When everyone is a King, the clowns take control.
The Fiscal Year 2025 budget bill, known as the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" (H.R.1), faces significant hurdles due to the closely divided control of Congress. With Republicans holding a slim 53-47 Senate majority and a narrow House majority, passing this critical legislation is a complex task. In such a tightly split Congress, every member of the majority party wields substantial influence, as a single defection can jeopardize the bill’s passage. This dynamic complicates efforts to pass a streamlined budget bill without incorporating numerous concessions that may undermine its fiscal goals. Moreover, when gridlock stalls progress, bureaucrats step into the void, effectively taking control and steering policy through administrative actions while elected officials remain deadlocked.
The Senate’s version of the bill, passed on July 1, 2025, by a 51-50 vote with Vice President JD Vance casting the tiebreaker, includes significant tax cuts, such as extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, increasing the child tax credit to $2,200, and eliminating taxes on tips and overtime pay through 2028. It also boosts defense and border security spending while cutting Medicaid and SNAP programs. However, the Congressional Budget Office estimates this bill will add $3.3 trillion to the national debt over ten years, falling short of the House’s requirement for $2 trillion in deficit reduction.
To secure passage in the Senate’s narrow majority, Republican leaders negotiated extensively, addressing concerns from holdouts like Senators Lisa Murkowski, Rick Scott, Mike Lee, and Cynthia Lummis. Concessions included a $50 billion rural hospital fund to mitigate Medicaid cuts and adjustments to the SALT deduction cap, raised to $40,000 but set to revert to $10,000 by 2030. These compromises, while necessary to secure votes, have inflated the bill’s cost and deviated from the goal of fiscal reduction.
The House, which passed its version on May 22, 2025, by a 215-214 vote, now faces the challenge of approving the Senate’s altered bill. With opposition from some Republicans, such as Representative David Valadao, over Medicaid cuts, further negotiations will likely add more provisions, potentially increasing the deficit further. This scenario exemplifies how, in a closely divided Congress, each member’s demands must be addressed, resulting in a bill that struggles to achieve its intended fiscal discipline. Meanwhile, prolonged gridlock empowers bureaucrats to fill the power vacuum, shaping outcomes through regulatory decisions rather than legislative intent.