Stop Stressing Out Over Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill.” Most Of It Is Headed To The Judicial Graveyard

Let’s just start with a simple, unassailable fact. While they may propose a bill, or sponsor a bill, your average incumbent congressman or Senator couldn’t actually write a bill if you stuck a gun to their heads. That’s what their staff is for, and why some of the better legislative aides on the staff make damn near as much money as the congressman or Senator does.

In the normal course of legislative business, there are three basically easily definable types of bills’

1. The Fetcher Bill – This is a whimsical, self serving bill. A legislator running a little light in the wallet will rip off a bill that proposes that All railroad tracks in the United States must be laid 10″ wider. This bill will fetch a visit from the railroad lobbyist, bearing a gift in a sealed white envelope
2. The Vanity Bill – This is a serious sounding bill, but don’t be fooled. It’s actually a bill on an issue that is important to a critical bloc of voters in the legislators home district or state, such as gay rights. The bill is serious, but the legislator already knows that in the current political environment, such as his party being out of power, it cannot pass. Still, the party or legislator brings it to the floor for the purpose of showing the voters that at least they’re trying
3. Serious Legislation – This is the kind of stuff that is meant to get through the process and at least have a 50-50 chance at passage. Budget bills are one example, as are national defense and infrastructure bills. These are the bills that get the most coverage in the national media, for obvious reasons.

There is a well tuned process for these bills. The author of the bill, often with one or mose sponsors, usually from the same party, although there are occasional bills that are bipartisan, get together and create the general framework of the bill and what it is meant to accomplish. This is then turned over to the legislative aides, who actually draft the contents of the bill. Think of it as a legislative version of a screenplay being turned into an actual script.

Make no mistake about it, Trump’s Big, beautiful Bill was both intended, as well as produced to be actual serious legislation. But like everything else that comes out of this clown car circus, it suffers from a fatal flaw.

And that fatal flaw is that neither Trumpbo the Flying Elephant, nor any of the members of the MAGA GOP conference have any interest in forming or executing meaningful legislation. Everything with these ass clowns is purely ideological, meant to hold both the MAGA base, as well as their corporate overlords in a perpetual thrall.

Which means, as my sainted mother used to say, Too many cooks in the kitchen. Because with this GOP everything is ideological, and because with this particular iteration of the GOP, the cruelty is the point, like an eight year old helping his mother on Thanksgiving day, they can’t resist dropping little spices and seasonings of racism and exclusion that will have a hard time passing judicial muster.

Here’s an empirical example. In the bill, the GOP was hell-bent-for-leather to strip as much from Medicaid as possible, nationwide. But because the GOP desperately needed AK Senator Lisa Murkowski’s vote, they carved a little hidden rider that expanded Medicaid to Alaska and Hawaii. The Senate Parliamentarian sh*t all over this, telling the GOP that you can’t rob Peter to pay Paul, and that pill was excluded.

Folks, the whole. damn. bill is written that way, for the simple fact that a dry, boring bill full of legislative mumbo-jumbo that could pass muster wouldn’t excite the base. And so they kept dropping in these poison pills of cruelty which they can brag about back home, but will likely sink the clauses on judicial review.

Here’s a perfect example. One of the sections of the bill was specifically engineered to clip the wings of the judiciary, by requiring a federal judge to obtain a surety bond before issuing a Temporary restraining Order or Judicial Hold on any pending matter before the court.

This is the most imbecilic thing I’ve ever heard in my life. A Surety Bond is something that a criminal defendant has to get in order to obtain bail pending, trial, an assurance he will show up for trial.  There is no risk of flight from a TRO or judicial hold, and no monetary threat risk.

What Traitor Tot and the GOP were hoping for was to stop federal judges from stopping their unconstitutional laws from going into effect until they could write up the paperwork. Get it going, then let the court figure out how to stop it later. And if Emperor Numbus Nuttus and his slavish legislative butt-boys think that John Roberts is going to let them weaken the authority of the brotherhood in black, they’re even dumber than I gave them credit for.

My advice? Sit back, pop the micro corn, grab a frosty one, and watch. This is not going to happen immediately. Cast your mind back to the Affordable Care act. It was one bill, but it was implemented in pieces over several years. The same thing is going to happen here. There are implementation dates for various pieces of this  legislation. and it’s only when the Trump administration tries to implement the various pieces of thos boondoggle that you’ll see the lawsuits start pouring in. Patience, Grasshopper.

I thank you for the privilege of your time.

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