Consulo Indicium - 6/20/25

Information for your Consideration… 

The Simplified House Version Overview Of The Great Big Beautiful Bill – The Senate version is just out and I’ve not had a chance to review it thoroughly. One of the dilemmas of the current environment is the color commentary advanced on all sides about activities, events, and policy decisions. The parsing and misrepresentation of content confuses and discourages true understanding on all sides. So, here’s an attempt to cut through the rhetoric for your consideration and evaluation. The bill:

• Extends Trump-era 2017 tax cuts for individuals and corporations, including a State and Local Tax (= “SALT”) cap that is increased to $40,000, including new deductions (e.g., tips, overtime), and also extends child tax credits plus a bunch of other deductions.
• Reduces entitlement spending by implementing tighter Medicaid requirements – reducing expenditures by about $880 billion.
• Reduces SNAP Program (which reduces food insecurity by providing eligible households with monthly benefits to buy food), work requirements, and stricter Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) certification rules, potentially making benefits harder to access for low-income families. In fact, it’s likely that the stricter SNAP and EITC rules will push more families into poverty.
• Increases the defense budget by about $150 billion, adds about $70 billion for border security that includes $46.5 billion for a border wall or the uncompleted wall.
• Raises the USA debt ceiling by nearly $4 trillion to support the expanded spending and, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) adds ~$2.6 trillion to national debt over a decade and up to $3–$3.8 trillion according to other analysts.
• Imposes a 10-year federal moratorium on state-level regulations of Artificial Intelligence.
• On the “social” or “healthcare” side, up to 8.6 million Americans may lose Medicaid benefits by 2034 with 5.2 million due to work requirement conditions included in the bill.
• Gender-affirming care will be excluded from Medicaid, and access to Planned Parenthood and reproductive health in more permissive states will be reduced, plus immigrant families will face tougher public benefit limitations and new remittance taxes.

And, the list goes on and on. And, the bill passed with an overwhelming 215 (for) - 214 (against). Ai yi yi!!! The other concern is that many of the Congressional delegation have not even read the bill (even admitting it on media) although I anticipate they have been given the purged version by staff with variation in interpretation of the results culminating from the bill. We shall see. The bigger issue, from my perspective, is noted above on the more general question of the amount of debt the USA is accumulating over the coming decade with these changes. While are reducing benefits for those without resources in our society, we are increasing benefits for the upper-income folks. I am part of this latter crowd, even though I no longer generate income but I’ve done OK over the years. At the same time, I believe it is everyone’s responsibility to make sure we take care of all members of society. It’s why I’ve been a critic of the current payment system in healthcare. A change could create savings…but that’s a longer conversation!!

Now, we all need to turn to the Senate’s version...it’s just out!

Reacting To Bots – Imperva recently issued its 2025 Bad Bot Report, which noted that “bots” (= those software interactions that occur without human intervention) for the first time constitute more traffic on the Internet than human-to-human connections! Yikes!! The computers are starting to talk with one another. While the language may be simple at present, it does point us in a direction where significant considerations need to be debated. Furthermore, there are “good” bots as well as “bad” bots engaging in independent work, which now represent 37% of all Internet activity, compared to “good” bots which only represent 14% of activity. And, the disparity is increasing. The other consideration is that the bots are getting better at hiding themselves in the Internet morass. So, a word to the wise: be careful…