With Republicans like this, who needs Democrats?

Yesterday, John Puri wrote a good post about the various amendments in the Senate’s version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. He sorted them out into good, bad, and interesting. I am here to report that things have deteriorated significantly since yesterday.

The two good amendments were withdrawn in the final version that passed the Senate. Senator Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) agreed to pull his proposal to cap eligibility for farm subsidies — a measure that would have redirected support from wealthy landowners to working-class farmers. Also, Senator Rick Scott (R., Fla.) withdrew his amendment to gradually eliminate the enhanced federal Medicaid match for Obamacare-expansion enrollees.

Meanwhile, the bad amendments were made worse. For all the complaints and the “green new scam” label, the Senate utterly failed to terminate the Biden administration’s green subsidies. Read Alex Epstein’s summary and weep. And Senator Susan Collins (R., Maine) got all the subsidies she wanted and will pay for them by taxing the rich.

With Republicans like this, who needs Democrats?

For those of you who believe that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will produce enormous growth, as projected by the Council of Economic Advisers, I have a bridge to sell you. There is only so much that the few good tax provisions in the bill can do. For instance:

Take the most pro-growth provisions in the bill. The 100% bonus depreciation & R&D expensing provisions will add about 0.7% to the growth effect. Changes to EBIT, GILTI, and BEAT add another 0.3% — so combined this is 1% extra growth. Good. However, as Jack Salmon has shown the $40k SALT cap reduces growth by 1%, completely canceling out all of those pro-growth provisions.