Two under-reported facts about the Big Beautiful Bill that I learned from @StephenM: First, reconciliation bills only deal with “mandatory spending,” not “discretionary spending.” Since the DOGE cuts apply to discretionary spending, they will have to be dealt with separately. To be clear, I will be very disappointed if the DOGE cuts aren’t codified. But according to Senate rules, that has to happen through a different vehicle. Second, BBB does actually cut spending. It’s just not scored that way because the bill removes the sunset provision from the 2017 tax cuts. In other words, the bill *continues* tax rates that have been in place since January 1, 2018 but CBO scores this as a spending increase because those rates would have expired on December 31, 2025. If you use the current year as a baseline, as common sense would tell you to do, BBB represents a cut in net spending. Undoubtedly there are things that could be improved about the bill, but Republicans only had a 1-vote margin in the House to work with. Now let’s hold their feet to the fire because we do need the DOGE cuts to be made permanent and for that critical work to continue.