What happened
The multitrillion-dollar Republican domestic policy bill the House passed Thursday on a 215-214 vote includes a provision that would limit federal judges’ power to hold people in contempt, “potentially shielding” President Donald Trump and members of his administration “from the consequences of violating court orders,” The New York Times said.
Who said what
Republicans “tucked the provision” into their megabill as a handful of federal judges have “opened inquiries about whether to hold the Trump administration in contempt for violating their orders in cases related to its aggressive deportation efforts,” the Times said. The limits, which also target injunctions blocking Trump’s executive orders, “would apply retroactively to court orders that were made” before the bill was enacted.
A majority of taxpayers would see their federal taxes lowered under the legislation — extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, at a cost of $2.18 trillion, is its biggest expenditure — but lower-income Americans will have fewer household resources while the richest will have more resources, the Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday. That’s mostly due to steep cuts and new requirements for Medicaid and food assistance. The CBO estimated Thursday that millions of Americans would lose access to food stamps and millions more would get less food aid.
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The bill would boost U.S. annual growth by 0.03 percentage points, to 1.86% from 1.83%, the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation predicted, which would lower its overall price tag to $3.7 trillion from $3.8 trillion. But the legislation’s trillion of dollars in deficit spending has “spooked” bond investors, driving government borrowing costs to their “highest level in nearly two decades,” The Washington Post said. If “yields remain elevated,” that will drive mortgage, credit card and auto loan rates higher and add trillions more to the national debt from elevated interest payments.
What next?
The GOP bill now goes to the Senate, where Republicans have been “hotly debating whether to do a full teardown” of the bill “or gently renovate it,” Semafor said. “Right now, the renovators are winning out.” The provision on judicial contempt may not “survive under special procedures Republicans are using to push the legislation through Congress on a simple majority vote,” the Times said.
