The Big Budget Bill Is BS

Lankford Spins Atrocity As Something ‘Great’

I am among many, no doubt, who received a bulk email from Oklahoma’s senior U.S. Sen. James Lankford. It arrived in my inbox hours after Veep J.D. Vance broke the 50-50 tie to pass the Trump administration’s One Big Bullshit Budget bill [OBBB].

I think that’s what they’re calling it.

At any rate, as one would expect from Lankford, his email to constituents highlights numerous “great” provisions of the Senate’s version of the OBBB. A number of Lankford’s bullet points beg for deconstruction. Allow me.

“Here,” Lankford begins, “are some of the great things the bill does:”

To help hardworking families, no federal tax on tips or overtime

My comments: Most “hardworking families,” obviously, will not qualify for this arbitrary criteria for tax-exempt income. While it's open for debate, I personally do not see tax-free tips and overtime as particularly fair. Even if I did, this token tax relief for workers does not in one’s wildest imagination balance out the bill’s permanent tax cuts for the rich or their devastating impact on millions of Americans.

The primary reason this is in the budget bill, in fact, is to distract from multi-millionaires being given tax relief at the expense of essential benefits like health care and food access. As Lankford does here, Republicans can point to it as an example of how they are attending to average Americans, not just the millionaire/billionaire class. It makes for a flimsy beard.

Freezes tax brackets for every American so no one sees the scheduled tax increase next year

My comments: This includes the highest income Americans who can afford to pay more. There is a good reason our income tax is progressive rather than regressive, which this seeks to reverse. By refusing to even consider raising taxes on the very wealthy, while slashing benefits to the poor, this is not a bullet point to brag about.

Planned Parenthood is defunded for the next year

My comments: Many people mistakenly believe that federal dollars support abortions generally at Planned Parenthood. This hasn’t been the case since passage of the Hyde Amendment in 1976, which prohibits federal funding for abortions except when the mother’s life is endangered or pregnancy is the result of rape or incest. That narrow category of abortions are the only ones this provision of the budget will stop funding [through Medicaid], since federal funding for all other abortions is already long-prohibited. Even many pro-life Americans support the exceptions that are now being eliminated. Also, Planned Parenthood is not merely an abortion provider. In fact, in Oklahoma their clinics stopped offering abortions even before the law required them to.

What else, then, will this budget provision curtail? The answer is Planned Parenthood’s non-abortion health care services for low-income women: PAP smears, STI testing and treatment, pregnancy testing, contraceptives, and cancer screenings. Baby, meet bathwater.

Increases the efficiency of our social safety net programs

My comment: “Efficiency” here is a grotesque misnomer. In this case, it is a euphemism for disqualifying millions from affordable health care access, WIC assistance, and food benefits.

Medicaid, Medicare, and premium subsidies for the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance marketplace will be slashed. The Congressional Budget Office [CBO] warns that almost 12 million Americans who are currently insured will likely lose their coverage as a result of this bill, as will millions more due to other Trump administration policies. This is in addition to the 26 million Americans who already lack health insurance [about 8% of the U.S. population]. $1.1 trillion will be cut from health care spending, almost all of which will come from Medicaid.

Adding a work requirement, by the way, turns out not to be an effective way to encourage employment. The state of Georgia tried this. Employment did not increase; the number of uninsured did.

Also, making Medicaid recipients re-certify their eligibility every 30 days is an enormous barrier. Both these changes, in fact, are well known not as means to efficiency, but as “administrative barriers” – red tape - causing qualified recipients to lose their health insurance.

Further, as CNBC reports on CBO’s latest analysis, “The funding cuts go beyond insurance coverage: The loss of that funding could gut many rural hospitals that disproportionately rely on federal spending.”

Aside from Medicaid cuts, the budget bill would reduce SNAP benefits, exasperating the problem of food insecurity. In Oklahoma, for example, about 25% of our children live in food-insecure homes, as do 17% of our adults and seniors. Lack of adequate nutrition contributes to our state ranking among the lowest in the nation in health outcomes.

This bullet point is not about efficiency or eliminating fraud. It’s about paying for tax cuts for the richest among us at the expense of the most vulnerable. Pardon my language, but “efficiency of our social safety net” my ass.

Boosts domestic energy production for all base load power and it repeals Biden’s oil and gas tax penalty

My comment: This is a convoluted reference to getting deeper into the pockets of the fossil fuel industry and the reprehensible short-sightedness of ignoring alternative energy. Profits over responsibility during a globally devastating environmental crisis.

It is a mystery to me why addressing that crisis is somehow considered foolish to conservatives. Stewardship of the environment was not always considered “woke.” Republican President Richard Nixon – hardly a hero to liberals – prioritized it, creating the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. Yes, it resulted by design – conservative design – regulations. When it comes to clean air, water, land, and the global health required to sustain human life, regulations are a critical tool. This again should be a bipartisan priority. But the oil & gas industry knows how to line pockets of the powerful.

Remember Trump’s campaign bribe, extolling the industry to donate millions to his presidential run in exchange for policies that will lavish upon them enormous profits through deregulation? This part of the proposed budget is his part of the deal.

This administration’s level of corruption is unprecedented; this is further evidence of that ugly truth. It is more than disheartening that Congress is on the verge of enabling it through this bill, shirking responsibility for stewardship of the planet.

$160 billion to finish the wall, hire Border Patrol and ICE, and secure the border

My comment: Wasn’t that wall supposed to be built during his first term? And paid for by Mexico? I suppose it’s already become old fashioned to refer to those blatant lies.

Wall boondoggle aside, the bloated funding in this bill for immigration control is as outrageous as it is eye-popping: $170 billion for ICE.

Talk about waste! It is a betrayal, too, of the bipartisan bill carefully crafted during the Biden administration, with Lankford playing a crucial role in representing Republican interests. Exposing a complete disregard for ethics, Trump torpedoed that effort because he didn’t want Biden to get credit for fixing the “broken” system, thereby robbing him of his favorite red meat campaign issue.

A staggering amount of money will go to scaling up detention centers, while at the same time the number of immigration judges will be limited, revealing the administration’s preference of imprisonment over due process.

As The Guardian reports, ICE is set to become the largest-funded federal law enforcement agency by far – with more than double the funding for all other such agencies [DEA, ATF, FBI, IRS] combined.

This is unprecedented and disportionate, not to mention ripe for fraud, waste, and abuse. By abuse, I don’t mean financial malfeasance alone [is DOGE watching?]. We are already seeing on a daily basis unacceptable abuse of targeted immigrants. Officers are replacing established law enforcement practices with Gestapo tactics.

Effectively addressing the nation's problems related to immigration does not require this radical, draconian approach. This was proven by the aforementioned bipartisan border control bill Lankford helped negotiate in 2024 – and which Trump and his sycophants cynically sabotaged before he was even elected.

Lankford’s email glorifying the OBBB contains other bullet points. I offer no comment on these because I don’t know enough about them to have a well-informed opinion. [I wish this hesitation to opine when not up to speed were more widespread.] Even lawmakers are admitting their struggle to wrap their heads around the details in this nearly 1,000-page bill being hurried through Congress.

To be fair, I presume the bill includes some reasonable provisions. The examples above – what Lankford calls “great things” – are, however, toxic.

Toxic enough on their own to make this bill – far from being beautiful – a poison pill the American people should not have to swallow.

Meanwhile, not one of Oklahoma’s Congressional delegation is among those signaling they have any problems with the bill. Let’s remember this when they run for re-election next year.