Coming to Democratic Attack Ads Near You...

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. Despite gerrymandering wins, things look bad for the GOP in part because the Iran War has gone badly.  Because of the war, the economy is foundering.

Allen Smith at NBC:

President Donald Trump told reporters on Tuesday that he is not weighing the economic burden of the Iran war on everyday Americans when negotiating a deal with the country’s leadership.

Speaking on the White House South Lawn before departing for a diplomatic trip to China, Trump was asked to what extent “Americans’ financial situations” were motivating him to make a deal with Iran.

“Not even a little bit,” Trump replied. “The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran — they can’t have a nuclear weapon. I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing — we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all.”

Ariel Edwards-Levy at CNN:

A new CNN poll conducted by SSRS finds that 77% – including a majority of Republicans – say that Trump’s policies have increased the cost of living in their own community. Roughly two-thirds of Americans say that Trump’s policies have worsened economic conditions in the country. And Trump’s approval rating stands at 30% on the economy, a career low.

 Zachary Basu at Axios:

The big picture: The affordability crisis that fueled Trump's return to power has become a five-alarm threat to his presidency — even as GDP growth, fueled largely by the AI boom, remains strong on paper.

1. Prices are surging: Inflation spiked to 3.8% in April as the Iran war pushed the national average price of gas above $4.50 a gallon.Economists fear the energy shock is beginning to ripple through the broader economy, pushing up the cost of groceries, airfare, electricity and other essentials Americans rely on every day.

2. Paychecks are shrinking: Tuesday's inflation report showed that prices are outpacing wages for the first time in three years, erasing gains in real purchasing power.American households have absorbed a rise of nearly 30% in consumer prices since the pandemic — a cumulative toll that has never fully healed, Axios' Courtenay Brown reports.

3. Debt is mounting: Americans are increasingly leaning on credit cards and loans to absorb rising costs, with consumer borrowing posting its biggest monthly jump in March since late 2022.The personal savings rate fell to 3.6% in March, its lowest level since 2022, as lower-income households burn through savings to cover essentials.

4. Confidence is collapsing: Consumer sentiment has cratered to record lows as Americans grow pessimistic about the economy and their own financial futures.A new YouGov/Economist poll found that 59% say the economy is getting worse, while just 15% say it's improving. More than two-thirds of Americans say the country feels "out of control."

5. Main Street is souring: The National Federation of Independent Business says optimism around future business conditions and expansion plans has fallen to its lowest level since before Trump's reelection.

Shutdown, Obamacare, and the Debt

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments.  Americans are noticing.

Chris Stirwalt at The Hill:

Two big data points in the headlines this week: 1) The average cost of a family health insurance plan will be $27,000 for coverage next year and 2) The federal debt grew faster than any time other than the pandemic and surpassed $38 trillion Wednesday.

...

Democrats have already won the shutdown. Whether it ends today or on Nov. 1, when the open enrollment period for health insurance begins in most places, the shutdown will have dramatically increased the pressure on Republicans over rising health costs. The GOP has already agreed to extend enhanced ObamaCare subsidies, but is insisting the vote will come after the government is reopened, not as a condition for reopening it.

...

Which is all a long way of saying that in that way, Democrats have already won the shutdown. Whether it ends today or on Nov. 1, when the open enrollment period for health insurance begins in most places, the shutdown will have dramatically increased the pressure on Republicans over rising health costs. The GOP has already agreed to extend enhanced ObamaCare subsidies, but is insisting the vote will come after the government is reopened, not as a condition for reopening it.

Either way, when they do, Republicans will be acceding to Democrats’ demands to have the government provide more subsidies to offset the consequences of a cost spiral that itself is partly caused by … subsidies.

So Washington’s response to those two big new numbers this week will most assuredly make them both worse.

The Megabill Missed Opportunity

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics.

Congress is about to pass the unpopular debt-exploding, Medicaid-cutting megabill. Charlie Mahtesian at Politico:

One astute conservative student of the realignment likened the legislation “to a death march through a series of choices that nobody really wanted to be making.”

“[It’s] not something that has an especially coherent logic to it or much prospect of actually accomplishing the things that I think people want,” Oren Cass, founder of the think tank American Compass and a leading advocate of conservative economic populism, told POLITICO Magazine recently.

The failure to imbue the legislation with more of a Trumpist ideological throughline may be due to a few factors; perhaps it’s Trump’s well-known aversion to wonky policy details, or the fact that most Republican lawmakers are still loyal to the Reaganite economic policy they came up with even as they now publicly bow to Trump.

But whether the sprawling bill is ultimately judged a policy success or failure, it lacks an original vision to hold together the constituencies Trump has improbably knitted together — tax relief, border spending, safety net cuts and Biden policy rollbacks aren’t a theory of the case. Sure, it has a few Trumpian frills that nod to the president’s populist campaign pledges, but they are largely small-bore and were scaled back by senators anyway. “No tax on tips” became a temporary tax deduction on tips, for instance. The brief musings about a tax hike on upper-income earners quickly were extinguished by opposition from Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Decades from now, no one will point to this legislation as a key building block of a lasting Republican coalition. It’s more likely to be remembered for the $3.3 trillion it is estimated to add to the national debt.

The legislation isn’t just a missed opportunity. It’s also a striking departure from the more disciplined efforts to reshape and reckon with an evolving party that happened in the last Republican administration before Trump. When George W. Bush occupied the White House, Karl Rove, his political architect, pursued a master plan to lock in the party’s newly emerging coalition and ensure its viability over the long haul. The creation of Medicare Part D, the program’s new prescription drug benefit, was designed to blunt the Democratic advantage on health care issues. Immigration reform, which failed, was a nod toward consolidating Bush’s gains with Latino voters.

The Iraq debacle made the efforts moot, but some of the residual effects of Rove’s work remains visible today: the GOP’s edge in the exurbs, its dominant position among evangelicals, the party’s gains with Catholics.

If anything, the megabill threatens to peel off some of the new constituencies of the ascendant Republican coalition or give them cause for concern. The Medicaid spending cuts stand to hit working class people of color and in rural America hard, from the Trump Belt of Appalachia to the Southwest. The income tax cuts and expanded child care tax credit will be warmly welcomed, but wealthier Americans will benefit more.

It’s revealing that there is no quarter of the new coalition that is wildly enthusiastic about the package. Polling suggests Americans largely disapprove of the megabill, though there is support for some of its individual provisions. More important, from the standpoint of the future of the MAGA coalition, are findings like this one: According to a June Washington Post-Ipsos poll on the bill, non-white, non-college graduates — an important part of the new coalition — oppose it by a 41 percent to 18 percent margin. Without voters like them, it isn’t really much of a realignment.

One Big Fiasco

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start. Trump and his congressional supporters are on track to blow up the federal debt.

CBO:

The Congressional Budget Office and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) previously reported that H.R. 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, as passed by the House of Representatives on May 22, would increase the primary deficit by $2.4 trillion over the 2025-2034 period.[1] That estimate reflects a $3.7 trillion reduction in revenues and a $1.3 trillion reduction in noninterest outlays.[2] It does not account for how the bill would affect the economy.

Under House Rule XIII(8), H.R. 1 is classified as major legislation and CBO and JCT are required, to the extent practicable, to account for the budgetary effects of changes in the economy resulting from the bill. CBO and JCT have now had time to complete that analysis and estimate the following relative to CBO’s January 2025 baseline:

• The economic effects of H.R. 1 would decrease the primary deficit by $85 billion over the 2025-2034 period, primarily reflecting an increase in economic output; and
• The bill would increase interest rates, which would boost interest payments on the baseline projection of federal debt by $441 billion.

Accounting for those budgetary effects, CBO’s estimate under House Rule XIII(8) is that H.R. 1 would increase deficits by $2.8 trillion over the 2025-2034 period (see Table 1).

First time I've seen a tax cut so poorly designed that the dynamic score RAISES the cost by $356 billion.

The infinitesimal growth revenues are dwarfed by the rising inflation and $441 billion in interest costs from higher interest rates. pic.twitter.com/mIfvIG7Qfd

— Jessica Riedl 🧀 🇺🇦 (@JessicaBRiedl) June 17, 2025

One Big Beautiful Bill Act and Liberation Day, Continued

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.  His reconciliation bill will blow up the debt and his trade policies will blow up the economy.

 The Joint Committee on Taxation looks at "The One Big Beautiful Bill Act."

The Joint Committee staff estimates that enacting these provisions would increase the 
average annual growth rate of real Gross Domestic Product (“GDP”) by 0.03 percentage points, from 1.83 percent in the present-law baseline to 1.86 percent, over the 2025-2034 budget window. The Joint Committee staff estimates that the macroeconomic effects due to this proposal would increase Federal revenues by about $103 billion. Relative to the conventional revenue effect of about -$3,819 billion, the Joint Committee staff estimates that the proposal would have a total revenue effect of about -$3,716 billion over the budget window.

The Joint Committee staff also estimates that after the budget window, cumulative  increases in Federal deficits under the proposal will continue to increase Federal debt as a
percentage of GDP relative to the present-law baseline. While the Joint Committee staff
estimates that labor supply will continue to be higher than projected in the baseline, the growth in Federal debt will increasingly crowd out private investment, reducing the capital stock relative to the baseline. The long-run effect on real GDP remains positive at first—primarily over the second decade following enactment—driven by labor supply effects. However, by the third decade, the crowding-out effect dominates, and real GDP falls below baseline projections. As a result, the budgetary feedback from the macroeconomic effects of the proposal diminishes over time.

From CBO:

Tony Romm and Colby Smith at NYT:

One day after House Republicans approved an expensive package of tax cuts that rattled financial markets, President Trump pivoted back to his other signature policy priority, unveiling a battery of tariff threats that further spooked investors and raised the prospects of higher prices on American consumers.

For a president who has fashioned himself as a shrewd steward of the economy, the decision to escalate his global trade war on Friday appeared curious and costly. It capped off a week that saw Mr. Trump ignore repeated warnings that his agenda could worsen the nation’s debt, harm many of his own voters, hurt the finances of low-income families and contribute far less in growth than the White House contends.

The tepid market response to the president’s economic policy approach did little to sway Mr. Trump, who chose on Friday to revive the uncertainty that has kept businesses and consumers on edge. The president threatened 50 percent tariffs on the European Union, and a 25 percent tariff on Apple. Other tech companies, he said, could face the same rate.

Since taking office, Mr. Trump has raced to enact his economic vision, aiming to pair generous tax cuts with sweeping deregulation that he says will expand America’s economy. He has fashioned his steep, worldwide tariffs as a political cudgel that will raise money, encourage more domestic manufacturing and improve U.S. trade relationships.


But for many of his signature policies to succeed, Mr. Trump will have to prove investors wrong, particularly those who lend money to the government by buying its debt.

So far, bond markets are not buying his approach. Where Mr. Trump sees a “golden age" of growth, investors see an agenda that comes with more debt, higher borrowing costs, inflation and an economic slowdown. Investors who once viewed government debt as a relatively risk-free investment are now demanding that the United States pay much more to those who lend America money.

That is on top of businesses, including Walmart, that say they may have to raise prices as a result of the president’s global trade war. The onslaught of policy changes has also left the Federal Reserve frozen in place, unsure as to when the economy will call for lower interest rates in the face of persistent uncertainty. As a result, borrowing costs for mortgages, car loans and credit cards remain onerous for Americans.

Moody's Blues

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start. Trump and his congressional supporters are on track to blow up the federal debt.

Tony Romm,Andrew Duehren and Joe Rennison at NYT:

The credit rating of the United States received a potentially costly downgrade on Friday, as the ratings firm Moody’s determined that the government’s rising debt levels stood to grow further if Republicans enact a package of new tax cuts.

The downgrade, to one notch below the highest triple-A rating, amounted to a repudiation of Washington, where President Trump only hours earlier had pushed his party to adopt a legislative package that might add trillions of dollars to the nation’s fiscal imbalance.

The downgrade from Moody’s means that each of the three major credit rating agencies no longer gives the United States its best rating. Fitch downgraded the United States in 2023, citing fiscal concerns, and Standard & Poor’s downgraded the country in 2011.

The new rating decrease could send ripple effects throughout the economy if it prompts investors to demand higher payments on bonds, which in turn could raise consumers’ borrowing costs. So far, though, past downgrades have proved largely symbolic, as the American government’s debt remains the bedrock of the global financial system.

DOGE Debacle

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start. Trump and his congressional supporters are on track to blow up the federal debt.

 Jessica Riedl at The Atlantic:

These spending data do not flatter the Musk project. Total federal outlays in February and March were $86 billion (or 7 percent) higher than the levels from the same months a year ago, when adjusted for timing shifts. This spending growth—approximately $500 billion annually—continues to be driven by the three-quarters of federal spending allocated to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense, veterans’ benefits, and interest costs. These massive expenses have been untouched by DOGE’s focus on small but controversial targets such as DEI contracts and Politico subscriptions.

...

Cost reductions from laying off federal employees have been too small to show up in the data. This is not surprising, because even laying off one quarter of the 2.3 million federal civilian employees would shave off just 1 percent of federal spending. To be fair to DOGE, more savings will materialize in October, when the salaries of the 75,000 federal employees who took a buyout come off the books. That should save Washington $10 billion a year, or 0.1 percent of federal spending—except even that is an overestimate, because Washington will surely end up hiring contractors to perform at least some of the work previously handled by those civil servants, and many contractors cost more than employees.

That, by the way, is the good news for DOGE. The bad news is that the project seems quite likely to expand long-term budget deficits. Slashing IRS enforcement will embolden tax evasion and reduce revenues by hundreds of billions of dollars over the decade. Laying off Department of Education employees who ensure collection of student-loan repayments will increase the deficit. Illegally terminated federal employees are already being reinstated with full back pay, leaving the government with little to show for its trouble besides mounting legal fees.

Even if DOGE somehow manages to end up in the black, any modest savings it achieves will be completely overwhelmed by the GOP’s push to expand the 2017 tax cut at a cost of roughly $500 billion annually. Claims that Washington can no longer afford to spend 0.1 percent of its budget providing lifesaving HIV treatments to 20 million impoverished Africans cannot be taken seriously when the administration and Congress are preparing to cut taxes and expand other spending by trillions of dollars.

 

The Cave-In Caucus

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Paul Kane at WP:

First, they threatened to block House Speaker Mike Johnson’s path to claiming the gavel in early January. Then they threatened to block a funding bill to keep federal agencies open in mid-March.

Then, in recent days, they threatened to block a resolution that would unlock the process to push ahead with President Donald Trump’s tax-and-border agenda.

Each threat from leaders of the House Freedom Caucus ended with the same result: capitulation. After caving on each round of threats, these far-right conservatives vowed that the next time would be different — if their demands were not met precisely as they sought.

This collection of several dozen Republicans, after a decade of rabble-rousing that helped push aside three other speakers, has yet to fully buck Johnson (R-Louisiana) on any major initiative this year. In their minds, these are Freedom Caucus victories, after they piled up pledges from establishment Republicans to supposedly bend to their will.

“We’ve demonstrated now for the third time that we can deliver on the president’s agenda,” Rep. Andy Harris (R-Maryland), chairman of the Freedom Caucus, told reporters after Thursday’s vote to advance the budget resolution.

Last month their caucus provided the key votes to fund the government and pass the first version of the budget resolution.

To some former allies, the gang has morphed into an attention-seeking group that will ultimately support whatever Trump wants, giving up their past ideological purist ways on issues like bringing down the national debt.

Trump-o-nomics Will Blow Up the Debt

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.

Peter G. Peterson Foundation:

New analysis released today from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) shows deficits doubling and debt skyrocketing under a scenario where the expiring provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) were made permanent. If interest rates were also higher than projected, a second scenario shows that the United States would incur even worse fiscal damage.

CBO finds that:

1. If provisions of the TCJA were made permanent (and there were no other changes to fiscal policy), debt held by the public (DHBP) would reach 214 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2054 — 47 percentage points higher than under the baseline scenario in which the provisions expire as scheduled and well above the level in 2024 of 98 percent of GDP.
2. Making those provisions permanent would lead to a near-doubling of the annual deficit relative to GDP — from 6.3 percent this year to 12.3 percent in 2054.
3. In addition, if interest rates also increased each year until they were higher than projected by 1 percentage point, DHBP would exceed 250 percent of GDP within 30 years. Macroeconomic feedback effects would further increase interest rates and, therefore, lead to even worse fiscal outcomes. Such findings demonstrate the sensitivity of the nation’s finances to borrowing costs.

But wait, there's more!

Jacob Bogage at WP:

Senior tax officials are bracing for a sharp drop in revenue collected this spring, as an increasing number of individuals and businesses spurn filing their taxes or attempt to skip paying balances owed to the Internal Revenue Service, according to three people with knowledge of tax projections.

Treasury Department and IRS officials are predicting a decrease of more than 10 percent in tax receipts by the April 15 deadline compared with 2024, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share nonpublic data. That would amount to more than $500 billion in lost federal revenue; the IRS collected $5.1 trillion last year. For context, the U.S. government spent $825 billion on the Defense Department in fiscal 2024.

Trump Does Not Care About the Debt

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It notes that neither candidate talked a lot about specific deficit reduction plans.

Lachlan Markay and  Asawin Suebsaeng, Daily Beast, Dec. 5 2018 10:32AM EST:

Since the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump’s aides and advisers have tried to convince him of the importance of tackling the national debt.

Sources close to the president say he has repeatedly shrugged it off, implying that he doesn’t have to worry about the money owed to America’s creditors—currently about $21 trillion—because he won’t be around to shoulder the blame when it becomes even more untenable.

The friction came to a head in early 2017 when senior officials offered Trump charts and graphics laying out the numbers and showing a “hockey stick” spike in the national debt in the not-too-distant future. In response, Trump noted that the data suggested the debt would reach a critical mass only after his possible second term in office.

“Yeah, but I won’t be here,” the president bluntly said, according to a source who was in the room when Trump made this comment during discussions on the debt.

Catie Edmondson and Andrew Duehren at NYT:

While Republicans have traditionally agitated for less government spending, Mr. Trump has displayed a laissez-faire attitude toward cutting costs and proposed a number of policies that would actually increase the nation’s debt.

Some Republicans have privately made it clear that they’d rather not include some of Mr. Trump’s most expensive proposals in the legislation, especially as they battle concerns from hard-right Republicans that the bill will cost too much.

But Mr. Trump has personally been lobbying lawmakers on some of the issues he campaigned on. In a private meeting with Republican congressional leaders in the Cabinet Room at the White House on Wednesday, he urged them to implement his campaign promise to eliminate taxes on tips.

He told them repeatedly that he saw the move as a winning issue, according to two people familiar with his comments who were not authorized to discuss the private meeting.

Of the suite of tax cuts Mr. Trump proposed during the campaign, terminating taxes on tips has gained the most traction on Capitol Hill. The idea won bipartisan support during the campaign, and Republican aides are working on legislation that would translate the “no tax on tips” slogan into policy that won’t kick off a gold rush of tax avoidance.

There are several other promises Republicans would rather avoid. Free traders on Capitol Hill have particularly bristled at Mr. Trump’s vows to enact across-the-board tariffs. While the president has the authority to unilaterally impose tariffs, some Republicans have studied the possibility of imposing tariffs through law — an idea that quickly proved unpopular within the party.

A Limit to Trump's Power

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections.  Our next book will discuss 2024,

Why did dozens of House Republicans feel free to defy Trump this week? His power over them depends mainly on primary voters. And those voters are unlikely to punish members for not raising the debt limit.

Of course, cutting taxes will increase the debt, but those same voters would punish Republicans who opposed tax cuts.

Catie Edmondson and Andrew Duehren at NYT:

Something unusual happened this week after President-elect Donald J. Trump ordered House Republicans to back legislation raising the debt limit: Dozens refused.

It was a rare breach by a group of Republicans who have traditionally backed Mr. Trump’s policy preferences unquestioningly and taken pains to avoid defying him.

And it laid bare a disconnect between Mr. Trump and his party that could upend their efforts next year to pass transformative tax and domestic policy legislation with the tiniest of majorities. Even as Mr. Trump has displayed a laissez-faire attitude to the federal debt and a willingness to spend freely, a number of lawmakers in his party fervently adhere to an anti-spending philosophy that regards debt as disastrous.

In this week’s spending bill fight, Mr. Trump was intent on trying to absolve himself of responsibility for dealing with the debt ceiling, which is expected to be reached sometime in January. Raising it while President Biden was still in office and Democrats still held the Senate, he apparently believed, could avoid a messy internal Republican fight over the issue next year when Mr. Trump is in the White House and his party in full control of Congress

Instead, he only accelerated that clash, which unfolded on the House floor on Thursday night when 38 Republicans refused to suspend the borrowing limit without spending cuts.

They tanked a spending plan that would have deferred the debt cap for two years, and by Friday, when Speaker Mike Johnson advanced a third proposal to avert a shutdown to the House floor, they had jettisoned the debt limit measure entirely, promising instead to deal with it next year.

...

 A New York Times analysis of votes on spending bills since 2011 found that hard-right lawmakers associated with the Freedom Caucus have voted in favor of government funding bills less than 20 percent of the time. A smaller group of ultraconservative members has almost always voted against appropriations bills — in an average of 93 percent of cases.

It was that group of lawmakers that revolted against Mr. Trump's call this week to raise the debt limit without any cuts in exchange.

Election Forecasts

 Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the politics of economic policy

🇺🇸 The Fiscal Impact of the Harris and Trump Campaign Plans 🇺🇸

Our comprehensive analysis breaks down the presidential candidates' tax and spending plans and what they would mean for the #NationalDebt.

Under our central estimate, we find:

➡️ Vice President Harris would add… pic.twitter.com/bhnZEbwiPJ

— CRFB.org (@BudgetHawks) October 7, 2024

Simon Kuper at The Financial Times

In 2016, I was one of the fools who thought people wouldn’t vote for Donald Trump. As I explained to readers before the Republican primaries, “The electorate generally just wants a leader who appears sane, which is why Republicans almost certainly won’t nominate Trump.” I was taking my lead from so-called experts. “If you want to know the future,” I wrote in May that year, “the best forecasters are betting markets . . . The Oddschecker website, which compares odds offered by different bookmakers, indicates a chance of just over one in four that Brits will opt for Brexit. The chances of Trump becoming American president or Marine Le Pen French president are judged a tad smaller.” This time, I won’t be making election forecasts. When you are wrong, you need to ask why — especially when you face a similar situation again. Perhaps I’m an out-of-touch elitist who doesn’t understand the suffering of ordinary people, but I’ve come to a different conclusion. In 2016, I still mistakenly believed that most voters were economically motivated, self-interested rationalists. The “rational actor” turns out to be a rare beast.

Justin Grimmer at Politico:

Are these calculated probabilities any good? Right now, we simply don’t know. In a new paper I’ve co-authored with the University of Pennsylvania’s Dean Knox and Dartmouth College’s Sean Westwood, we show that even under assumptions very favorable to forecasters, we wouldn’t know the answer for decades, centuries, or maybe even millenia.

...

The reason it takes so long to evaluate forecasts of presidential elections is obvious: There is only one presidential election every four years. In fact, we are now having only our 60th presidential election in U.S. history.

Compare the information available when forecasting presidential elections to the amount of information used when predicting stock prices, forecasting the weather or targeting online advertising. In those settings, forecasters commonly use millions of observations, which might be collected almost continuously. Given the difference, it isn’t surprising that forecasters in other settings are more easily able to identify the best performing model.

The paucity of outcome data means that election forecasters have to make educated guesses about how to build their statistical models.

 

Tentative Debt Deal

Our recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. 

 Jordan Weissman at Semafor:

President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced Saturday night that they had reached a deal to raise the debt ceiling and avert a catastrophic federal default with a bit over a week to go before the deadline.

Afterwards, a quick consensus formed among much of the right and left: Republicans got blanked.

The agreement would temporarily freeze a portion of non-defense spending, while temporarily tightening the food stamp program’s work requireme​​nts for childless adults, and enacting modest changes to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

The early details prompted furious reactions from members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, who’d hoped to extract vastly more sweeping budget cuts and changes to the federal safety net in return for hiking the borrowing limit.

“This ‘deal’ is insanity,” tweeted South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman. “A $4T debt ceiling increase with virtually no cuts is not what we agreed to.” North Carolina Rep. Dan Bishop tweeted a vomiting emoji after a GOP conference call, and complained about “RINOs congratulating McCarthy for getting almost zippo.”

GOP Debt Bill

Our recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. 

Politico Huddle:

After House Republicans barely passed their debt bill, House Democrats are getting ready to pull out the playbook that worked for them in 2018 to win back the majority in 2024.

In those midterm elections, Democrats hammered Republicans over tough votes that swing seat lawmakers made on repealing Obamacare and enacting tax cuts. This time, Democrats think they’ll be able to hitch vulnerable Republicans to Wednesday’s vote pairing a debt limit hike with spending cuts.

“I think the American people are pretty upset with what's happening, and they want to see governance work, and Republicans are going to be held accountable for not governing,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.) said in an interview.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) set the tone at the beginning of the week, privately telling Democrats in a leadership meeting that the debt vote could be framed to the American people in the same way liberals responded to Republican efforts to privatize Social Security, repeal Obamacare and pass the 2017 tax cut package, according to a person familiar with his remarks.

“We're focused on doing the right thing by the American people, which is to make sure we avoid a dangerous default and ensure that America pays its bills,” he said Wednesday in a brief interview.

Democratic groups are already gearing up to knock Republicans over the debt standoff. The DCCC said vulnerable Republicans were “helping build the case against themselves” and their re-election, and House Majority PAC singled out frontline Republicans who voted for the bill.

Problems of the House GOP Debt Plan

Our recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. 

E.J. Dionne at WP:

McCarthy is having trouble uniting his caucus behind any budget proposal, so the speaker has pushed aside governing in favor of theater. And the production is not even worthy of a high school gym. (I apologize to high school thespians who take their work more seriously.)

It is truly astonishing, as my Post colleagues Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman wrote on Friday, that any Republican operating under labels such as “moderate,” “mainstream” or “problem solver” would vote for a McCarthy proposal that hides its ferocity behind sanitized budgetary gobbledygook. McCarthy would cut federal spending back to 2022 levels and limit its growth to 1 percent a year.

What this means in plain English, as The Post’s Tony Romm reported, are “massive spending cuts,” but without having to specify them. Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget, helpfully translated the impact to particular programs. If Republicans exempted defense spending from their ax, as they seem inclined to do, all other programs would suffer 22 percent cuts, she said, which “would grow deeper and deeper with each year of their plan.”

House GOP Problems

Our recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. 

“McCarthy also proposed stiffening work requirements for benefit programs like SNAP… That, likewise could hit Republican-leaning states harder: 3.1% of the population in those states could lose benefits, compared with 2.8% of residents in Biden states.”https://t.co/LqKXQJzq2e

— Jesse Lee (@JesseLee46) April 17, 2023

Marianna Sotomayor and Leigh Ann Caldwell at WP:

“Everybody is going to be looking at each other much more suspiciously now,” said a Republican aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal party dynamics. “It’s going to be much harder to do things.”

House Republicans have had some success, pushing through several bills that put Democrats on the record and were signed into law by President Biden, including those to declassify information pertaining to covid-19, end the covid national emergency and block a local D.C. crime bill from going into effect.

But Republicans’ first 100 days in the majority have been comparatively less productive than some previous Congresses. They have so far passed only a few of their top priorities, including an energy bill and voting to rescind money for IRS staffing — neither of which will be voted on in a Democratic-controlled Senate. Republicans point to the protracted speaker’s fight and slow organizing of the Congress to explain the sluggish start on the legislative front.

 Karlyn Bowman at AEI:

The difficulty Washington will have dealing with the deficit and entitlement spending going forward was clear in several questions in the Fox News poll. When asked which of two things was most important to them, 26 percent said reducing the budget deficit, while 71 percent said continuing to fund entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare at their current levels was. In separate questions, 21 percent said the funding of Social Security was a crisis (43 percent a major problem), and 28 percent gave that response about the national debt (50 percent a major problem). Only 16 percent supported reducing future Social Security benefits for some future retirees.

Joseph Zeballos-Roig at Semafor:

But new polling from Data for Progress, provided first to Semafor, suggests Americans are cold on the concept. It finds that about 65% of likely voters are against lifting the retirement age for people in their 20s, compared to 27% who support it. Among self-identified GOP voters, the split is similar: 59% are opposed and only 32% are in favor.

The Data for Progress poll also looked specifically at three swing districts in New York, where GOP gains in 2022 helped the party take back control of the House. In one of the districts, just 20% supported raising the retirement age to 70 for future generations. In the other two, less than 10% supported it.

Public: Cut the Budget but Don't Cut Spending

Our recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. 

Josh Boak at AP:

In the federal budget standoff, the majority of U.S. adults are asking lawmakers to pull off the impossible: Cut the overall size of government, but also devote more money to the most popular and expensive programs.

Six in 10 U.S. adults say the government spends too much money. But majorities also favor more funding for infrastructure, health care and Social Security — the kind of commitments that would make efforts to shrink the government unworkable and politically risky ahead of the 2024 elections.

These findings from a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research show just how messy the financial tug-of-war between President Joe Biden and House Republicans could be. At stake is the full faith and credit of the federal government, which could default on its obligations unless there is a deal this summer to raise or suspend the limit on the government’s borrowing authority.

New @AP poll neatly captures the paradox of budget politics. Americans say abstractly the government should cut spending, but show them the list of things it actually spends money on and they say nice, spend more on that.https://t.co/lSYaIJjxYY pic.twitter.com/2J9J5fbLwe

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) March 29, 2023

Fiscal Politics 2023

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the politics of economic policy.

CBO Director Phillip L. Swagel:.

Regarding the debt ceiling, the limit on debt of $31.4 trillion was reached on January 19th of this year. The Treasury then began to take well-established “extraordinary measures” to borrow additional funds. We project that, if the debt limit remains unchanged, the government’s ability to borrow using extraordinary measures will be exhausted between July and September 2023.

The projected exhaustion date is uncertain because the timing and amount of revenue collections and outlays over the intervening months could differ from our projections. In particular, income tax receipts in April could be more or less than we estimate. If those receipts fell short of estimated amounts—for example, if capital gains realizations in 2022 were smaller or if U.S. income growth slowed by more in early calendar year 2023 than we project—the extraordinary measures could be exhausted sooner, and the Treasury could run out of funds before July.

If the debt limit is not raised or suspended before the extraordinary measures are exhausted, the government would be unable to pay its obligations fully. As a result, the government would have to delay making payments for some activities, default on its debt obligations, or both.

Conclusion

I will close with three key takeaways from our analysis.

• For 2023, we project stagnant output, rising unemployment, gradually slowing inflation, and interest rates that remain at or above their levels at the beginning of the year—before the economy subsequently rebounds.
• Noninterest spending substantially exceeds revenues in our projections even though pandemic-related spending lessens. In addition, rising interest rates drive up the cost of borrowing. The resulting deficits steadily increase the government’s debt.
• Over the long term, our projections suggest that changes in fiscal policy must be made to address the rising costs of interest and mitigate other adverse consequences of high and rising debt.

Deadlock and Polarization and the Grassroots

In Defying the Odds, we talk about the social and economic divides that enabled Trump to enter the White House. In Divided We Stand, we discuss how these divides played out in 2020.

From Pew:

As partisan battles over the debt ceiling and other key issues loom and the GOP takes back control of the House of Representatives following last fall’s midterm elections, most Republicans say they want their party’s leaders to take a hard line in their dealings with President Joe Biden and the Democrats.

More than six-in-ten Republicans and independents who lean toward the Republican Party (64%) say that Republican congressional leaders should “stand up” to Biden on matters that are important to GOP voters, even if this makes it harder to address critical problems facing the country. About half as many Republicans – 34% – would prefer to see the party’s congressional leaders work with Biden, even if doing so requires them to make concessions that disappoint some GOP voters, a new Pew Research Center survey has found.

Democrats are more likely to say they would support efforts by their leaders to find common ground with the other party. A majority of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (58%) say that Biden should try as best he can to work with GOP leaders to accomplish things, even at the cost of disappointing some of Biden’s voters. Roughly four-in-ten Democrats (41%) prefer that Biden stand up to Republicans, even if that makes it harder to address the nation’s important problems.

Kinzinger on Fiscal Politics

Our recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. 

Spending debate thread and primer: Spending needs to be cut or disciplined better. No doubt. But this debate is about details. When I was in, here were the recommended tactics (let’s look behind the curtain shall we? 1) be vague. Give the authority to others (dept heads) etc

— Adam Kinzinger #fella (@AdamKinzinger) January 24, 2023

2). Even though 2/3rds of spending are social security and Medicare/Medicare, don’t say you’ll cut those it’s unpopular.  (Quick aside, these are unsustainable and making changes for people my age and younger to save it wouldn’t be bad)…

3) vaguely talk about fraud and waste.  Sure there is some, but nothing that would even make a dent.  But people don’t know that so just rail against the waste and move on.

4). Go after foreign aid (except Israel).  Foreign aid is a tiny part of the budget- it’s less than ONE PERCENT- but most people assume it’s up to 1/4th.  Also foreign aid is cheaper than war and mostly is spent on American products.

5) never discuss raising any taxes ever.  Even though most people would pay more tax if they knew govt was cutting and making a dent in debt they would support it.  But if you talk about it you will lose next election·

6) even though everyone knows SS and Medicare need reformed, it’s a potent political issue (my first race they spent 1 million against me saying i wanted to cut SS). It creates fear, and it’s a great political issue.  Political meth

7) Defense: yes there is money that can be saved in procurement etc. To start, about 1/3rd of defense spending is on people.  Pay/healthcare/etc. China and Russia beat us on supersonics, because cuts hurt investment.  (May do a deeper thread on defense). Remember inflation too

8). The key here is the political issue.  Reps can hit dems for spending and “wanting to raise taxes.”  Dems can hit reps on “cuts to the most vulnerable and seniors and children and puppies.”  Both are potent

9). You’ll hear about the “penny plan” which sounds so easy but is a massive joke and unrealistic talking point.  Just cut one penny on every dollar for five years for 5% cut.  It’s perfect for talking points, but it’s actually a cut of close to 15% depending on inflation…

for everything.  Roads, military, SS, Medicare, law enforcement, parks, everything.  And when they start exempting all the popular stuff, well now it’s deeper on other things (roads etc) or completely ineffective…

10). In truth, we need to slowly bring the debt under control so it grows slower than the economy.  By the way, a debt default is economic malpractice and will add hundreds of billions in borrowing costs.  So, we need some revenue increase and some spending cuts but…

11) it’s unpopular of course.  So either everyone needs to jump off the bridge together (pardon the metaphor) or do nothing and pretend like it’s all ok.  Any guess what will happen?  And yes EVERYONE (including me) owns this problem.

12). Lastly, as the debt ceiling is debated and Reps talk about spending cuts, media and citizens need to ask for specifics.  What will you cut specifically.  If they punt to dept heads, remind them that CONGRESS appropriates money.  Specifics, not slogans/ END