The Big Beautiful Bill That Wasn’t

I’ve tagged this “from behind enemy lines” because I didn’t know where to put it. It’s replacing today’s prepping article because I only have time to write one, and this one needs to be written.

Many of you know, maybe all of you, that I’ve drifted Right over the past few years. Some of it is indeed that the Left has run so far Left that I look Right, but some of it is the conservative beliefs I already had (fiscal conservatism, for instance, and my stance on 2A) coming to the forefront. I have gone from being a “never Trumper” to being cautiously optimistic about him. I think that’s the most I could ever really have for any President, because the act of becoming President means I should be examining their every move carefully. I don’t care if it’s Gandhi or Mother Teresa. If you’re President, every action you take should be scrutinized, constantly and unendingly. You are MY employee, not the other way around, and in order to make sure you do a good job, I need to watch what’s going on.

I am not a fan of the BBB (Congress.gov). First and foremost, I believe that things need to be simple, and people I trust have stated that this bill is full of pork. It’s as full of pork as any other budget that’s been put in front of the House. I don’t want pork. We The People didn’t elect Trump to put pork into bills; he was hired to remove it. The fact that it took some 16 hours for the bill to be read to the Senate says enough. The fact that I don’t have time to read the damn thing from beginning to end says more. The fact that the table of contents itself is larger than I believe ANY bill should be pretty much puts the last nail in the coffin.

If it’s too long for ME to read, then the average American isn’t going to read it. That’s just a statement of plain fact. It’s also a damn shame. It puts the country in another moment of “you have to vote the bill in to know what’s in it.” Nothing that this country’s government is passing should be beyond the understanding of the average American (I realize we need to educate our people more, and that’s another fight for another day, but let’s just assume that most people have the reading ability and comprehension to read most bills). If the government is inking up rules for us that we cannot comprehend, then we’re no better than Britain was 250 years ago, folks. It means we have a ruling class, and that is EXACTLY what we fought to get out of.

I realize some folks are always going to consent to be ruled from on high. I can’t help them. Frankly, I’m not even interested in helping them (though the thought of deporting them has come to mind). If you haven’t voted in the last four Presidential elections, then I’m not really talking to you. You can move along. I’m talking to those of you who give a shit, who try to keep up with this crap, and attempt to understand it in order to make educated choices.

That leads me to ask… What’s in the BBB? Good question. After 20 minutes of looking for the plain text of the bill as it currently stands (as of Thurs. July 3, 2025 at 4pm), I couldn’t find it and asked Chris for help. He gave me a link to the US Government code. Basically, as near as I understand, the BBB (and previous budgets in general) rewrites part of the code that runs this country. This means there is no definitive bill to read. You have to go read each section of the bill, then go read each section of the code, and then figure out which part gets replaced and which stays the same. I believe my reading comprehension is higher than the average American, and I find this shit downright unreadable. I’m trying. I’m not doing well.

The first part of the bill is about feeding Americans. It does things like tell the government how to figure out how much food “a family” needs, and what “a family” is (apparently one mother, one father, and two children, one aged 6-8 and one aged 9-11). Then it tells us how to manage a family with only one kid, or one adult, or 8 kids and 2 adults, etc. On the face of it, this seems pretty simple. But is it? I’ve long pointed out that the cost of living in Savannah, Georgia, for instance, is very different than the cost of living in New York City, NY. But the benefits for all the contiguous states are the same, and only Alaska and Hawaii are modified. This doesn’t seem right to me. If our goal is truly to help families out, then the benefits for Georgia and NY should not be even remotely the same. It should be based on the needs in that part of the world.

(This is also why “minimum wage” can never be a federal thing and be fair, imo… and also why people in southern states are eating well off SNAP and people in bigger cities are barely managing. But that’s an article for another day.)

Then we get into one of the contentious areas of the bill, the SNAP benefits. It’s what’s come to be known as the “able bodied” clause. Dems would have you believe that everyone’s being dumped off SNAP and left to fend for themselves, and we’re dooming children to die in the streets of starvation. The bill states quite plainly who the exceptions to the “able bodied” part are: those under 18 or over 65 years of age; those medically certified as physically or mentally unfit for employment; a parent or other member of a household with responsibility for a dependent child under 14 years of age; those otherwise exempt under subsection (d)(2); a pregnant woman. There are other exemptions but I don’t think anyone’s arguing about the latter parts (they have to do with Native Americans and no one seems to give two spits about them). So no, SNAP is not being taken away from any children, nor is it being taken away from parents of said children, or disabled people.

People who are “able bodied” and who have children (I can’t find it at the moment but it’s been reported as either “kids over 7” or “kids over 14”) in school will be expected to do *something* with their lives: work, volunteer, attend school or training, or otherwise do something useful to society and themselves, for 80 hours a month (ie part time) in order to get their benefits.

The bill then goes on to define how much “a crop” of certain items should cost (for instance, for wheat, $6.35 per bushel). There’s a part on allocation of acreage that I couldn’t follow. Ditto with price allocations and price loss coverage and agricultural risk coverage.

Once you get past the farm stuff, which takes up about a sixth of the bill by my reckoning, we get into the military stuff. They’re setting aside money to fix barracks for our troops, adding money to supplement people who need housing, and then stuff on education tuition, cost of living, etc. There’s a section on ship building, which I guess I figured we were doing but hadn’t thought of in terms of budget. We’re setting aside a chunk of cash for making new ships, and for the technology to make all the various parts of our own ships.

The bill sets money aside for missiles, both the making of and the researching of new ones. Blah blah about radar, guidance, etc. Money for making “low cost weapons.” Again, much of this stuff isn’t readable unless you take the time not just to read the bill itself, but go to the government codes and pull out the relevant part, re-write it to include the new wording, and then re-read the whole thing. I could be here ’til Christmas if I tried to do it for the whole bill, so you’re getting the condensed version of it.

It gives money to cybersecurity. DoD resources for air defense. Nuclear stuff (both safety items and production items like new B-21s). Then we move into border security. That has its own section. Then back again to more military spending.

Moving along, we get to air traffic control upgrading. There’s lots of stuff in there about making runways safer, getting better telecommunications working, funding new displays, adding more automated weather observation systems. After a while they drop a piddling amount on training actual Air Traffic Controllers.

That segues into NASA funds. Upcoming Mars stuff. Money to the ISS. Upgrades to NASA air fields and communications and such.

New section on energy. Oil, coal, gas. Lots on who we get it from, where we get it, how much we’ll spend to get it. A lot of this section makes no sense without going and reading the actual code. I don’t know that I’d understand it any better if I did, so I’m just skimming again.

There’s a small but significant section about the Secretary of Energy making data available to AI for it to learn from. This is one of the sections that bothers me. AI can be useful, but like fire, if you don’t use it correctly it can burn you. I frankly don’t trust the Secretary of Energy or anyone in the government to make those decisions. Just throwing money at someone and telling them “make it happen” seems a poor choice to me.

There’s a bunch of sections after this where money is rescinded from people or groups. These appear mostly to be funding that was previously earmarked for reducing diesel emissions, addressing air pollution, and greenhouse gas reporting. I can see these were pork rinds left behind by various Dems of years gone by.

Then we move into the Finance portion of the BBB. We’re still only a quarter of the way through, by the by. You’ll have to read this yourself, but it touches on the Social Security of seniors, increasing the child tax benefit, etc. After that we reach the part where taxes are dealt with. Again, above my pay grade. This is where the Dems tell us that the middle class is being taxed to carry the ultra-rich. I honestly don’t understand it well enough to know whether that’s true or not. I can see that tips are now tax deductible, which is one of Trump’s major campaign promises. I don’t think what people got is exactly what they wanted, but it’s not a bad fix (you have to claim your tips, but then you can write them off, but only up until you make $25,000.00).

No tax on overtime also has a similar fix. You can write it off, but only up to $12,500. It appears once you hit that threshold, taxes are again applied.

Trump Accounts are mentioned, which are a type of savings account for kids under 18. The explanations are complex, but what I got is that it’s sort of a savings account that parents can get for their kids, to help pay for education or the cost of living on their own as young adults. Doesn’t seem too bad.

Taxes, domestic… blah blah. Taxes, foreign… blah blah. Trying to read this stuff (which is not written in full sentences but as additions to already written statutes) is like listening to the adults speak in a Peanuts movie. Like thus:

SEC. 70342. DEFINITION OF ADJUSTED TAXABLE INCOME FOR BUSINESS INTEREST
LIMITATION.

(a) In General.–Subparagraph (A) of section 163(j)(8) is amended–
(1) by striking “and” at the end of clause (iv), and
(2) by adding at the end the following new clause:
“(vi) the amounts included in gross income
under sections 951(a), 951A(a), and 78 (and the
portion of the deductions allowed under
sections 245A(a) (by reason of section
964(e)(4)) and 250(a)(1)(B) by reason of such
inclusions), and”.
(b) Effective Date.–The amendments made by this section shall
apply to taxable years beginning after December 31, 2025.

At about the half way mark, we get into the part of the bill that supports families and small businesses. There’s money for helping smaller businesses with certain expenses in relation to daycare and such. There is a part about scholarships, and how both elementary and post elementary scholarships must go to “qualified individuals.” That means children of citizens, who themselves have SSNs. It will be interesting to see how that melds with the current idea that every child is required to get an education. Since it’s a requirement, and we’re now stopping some children (and no matter how you spin it, minor children are not adults and cannot make adult decisions, and so can’t just tell their parents to stop being dickwads and take them back home) from being able to get an adequate or above adequate education. I can’t tell, based on the wording, whether these two ideas actually clash.

By the time we reach chapter 5 of this opus, we’re just past the half way point. There will be more skimming, because it’s almost dinner time here and I need to feed the family or riots will ensue. The clean vehicle credit goes away this September. Ditto for the alternative fuel credit and the energy efficient home credit. Basically anything that was done for energy efficiency seems to have been rescinded. Fines have been put in place for people who repeatedly mis-report things as American made if they are not.

In the home stretch, we get into the “de minimus” thing that’s been bandied about. I believe that it has to do with the way that places like Temu and other Chinese companies were getting around levies and tariffs by ordering tiny amounts. That’s all gone.

Then we reach the Medicaid portion. This is all about reducing the number of illegal and ineligible people on the rolls. It addresses people who get on the rolls in two or more states, and how to avoid that. Basically when people are on Medicaid in the future (starting 2027 and more stringent stuff in 2029), they’ll have to show their SSN and/or other ID to get it. This lets people check to see they’re only getting it in one state. For those who may get their panties in a bunch, this is actually one of the good things you can use your SSN for. Oh, and dead folk are going to stop getting their Medicaid.

People on medicaid (some people, not all people) are going to be required to do their 80 hours of work each month. It can be employment, community service, volunteer time, training, etc. but they have to do “community engagement” as it’s called in the bill. This doesn’t apply if you’re under 19. People with certain exceptions (having to leave the state for medical reasons, short term emergencies, etc.) don’t have to do community engagement. Others who are excluded: those with children under the age of 13 or who are caretaker for a disabled individual, someone who is medically frail (examples given: blind, substance abuser, disabling mental disorder, complex medical condition, or is pregnant). Meaning, those who really can’t work or give time are not going to have to.

When it comes to insurance, we’re no longer required to have it and the bill says this is a “permanent” solution. Premium health care offices no longer have to provide telehealth options. Catastrophic insurance is back for those who prefer to have that. Money is going to rural health care providers.

Then there’s this gem:

SEC. 72001. MODIFICATION OF LIMITATION ON THE PUBLIC DEBT.

The limitation under section 3101(b) of title 31, United States
Code, as most recently increased by section 401(b) of Public Law 118-5
(31 U.S.C. 3101 note), is increased by $5,000,000,000,000.

They included a part about ending unemployment payments to “jobless millionaires.” Wow.

There’s also a section on limiting how much money students can borrow. While most of it seems normal (from what I can understand), there’s a $200,000 cap on upper level stuff. This means that people who want to be doctors and lawyers are not going to be able to borrow enough to pay for their educations through loans. It looks to me like the “total lifetime aggregate loan for any student” is capped at $257,500.00. There’s also a long section that, I believe, boils down to “students will pay off their loans.” They also got rid of the “employment contingent loans” meaning people have to pay back their loans whether they get that one underwater basket weaving job or not. But not until 2028.

And then this… You can be turned away for a loan because your prospective job after graduation doesn’t make enough:

Low-earning outcome programs described.–An educational program at an institution is described in this paragraph if the program awards an undergraduate degree, graduate or professional degree, or graduate certificate, for which the median earnings (as determined by the Secretary) of the programmatic cohort of students who received funds under this title for enrollment in such program, who completed such program during the academic year that is 4 years before the year of the determination, who are not enrolled in any institution of higher education, and who are working, are, for not less than 2 of the 3 years immediately preceding the date of the determination, less than the median earnings of a working adult described in paragraph (3) for the  corresponding year.

Nearing the end of the bill, we see money set aside to make sure that people who are fostering or adopting kids who are tossed across the border on their own (because we can’t just deport little kids) are decent folk.

Then we get into all the border stuff. The wall, better and more agents. Better screening at the border. That sort of thing.

Immigration fees will go up.

And that’s the gist of it, friends. Is there pork? Yes there is. All that financial stuff I wasn’t able to understand is pork related. It’s written in such a way that the average human being cannot comprehend it. My understanding is that even the Senators and Congress critters require special staff who take all this stuff and put it into plain language for them to understand it.

At the end of the day, my big take away from skimming through this and reading the contentious parts, is:

• it’s too big to be practical, and that’s wrong
• it’s impossible for the average (or even above average) person to read this thing and get a good understanding of what it means
• it includes too much pork
• it adds some stuff to protect people on medicaid and SNAP which are good, and as lazy folk are dumped, benefits for those truly in need should go up slightly
• it pumps the national debt from about $36 trillion to $41 trillion
• it doesn’t include anything that DOGE did
• while Trump is ditching the mandates for electric and alternative fuel vehicles, he also gutted incentives for alternative programs
• energy prices aren’t being pushed down in this budget
• there’s nothing at all in there about term limits for Senate or Congress, though I’m not sure if that belongs in here or elsewhere

I supported Trump for a number of reasons, and some of them are addressed in the BBB. I know that the Republicans MUST have a budget this year, and they’ve done it, and I am glad of that. But I do not like this bill. More than anything, I’m disappointed in President Trump, and I don’t WANT to be. I want to be proud of him today. Instead, I’m finding myself biting my tongue and sighing a lot. The stuff the Dems are whinging on about is nothing, most of it is made up, and the few things that touch on actual line items are overblown and taken out of context. The REAL problems in the bill are the bloat and the various work-arounds. I know Trump had to do certain things to grease palms to get this thing through. I get that. But man, I wish he hadn’t. I wish this was entirely without the pork.

The only way I like my pork is crispy, hot, and right out of the frying pan.