AND NOW FOR THE CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS

After several weeks of the Trump-Musk onslaught against the American government, the House and Senate Republicans are stepping up to the plate with their Budget Resolution blueprints to forge reconciliation legislation for multiyear tax and spending plans. While court decisions and other public pressure might bottle up some Trump-Musk damaging actions, the Republican Congress could backstop the two dictators’ attacks by passing spending policies and law changes that legalize them.

Americans need to brace for the details coming this week from both the House and Senate; we got a peek from the Senate on Friday when the chair of the Budget Committee, Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, introduced an element of their spending plan on border security, immigration enforcement, and national defense with about $350 billion over four years, with a no-details direction to committees to cut equivalent amounts in the same period.

A tax cut plan has not yet been released, although the overall Republican scheme involves gigantic, virtually demented levels of tax cuts and revenue losses which they plan to pretend won’t take place because the tax cuts will stimulate such rapid economic growth that the revenue losses will be offset. The ten-year tax cut plan appears to be $ 5.5 trillion, but the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has warned that, depending on how the tax bills are written, the revenue loss risk over ten years could go as high as $11 trillion.

Speaker Johnson’s plan initially involved introducing a Budget Resolution on Feb.10, with directions to committees to “ mark up” spending details beginning this week, passing them the week of Feb. 17^th, reconciling differences with the Senate the week of Feb.27^th, and coming up with a Joint Resolution after that, which could then be passed by both Houses. The Senate, however, is on its own track, the schedule is ambitious and the House Republicans need virtual unanimity to pass radical legislation.

Johnson’s leaders in the House had come up with a plan for about $1 trillion in spending cuts over ten years, but the Far Right in the House has been demanding spending cuts of $2 ½ trillion over the same period. The merely very conservative vs. the far-right extremists have been negotiating over the weekend and we will see the result in coming days. The Medicaid program and the Affordable Care Act are the biggest spending cut targets because combined they are the largest expenditures of the Federal government after Social Security, Medicare, defense, and interest on the debt.

While a one, or two bill multiyear tax and spending reconciliation measure is in the works over the next several months, the March 14^th deadline for the long-dragging current Continuing Budget Resolution will arrive to keep the US government open and address the debt limit. Johnson may need Democratic votes to keep the government open, but what concessions the Democrats might be able to win are open to question.

A budget battle will be ongoing while the damage from the Trump-Musk executive branch wrecking ball continues.