The title of this post is drawn from a 1986 book of the same name by David Stockman, most of which I’ve reread during the months since President Donald Trump began pushing the passage of his now-enacted “Big Beautiful Bill” (sometimes referred to as the “BBB”). For those with shorter memories, Mr. Stockman was the Reagan Administration’s first Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and probably the most responsible Executive Branch official, aside from President Ronald Reagan himself, for Americans’ initial plunge into our current escalating deficit-financed maelstrom. The tag line to Mr. Stockman’s The Triumph of Politics was, “Why the Reagan Revolution Failed.” I expect to refer to Mr. Stockman’s book in future posts; although the federal budget numbers and the ratio of budget deficit to GNP with which he was dealing over 40 years ago are incredibly small compared to those we now face, his book is a useful primer on the innards of the federal budget (with one exception: Medicare is now a much larger percentage of federal spending than it was in the early ‘80s). In 1981, the newly-elected Reagan Administration got its tax cut – those with the lowest incomes received a 14% rate reduction, those with the highest incomes as much as a 28% rate reduction — in large part because Mr. Reagan put all of his political weight (at its zenith, given his then-recent survival of an assassination attempt) behind the cut, since he believed, based upon his years in the movie industry, that the tax rates existing when he took office were an impediment to productivity.
Interestingly, in his initial chapters Mr. Stockman described how intense a political struggle it was to get the tax cut through Congress. Members of Congress of both parties initially opposed the drastic revenue reduction; they didn’t believe (as it turned out, obviously correctly) the claims of some Reagan Administration economists that the tax cuts would “pay for themselves” through increased economic growth. Mr. Stockman related that he himself never believed that the tax cuts would pay for themselves; his conception of the “Reagan Revolution” included tax cuts and a corresponding reduction in federal spending. His mistake, as he ruefully acknowledged in the book’s concluding chapters, was that he didn’t realize until too late in the process that members of Congress didn’t have the political stomach for spending cuts, so Mr. Stockman’s envisioned complete overhaul of the New Deal federal funding framework was left to drown in red ink. (Even Mr. Reagan, despite his rhetoric, was never as committed to spending cuts as he was to tax cuts.) It was … the triumph of politics.
Let’s move to the BBB. (I have it on highly credible authority that Brazilians following American political affairs were confusing the bill with an apparently-oft-performed Brazilian surgical procedure, the “Brazilian Butt Lift,” commonly referred to as, the “BBL.” Perhaps they think Americans will apply whatever tax relief they receive from the law to the adjustment of our … er … booties. 😉 ) All who care are already aware of the law’s primary components; it is generally undisputed that the law will increase our burgeoning federal debt by trillions due to its extension of Mr. Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which disproportionately favor the well-to-do, while at the same time it cuts about 1 trillion dollars in Medicaid and other food and health care benefits for millions of impoverished. There are certainly circumstances that warrant affirmatively increasing our deficit spending – COVID a recent example – but we are not currently facing such a challenge. (To be fair, until we have the opportunity to right-size our taxing scheme – perhaps, I say Pollyannishly, under our next president — I would have favored extending the Trump tax rates for the first $100,000 of household income, which as far as I can determine through clumsy internet searching, would completely cover the majority of American households but affect less than 20% of overall U.S. income tax revenue.) The law is cruel and stupid. It is clear that a substantial majority of Congressional legislators knows it. Many Medicaid recipients projected to be adversely affected voted for Mr. Trump. The increasing deficits will seemingly ultimately result in higher U.S. treasury interest rates that impede our real estate sector and overall economy and perhaps hasten the need to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits beloved by seniors, the majority of whom voted for Mr. Trump in 2024. Any such accelerated permanent reduction in these benefits could in retrospect make many voters’ extended tax breaks a painfully poor exchange.
The BBB’s passage was, as in 1981, the triumph of politics; what I find intriguing is the shift in political dynamic over the last 40+ years.
In 1981, the Reagan Administration couldn’t get its spending cuts through Congress because legislators wouldn’t risk invoking the wrath of their constituents by depriving them of cherished programs. This month, the Trump Administration was able to obtain passage of its welfare cuts – although they will adversely affect a significant segment of Mr. Trump’s 2024 voters – because Congressional Republicans feared invoking the wrath of Mr. Trump. Put another way: their constituents now follow and accept what Mr. Trump wants – i.e., tells them what is good, what is in their interest, whom they should vote for, whom they should not vote for – without critical assessment. In 1981, Reagan voters supported the President, but members of Congress understood that these citizens would still independently determine whether a law was in their best interest; in 2025, members of Congress have come to understand that a significant segment, perhaps a significant majority, of Trump voters have outsourced their thinking to Mr. Trump and alt-right media. It is a stunning demonstration of the power of decades of propaganda. Arguably the most insightful assessment of the Republican – now, very largely MAGA – base was a comment reportedly made by former Republican Senate Majority Leader U.S. KY Sen. Mitch McConnell in reassuring his Republican Senate colleagues concerned that Medicaid cuts would outrage their supporters: “They’ll get over it.”
They will. By the time the BBB’s provisions adversely impact the MAGA base, they will be convinced by alt-right media either that the losses they are feeling are caused by something former President Barack Obama did in 2010, or they’ll be distracted by some provocative fable about immigrants. At the time this is typed, I understand that many MAGAs are incensed at the Trump Administration for declaring that it has no client list of Jeffrey Epstein, the financier child sex trafficker, after being told for years in their media silo that the government was staging a cover-up to protect Epstein’s powerful (whom they presumably believe to be left-wing) clients. Although in recent days I’ve developed a better understanding why MAGALand is so obsessed with the Epstein case, I still consider it ironic that while MAGAs bellow about Epstein – a matter which, no matter how evil the truth, has absolutely no bearing on their wellbeing – and revel in the Administration’s implied if not explicit promotion of their “freedom” to disdain vaccines and fluoride, they utter not a murmur of protest about the BBB’s Medicaid cuts that will hinder or preclude their access to health care — including that they’ll need to treat the diseases and cavities inevitably resulting from the exercise of their “freedom.”
As legendary CBS Anchor Walter Cronkite used to say: That’s the way it is.
McCoy's Noise 