The Senate is currently passing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The OBBBA envisages enormous changes to the US budget, including drastic cuts in social spending, particularly in healthcare. The law primarily benefits those sections of the population who do not actually need support.
Two points strike me here: it is Trump’s law, which explains some of its irrationality and brutality. A lot of support is coming primarily from the Republicans. How can that be? Surely there should be Republican senators who must recognize how harmful these provisions are to US society and its future, how obscene it is to run up the national debt on the backs of the most socially disadvantaged. Why is there no resistance within the GOP? Why is everyone bowing to Trump’s will? There is hardly any protest within society either. People seem just to ignore the OBBBA. How can that be?
Even here in the SDMB, I haven’t seen a thread on this topic yet. Are dopers not affected? Is no one interested in the consequences of the OBBBA in medical care or social services and future consequences for the lives of normal American people?
Perhaps my perspective stems from the fact that I don’t live in the US?
That sounds resigned. Will the population simply accept this? Without any protest? Even the Democrats are hardly saying anything. Have the Americans given up? Are they accepting Trump’s rule as a stroke of fate?
I can only speak for myself, but I view it (or something worse) as a fait accompli. It’s not like the US public didn’t know what Trump’s policies were, or what legislation he would push. It’s not like the US public didn’t know that basically every single GOP legislator is full MAGA at this point. Hell, the one Senator that dared speak against the bill has already announced he won’t run for reelection - he knows he’s a dead man walking in the MAGA GOP.
The GOP is the MAGA party now. Everybody knew that, and yet they still won both houses of Congress and the Presidency. I don’t see why anybody should be shocked or surprised at this bill. Honestly, in a few ways I’m shocked it’s not quite a bit worse.
Trump won the election. His MAGA party won both Houses of Congress. This is what the American people, as determined by the voters, want.
The opposition can complain, and they have. There can be protests, and there have been. But ultimately, if people really care, they will vote the GOP out of power next year. I have my doubts that will happen.
Perhaps. Let me simplify it: The way Trump and the American Republican party appear really is the way they are, and all of us in the US are already fully aware of that. Most of us here are already about as disgusted as we can get by that, and most of his supporters like the way they are.
I’m an American transplant to Europe. Been here almost a decade. I have a view of both sides: the way Americans do things, and how Europeans see them.
People here, who are used to multi-party parliamentary systems, are consistently confused by the American model, and the limited avenues for pushback available to the opposition. There is also perplexity at the American reluctance to protest, compared to European people. (Here in Luxembourg, we just had a march of thousands and thousands of people complaining about pension reform.)
The basic reality is, when a party is elected and takes power, they have much greater latitude to enact their priorities than you’d see in Europe. The underlying assumption is, if the party is seen to be screwing things up, the voters will intervene and replace them in the next election.
So, yeah. Trump and his minions are passing this bill, and there’s essentially nothing anyone can do to stop them.
Americans by and large will do nothing to fight it. Oh sure, there will be “protests,” just like the two previous one that were more of fun parties than real protests.
Why? If you are not an undocumented person, or a brown person, etc., in your eyes it doesn’t affect you. Medicaid cuts? That’s for “old people,” and I’m not old too many will say. Plus, many already believe they won’t have Social Security and Medicare when they retire anyway so it’s no loss to them now, or in the future.
Americans consistently vote against their own interests. Americans are also in the here and now. The self-absorption is paramount in America.
All that said, when the true tentacles of this bill start to grab, it will be far too late. Yes, I’m painting a very, very dark picture. I know what my parents went through in their lives (Greatest Generation). I know how my generation (Boomers) blossomed from the fruits of their parents. The generations since have never experienced real hardship, real pain, real want.
Yes, you are right, I live on the continent, northeast from Luxembourg.
What you say is interesting, the different situations of the political parties and their consequences were not so clear to me before. From a European perspective, it is indeed difficult to understand why the population simply accepts the complete transformation of US society without real resistance. Quite a few Trump voters are likely to be negatively affected by the OBBBA. You are right, voters could vote against Trump in the next election, but only if there is another election, and a real election at that, not an election in the style of Putin. Good luck with that.
Honey, we marched – at least 5 million of us. Remember that? We are fielding anti-trump candidates for all the elected offices we possible can. We are protesting as strongly as we can. And maybe the tide will turn. But maybe it won’t, and the US will sink so deeply into fascism there will be no retrieving it. That’s about all there is to say.
In addition to all the horrible stuff inside the bill, the name itself is more evidence that the GOP will do whatever they can to prostrate themselves to their great leader. That name is so idiotic. I imagine if Kim Jong Un wanted something called that, the legislature would fall over themselves trying to please him. Sad to see it here, too.
Since I’m just a random person who is too obsessed with politics, I’ll defer to someone who is qualified on this: Lisa Murkowski.
See her tweet below where she explains that this is a horrible bill, but she cast the deciding vote for it because she got a payoff for her state of less than a million people in exchange for likely kicking 15 million Americans off of medicaid.
She might have also mentioned that its going to put the country, many of who’s residents can’t finance their states by drilling oil, into $3T of additional debt.
There is an article in The Atlantic by Annie Lowrey specifying the details of the bill. My hair stands on end. Maybe they exaggerate the consequences, it sounds dystopic. It might dawn on the American people that if they don’t fight fascism early enough, it might be too late. Once they are in the complete grip of fascist tentacles, there is no way out. And it doesn’t help if you are not old, not brown, are legal or else.
Over the weekend, I visited a small park. There was a sunken garden, and a museum showing Wolly Mammoth bones discovered during a lake excavation. The lake was created as a Public Works Project during the Depression.
That got me thinking. During the Depression, we, as a country, banded together to help each other. We created massive public works projects to put people to work. What if the Depression happened today? Would we, as a people, have the will to help those in need? This bill answers that with a resounding “NO!” Oh, it couches the SNAP cuts and the Medicaid cuts under “reasonable-sounding” work requirements, but they are really intended to remove the most needy from the rolls. Meanwhile, continuing massive tax cuts for the wealthy shows they have no qualms whatsoever about raising the national debt. Very typical Wall Street logic - “It advantages me in the short term, so it must be good!”
There’s some resistance. I’m sure Susan Collins is very concerned. 3 Republican Senators voted against it; Vance had to come in with the deciding vote. Exactly the same scenario as the Pete Hegseth nomination. Both parties get a lot of money from Wall Street, so it’s hard to vote against something that helps the wealthy. The electorate in red states sees the “reasonable” work requirements without understanding the effects. There is a huge concern with “replacement theory” in the US, so the “deport them all” stuff plays well in Peoria. (for those who don’t recognize the phrase, during the Vaudeville days, “will it play in Peoria” meant “how will the common people react?” The simple farmers. People of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know… morons.) Basically, “it doesn’t directly effect me, so it’s OK.” The politicians are worried about getting re-elected, so they’re going to either vote for what the people want or vote for what they can convince the people that they want. They’re not going to vote for what’s right for the country and then convince their voters that it’s what they should want.
We know the answer to this. During the Great Recession, the Republicans demanded and got “austerity,” which greatly increased the pain that ordinary Americans went through, with higher unemployment for longer.