«The House’s resolution lays out a $1.5 trillion floor for spending cuts across committees with a target of $2 trillion, puts a $4.5 trillion ceiling on the deficit impact of any GOP plan to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, and includes $300 billion in additional spending for the border and defense and a $4 trillion debt limit increase.»

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5164108-house-republicans-budget-resolution-trump-agenda/

(What is the current debt limit?

«The federal debt limit was reinstated on January 2, 2025, at $36.1 trillion. That total comprised $28.8 trillion in debt held by the public and $7.3 trillion in intergovernmental accounts. The statutory debt limit constrains nearly all federal debt, including both debt held by the public (mostly Treasury securities sold via auctions) and intragovernmental debt (mainly federal trust funds, such as those for Social Security, Medicare, and federal retirement systems).»

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IN/IN12045

(Pretty sure that “intergovernmental debt” is how we borrow money from Social Security, btw.)

Why can’t journalists include the base figure when things change? It’s not like we yutzes know this stuff of the top of our heads. Ok back to The Hill story:)

«The resolution directs the Energy and Commerce Committee — which has jurisdiction over Medicaid — to find at least $880 billion in cuts, a figure that some lawmakers said could not be reached without significant slashes to the social safety net program.

…

“Do a word search for yourself,” Johnson said Tuesday morning. “It doesn’t even mention Medicaid in the bill, so that’s an important point.”»

Uh huh. This is why people think politicians are liars. Everything is done by implication.

So, there’s law, and there’s regulations. The legislature passes laws and then individual government agencies implement the laws by making regulations. The *law* may not mention a thing, but at the level below the law, which the public doesn’t generally see because guess who doesn’t report on it, the thing most definitely gets “mentioned”.

(Sometimes, even then, the thing doesn’t get mentioned, but it happens anyway. This is how we implement racism now. It’s all pushed down to the state and county level. Or the thing is a blanket rule with exceptions for rural areas (the poor farmer! (who just happens to be white)), or exceptions for certain types of labor which just, purely by coincidence, happen to be mostly non-white (e.g., farm *labor* and domestic “help”).)