Monstrous Deportations And Bigwig Blowjobs Bill Slouches Onto Senate Floor, Passes
A 13-fold increase for ICE jails? Sure why not.
The Senate version of Donald Trump’s Big Budget-Busting Blowjobs for Billionaires Bill passed a short time ago, after Sen Lisa Murkowski (R-Alalska) overcame what little was left of her integrity and gave the bill its 50th GOP vote. All 47 Democrats were joined by Republicans Thom Tillis (North Caroline), Rand Paul (Kentucky), and Susan Collins (Very Concerned). Then Vice President JD Vance was released from a room full of couches where he was held all morning, so he could cast the tie-breaking vote.
Murkowski finally put her spine in a blind trust after measures were added at the last minute to spare Alaska from several parts of the bill that will deeply enshittify the rest of the nation. We’ll do a quick roundup of that in a separate post.
The final version, if passed by the House (no guarantees, but likely), will add $3.3 trillion to the federal debt over the next decade, nearly a trillion bucks more debt than the already budget busting $2.4 trillion debt increase in the House version of the bill from the Party of Fiscal Responsibility.
All that comes after an all-night “vote-a-rama” on amendment after amendment from Democrats, a few of which were still unresolved as we pounded on the keyboard in disgust this morning. But the basic shape of the bill hasn’t changed much: If it passes the House and Trump signs it, we’ll see trillions of dollars in tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, a huge boost in military spending, millions of Americans losing their healthcare coverage and food aid, and a gigantic increase in the budget for MAGA’s beloved mass deportations which will inevitably also mean increasing militarization of the USA, because you can’t try to eject 10 million people without going Full Police State.
Compared to the trillions for tax cuts (and the more than $1.2 trillion in safety net cuts), the roughly $175 billion in new spending for the deportation regime may seem like a pittance, until you consider just what a huge increase that represents from pre-Trump II levels. Hell, that final total even eclipses the bill’s $150 billion hike in defense spending!
There’s $29 billion in the bill for ICE operations, including to hire 10,000 new ICE goons over five years, increasing the number of paid thugs by 50 percent. That will also provide new retention and signing bonuses, to attract and keep secret police — all those death’s head gaiters and regular old face masks coverings probably cost a pretty penny, too.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which runs the Border Patrol, will also get $42 billion its ownself for operations, hiring and bonuses. CBP’s own workforce has grown a hell of a lot in recent years as both Republicans and Democrats sought to stop immigration at the border itself, but the huge increase in hiring ICE agents reflects Trump’s hard-on for deporting everyone who’s been here for years, even decades.
The CATO Institute’s David J. Bier, who heads immigration studies at the libertarian think tank, says that means armed agents in every city, and very visible mass arrests so we can be protected from day laborers outside Home Depot and nannies in parks.
“It's going to be unrecognizable in American history, the level of immigration enforcement, street harassment, that you will see by border patrol, ICE and all the law enforcement they have helping them out.” […]
“The average American probably hasn't seen an ICE raid in action, but they will if this bill passes,” Bier said. “It's going to be everywhere.”
The enforcement raids will keep getting bigger and bigger, because the the goal here isn’t just to terrorize immigrants, it’s to frighten all of us and convince the MAGAs that Trump is strong like bull. And even as most of those arrested and deported won’t have criminal records, as was the case in Los Angeles, the rhetoric will all be about whatever portion of those scooped up with criminal records, even if they’re from 40 years ago, as was the case with the 75-year-old Cuban man ICE killed this weekend.
Other new deportation money includes $45 billion to build immigration jails “for single adult alien detention capacity and family residential center capacity,” because we need to keep families locked up of course.
What else? There’s billions for everything, like $46 billion for WALL and other building projects, and nearly a billion for vehicles, too. Another $13.5 billion will go to a fund to pay state and local governments to help out with deportations, too; some of the WALL funds may end up going to reimburse Texas for the billions it’s spent on its own Greg Abbott WALL, and chunks of that may help pay Abbott back for his fun trolling policy of busing immigrants to Democratic-run cities after they were released from border facilities.
Keep in mind we’re talking about only the stuff that has “immigration enforcement” explicitly stenciled on it — in addition, there’ll be higher costs for deploying the military, which will come from the Pentagon budget, as well as ever-increasing diversions of funding, personnel, and resources from other agencies like the FBI, DEA, and US Marshals Service, to support deportations. Plus, whatever coming fuckery Stephen Miller thinks we need, like funding his eventual escape to Russia.
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Also, moderator note: Yell all you want at Lisa Murkowski, who deserves all the invective we have, but also remember we still have a comments policy, so don’t be misogynist assholes about it.
Murkowski did a masterful job of double-speak while explaining her vote to pass the bill. She admitted that they carved out some exceptions for her state, while screwing the lower 48. Then she turned around and said that the bill was horrible and that she wanted the House to fix it.
a single bright spot, courtesy NYMag dot com:
"On Tuesday, the city’s Board of Elections released the final results of the ranked-choice mayoral primary, showing Zohran Mamdani trouncing Andrew Cuomo for the Democratic nomination. Mamdani won 56 percent to Cuomo’s 44 percent once all other candidates were eliminated and their votes were given to the top two finishers in the third round of voting."