S&P 500, or the 500 most valuable companies in the U.S. stock exchange. This creates the illusion of success.

Yes, seven companies own one third of the wealth owned by the top five hundred companies. Sound familiar?

May was one of the best months in recent memory for the stock market. A really good month for the seven, who combined to account for 62% of the S&P’s advance, with six of the seven outperforming the market as a whole.

Hence the illusion of success. But the reality is, the few get richer and the many get poorer. Let the stock market serve as a preview of what’s to come.

The Bloated, Bogus Bill of Bankruptcy finally passed the Senate after over twenty-four hours of voting, with VP J.D. Vance casting the tie-breaking vote. He did the same in January to confirm Pete Hegseth and again to kill a bipartisan effort to rebuke Trump’s tariffs. (Both have worked so well for us)

It goes back to the House and if they approve it as-is, it goes to the White House. If the House makes any changes, that will force it back to the Senate, who must pass it as is.

The President has set a July 4th deadline, so he can probably exploit another holiday for his own ego stroking. So the House and Senate theoretically can go back and forth tearing the bill apart. But most Republicans will follow the artificial deadline to appease the Big Man.

So what will actually happen if the key provisions remain?

The Bill

If you’d like to educate yourself by reading the text of the bill on the congressional website, you’d be met with this message:

This text has been loaded in plain text format due to the large size of the XML/HTML file. Loading the XML/HTML in a new window may take several minutes or possibly cause your browser to become unresponsive.

Well, it definitely is big. How beautiful is it?

Taxes

The BBB will ensure the permanent extension of Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts & Jobs Act. Which sounds great, but favored the rich as the top quintile saw the highest cuts and the lowest quintile saw the lowest cuts.

Taxes were lowered more for the wealthiest 20% than the poorest 20% (-1.7% vs. 0.4%)

top 20% saw an almost six times greater boost to after-tax income than the bottom 20%. (2.3% vs. 0.4%)

The Child Tax Credit will be increased to $2,200, down from $2,500 when the House sent it

Increases the credit from $2,000 under the current code, which would go down to $1,000 when the current code expires at the end of the year

“SALT” Deduction Cap increase from $10,000 to $40,000 for incomes up to $500k (House kept it at $10k)

The SALT Cap gives people who pay higher state and local taxes the ability to lower their federal tax bill.

Someone making $150k who pays $20k in local/state taxes would be able to deduct the full $20k from their federal income (instead of the current $10k cap), potentially putting them in a lower federal tax bracket. (Any tax guys let me know if I f’d up)

Eliminates many Renewable Energy Tax Credits and creates a:

50% tax on wind and 30% tax for solar projects that use “materials obtained from prohibited foreign entities”. (Basically more tariffs)

Healthcare

Sixteen million people would lose health care by 2034 due to Medicaid cuts. The Congressional Budget Office estimates:

7.8 million people will become uninsured due to Medicaid cuts

4 million people will become uninsured due to marketplace cuts

4.2 million people will become uninsured because the bill does not extend premium tax credit enhancements (gives lower income people tax breaks to pay for healthcare)

Medicaid would be cut by $800 billion, the largest cut in the program’s history.

New work requirements introduced would also lead to:

5.2 million adults losing Medicaid coverage (according to CBO)

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates between 9.7 million and 14.4 million people would be at risk of losing coverage.

This would save $109 billion over the next ten years. Medicaid spending is projected to be $7.4 trillion, the cut would save the average American taxpayer only $650 over the next decade.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP, would be cut by $295 billion over the next ten years. More people than ever use food stamps in the U.S. About 42 million people or 12.5% of the population.

The Commonwealth Fund found that by as soon as 2029:

State gross domestic products will fall by $154 billion, 18% more than the $131 billion they would save the federal government.

The cuts would result in the loss of 1.2 million jobs nationwide, equivalent to a 0.8% increase in the unemployment rate.

States with higher rates of poverty would likely be harmed more. State and local tax revenues would fall by $12 billion. (Paired with SALT, a death sentence for both)

Rural hospitals will be shelled by the bill.

48% of rural hospitals operated at a loss in 2023, 92 have had to close in the last ten years (100 rural hospitals have had to stop delivering babies in the past five years)

47% of rural births in the U.S., are covered by Medicaid, 65% of nursing home residents in rural counties are covered by Medicaid.

1.8 million rural Americans will lose their Medicaid coverage by 2034. More than a $50 billion reduction to Medicaid spending to rural hospitals over ten years. 11.25% of the rural population would lose coverage

Spending

Defense Spending will increase by $153 billion

$25 billion for the 'Golden Dome' missile defense system

The SASC/HASC Defense Reconciliation Overview shows $29 billion for new shipbuilding, $25 billion for new munitions, $16 billion to expedite innovation for battlefield technologies, among other increases for nuclear and “Pacific” deterrence.

$9 billion to service member quality of life. 6% of the budget increase goes to the human underneath the uniform, 6,407 veterans died of suicide in 2022. At least 80% of veterans abuse drugs or alcohol.

7% of the population are veterans but almost 13% of the homeless population are veterans.

The CBO says the deficit would increase by $3.3 trillion over the next decade.

Tax cuts will be the main driver of revenue loss

This goes further than the next decade, if the tax code is permanent, the rich will get richer and be rewarded by paying lower taxes. The lower and middle class will suffer.

Gutting the IRS under DOGE will open the door to more “waste, fraud and abuse” and only increase the deficit some more.

The deficit can increase even more with some random Trump spending marathons, the guy loves to spend after all.

The Transfer of Wealth

An infant born in a low-income household will cost that family an additional $14,100 over its lifetime if the bill passes as is. The increase comes from the lack of social services (thanks to cuts) and lower wages stemming from stunted economic growth.

The other side of the coin, a high-income seventy year old would gain an additional $120,000 in wealth from the tax cuts.

CBO says the bill would cost the bottom 10% of American households $1,600 a year, or 4% of their income.

The top 10% of households would see a gain of $12,000 a year.

Middle income households will see a gain of $500-$1,000 annually.

The “No Tax on Tips & Overtime” section of the bill sounds good in theory, but what does it really mean?

Taxes on tips represent about $40 billion of the tax cuts (about 1%) and would do “nothing to boost the take-home pay of 98 percent of U.S. households.

One of the most hyped pieces of the legislation only represents 1% of the cuts. The vast majority of the cuts will impact the upper class and corporations.

The Washington Center for Equitable Growth found the tax cuts being the most regressive since Reagan’s 1981 Tax Cuts, the world’s first introduction to trickle-down economics or “Reaganomics."

We know that the bottom 20% of earners will see a 4% drop in annual income. In fact, it will be the bottom 40% of earners that will lose income due to the cuts. Only the top 60% of earners will see an income boost.

Basically, have money or else you’ll have even less. Cool.

The Murkowski Method

As a member of the United States Senate, you’re given the unique opportunity to serve not only the people of your own state, but of all fifty states. Shaping and approving legislation that supports your state’s best interests within those of the federal government. It’s a hard thing to get right, but one where the reward outweighs any headache or “Vote-a-rama” induced by the process.

The process is what makes our system great. Flawed? You bet your ass, but still the global model for effective government since our birth almost two hundred and fifty years ago.

So with that, I’d like you to envision Thomas Jefferson catching wind of Sen. Lisa Murkowski voting in favor of a massive government spending bill because she secured tax breaks for Native whalers in her state.

Yes, a U.S. Senator just bought herself some endorsements in exchange for the well-being of the rest of the country.

Or, one could argue that she’s just putting her own constituents over the rest of the country, a harsh but true reality of politics.

Well… no one had a gun to her head. She herself called the July 4 deadline “artificial,” and if she had the nation’s and Alaska’s best interest in mind, like she said she did, she wouldn’t have voted yes.

Would that have continued the never ending votes? Possibly…

But, possibly, instead of walking around the Capitol with a fucking Snuggie on, showing the whole world how much you’d like to go home and enjoy a little pinot while catching up on Love Island, do your goddamned job.

Her colleague from New Jersey, Sen. Cory Booker, stood and spoke for twenty-five hours and five minutes protesting the Trump administration’s DOGE efforts. Only yielding for short questions from other Senators, Booker did not sit, eat, sleep or use the bathroom for twenty-five consecutive hours.

Booker fasted and curbed water intake in the days leading up to his speech. He said there was “cramping up from lack of water.”

It’s understandable. You can’t expect everyone to have the will, desire, and strength to fight that hard for something. And that’s fine. We shouldn’t expect everyone to fight tooth and nail for our best interests, especially if it doesn’t benefit them directly.

And that’s okay. Not everyone is cut out to represent the masses in exchange for their own emotional, physical and mental well-being. Public office is hard, and we shouldn’t get angry at people for taking the easy way out, I sure did when I got my drive-thru coffee this morning.

So to those in power who chose to fight, you will be looked at as being on the right side of history.

But to those who choose the easy way, don’t accidentally book a round-trip when you leave Washington to head home.

…and to the senator, pack your blanket. I heard it gets cold in Alaska.

To Wrap

Within the time this piece was written, the bill and news cycle has changed many times. The cycle now favors the BBB story over any foreign war, Diddy’s acquittal on sex trafficking charges, and even a new Trump-Musk feud where the president vowed he “might have to put DOGE on Elon.”

Is it too little too late? Is it too little at all? It’s obvious that congressional Republicans have decided where they stand (By decided, I mean have been told) and with a majority, have the innate ability to pass what they want as long as they stick to party lines.

Which is what most are doing. North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis voted against the bill, and stated he was not attempting to “undermine the President”, but rather asked:

…why not take the time to make sure that we’re not going to have unintended consequences, which will also have, I think, substantial political consequences next year if we’re not careful.

A fair and coherent point. Rare. Where did that get Senator Tillis?

Oh, just a spot on the unemployment line.

Senator Tillis had to come out and make sure everyone knew he wasn’t “undermining the president” by voting against a bill. Something guaranteed to him by law, because he can vote however he pleases. But instead, he has to publicly declare he is not trying to undermine our fearless leader.

What a crock of shit.

We can either watch the largest transfer of debt from the old and rich, to the young and poor. In addition to that, we’ll watch rural hospitals close. We’ll watch tens of millions of Americans lose health insurance and people lose benefits that help put food on the tables in our country’s poorest ZIP codes.

The same people who elected Trump, will be the ones who suffer first and maybe the most. The same rural counties that have skewed further to the right since 2016 will watch their hospitals close, their neighbors lose their jobs and their family members lose their lives.

Hyperbole? One wishes.

But at least the country gets safer, right? Because defense spending will surpass a trillion dollars and we’ll see an additional $100 billion go to ICE and Border Protection. So… that’s good news during a time of global uncertainty? Right?

Question: Does a 64-year old woman with no criminal record, who never missed an appointment with immigration officials over the course of 47 years—someone who volunteered after Hurricane Katrina and not to mention posts cooking videos on YouTube represent a threat to our homeland?

If you answered yes, congratulations, you’re a scumbag.

I tried finding a nicer word, but it just doesn’t make sense to me that we should allocate money away from our poorest and most vulnerable, in exchange for gestapo-like policing inside of our borders.

“Illegal” or not, armed and masked agents who refuse to show ID and round up people into unmarked cars from off the street, their front lawns, or just by blasting into a home is not American. It should not be celebrated. May all involved face the unfettered wrath of our justice system on its finest day. (Unfortunately, not today.)

Using immigration enforcement to arrest those with criminal records was the standard. Last year, almost 72% of ICE arrests made were of those who had criminal convictions or pending charges.

So far in 2025, 65% of ICE detentions have 0 convictions, only 7% have violent crime convictions.

The Biden administration got more undocumented immigrants with criminal backgrounds off the street than Trump has. Without an inflated ICE budget or threatening agents if they don’t hit arrest quotas.

That’s neither here nor there. Fact of the matter is:

The nation’s richest and oldest will get to spend money on a credit card they aren’t liable for paying back.

The payments will come in many forms. One will be the financial side of things. Sending a nation already drowning in debt even further into the deep end. We usually can look ahead to the younger generation, but for the first time in American history, the average 30-year old is worse off than their parents were at 30.

Other forms of payment will include the loss of work, the loss of assets, the loss of medical insurance, new medical debt, losing nutritional benefits, the closing of hospitals, higher risk for serious injury, illness and of course, death.

We all have some older loved ones. Ones that we care about, and want nothing more for them than happiness and prosperity for years to come.

But would you give your already rich, dying uncle your credit card to use before he croaks? With no help from him and no money of your own to pay the tab?

I wouldn’t.

***'White House By Night' - Philippe Hugonnard***