There has been a lot of confusion about the “big beautiful bill,” with many understandably having the impression that it is the whole story with regard to federal spending and, specifically, budget cuts. Happily, that is not the case. This is from Stephen Moore’s Unleash Prosperity Hotline:
Here’s what House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters over the weekend:
Everyone here wants to reduce spending. All of us want to return to pre-pandemic spending levels. We do but you have to do that in a sequence of events. We have a plan. OK? This is the first of a multi-step process as I mentioned.
We’re going to have another reconciliation bill that follows this one. Possibly a third one before this Congress is up because you can have a reconciliation bill for for each budget year, each fiscal year. So that’s ahead of us.
We’re also doing rescission packages. We got the first one delivered this week from the White House and that will codify many of the DOGE cuts. There’ll be a series of those that come along and we have the actual spending bills, the regular appropriations process upcoming, where we will spend less money.
We’ve always believed this strategy makes the most strategic sense. Get the tax bill that everyone agrees on signed, sealed and delivered for a beautiful bill signing on the Fourth of July.
Then follow that up with DOGE savings, rescission bills, and the 10% across the board sequester cut of every domestic discretionary and Pentagon program. That will permanently lower the baseline spending of all programs and save trillions over a decade – and bring a big smile to the faces of our friends and Senate budget hawks Ron Johnson and Rand Paul.
Is that a guarantee that the budget cuts ultimately enacted into law will be enough to satisfy us conservatives? No. But let’s wait until the dealing’s done before we count our money.
