I don’t know the answer, but Trump appointments, Tea Party and Freedom Caucus hypocrites, and the bond market are in the spotlight.
I am sticking with my forecast of 222-213 House edge in favor of Republicans.
222 would be up one from their current 221-214.
For discussion, please see 17 Undeclared House Seats, How Will They Break?
It’s now 16 undecided. My estimate did not change.
Vacancies Matter
Trump called on GOP Reps. Elise Stefanik (NY-21) for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and Michael Waltz (FL-06) national security adviser.
That’s could be a smaller majority than the current very unworkable majority.
The difference this time is Republicans have control of the Senate and Trump is in the White House.
Regardless, appointing House members to the Cabinet makes little sense when the majority is this tenuous.
Tough Math in the House
The Wall Street Journal reports Republican Euphoria Punctured by Tough Math in the House
House Republicans on the verge of clinching a majority in the next Congress are already taking a victory lap, but their expected slim margin and unruly nature could undercut their efforts to pass President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda.
Party leaders, still bruised from infighting over the past two years that led to the ouster of the GOP speaker and embarrassing failed votes, say things will be different this time. The squabbles were exacerbated by the party’s historically small majority this Congress—now at 220 to 212 with three vacancies—and leaders now are bracing for a similarly narrow advantage next year.
With Democrats expected to be largely united against the Trump agenda, any number of issues could trip up the majority, ranging from spending cuts, to raising the debt limit, to ending the $10,000 cap on state and local tax deductions.
In June, Trump put one of the House’s most defiant lawmakers on notice. In a private meeting with House Republicans, Trump spotted Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) and asked whether she was “being nice” to Johnson. Greene had unsuccessfully tried to oust Johnson after he supported a $95 billion foreign-aid package that included money for Ukraine.
“Be nice to him,” Trump instructed her, according to Greene, who detailed the interaction in a CNN interview.
Trump’s Wish List
- No tax on tips
- No tax on Social Security
- Renewal of State and Local Tax deductions
- Paying caregivers for taking care of the elderly
- Credits for first-time homebuyers
- Extension of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA)
- Strengthen the military.
How Do We Pay for Those Things?
The Committee for a Responsible Budget estimates those items will add over $7 trillion to the deficit.
Anyone who thinks taxing imports will pay for that is a delusional TDS Type II believer.
How Many House Hypocrites Will There Be?
Let’s see how may Tea Party fiscal conservatives there really are now that Republicans are in the White House.
A big flush out of Tea Party hypocrites is coming and/or Trump does not get his wish list.
What’s Ahead for Bonds Yields?
The answer to the “how many hypocrites” question will determine the answer to this key question The Fed Cuts Key Interest Rate by a Quarter-Point, What’s Ahead for Bonds?
My Take: Trump and Fed Chair Jerome Powell are on a collision course with bond market reality in addition to a collision course with each other.
Trump’s ‘super power’ is like a Sorting Hat from Harry Potter. It renders his opponents unable to maintain a charade and they voluntarily self-align with those who share their base nature…party is irrelevant in the face of such power. That power will be tested by the remaining Never-Trump-Neocons who believe war is the blessing from which all good things flow.
Any hope I had disappeared with some recent appointments – Matt Gaetz for AG, Defense secretary -great talker hope he has a few management skills.
I don’t know. Can we recount all the riggings in the past week? This country’s elections are a joke and we’re on the path to certain doom until we get a handle on that. It should be the first order of business.
You would have to be absolutely thick AND not paying any attention whatsoever (with any depth beyond reading the corporate press) to disagree with the premise, by the way.
Depends on whether they can appease the Kooky Kaucus
It is hard to say what will happen on taxes and spending. But the reason that Freedom Caucus types are so irritable is that they have been lied to by the House leadership over many years. McCarthy’s great debt deal from May 2023 has literally added $4.5 trillion of debt in 17 months. All post-COVID spending. Budget reconciliation takes just a simple majority. But over 70% of federal spending is comprised of interest on the debt and so-called mandatory spending. Which is both programmatic and formulaic. There are some tricks allowed under reconciliation to control the spending, but my prediction is that if R’s try to cut most discretionary spending while increasing the military budget, they will fail! They will get neither. If Defense spending is on the table, then anything is possible. Everything needs to be on the table.
I’ll state the obvious reply to the article’s headline: Better chance of passing any legislation than if they didn’t hold their slim majority. Barring a massive House edge AND a super majority in the Senate, which was also unlikely, not sure what the author thinks is the concern. The country is split nearly 50/50 in aggregate and has been for some time.
Absolutely agree on questioning why one would appoint members of that slim majority to key administration positions and also why anyone in Congress who holds a seat representing their constituents would give it up to do so unless they were convinced it would be backfilled by a Republican who could also win in the upcoming midterms (which they are probably already spenidng all their time worrying about vs doing their legislative job for the next 2 years).
In general, with deficit spending run amok, both sides have spent us into oblivion for decades in such a way that nearly every relatively minor thing that faced disagreement between the 2 sides was paid for with mutual agreement such that:
All we have left are the irreconciliable differences.
That is why things are so contentious now. Congressional compromise for decades involved, eventually, Republicans got what they wanted, Democrats got what they wanted, spending every dollar that was already or was someday going to be in existence. The remaining debt will be punishing. The remaining concerns are raging hot with very little middle ground.
But as to this post–the President has to be pleased that he has a House majority, Senate majority and a conservative-leaning court. The Democrats at some level should view this as a huge opportunity, the pressure is all on the Republicans to deliver and history says they’ll fumble their position of strength and act like weaklings.
Interesting times as usual!
It’s split into states that check ID and states that religiously rig for a week after the count starts—that’s how it’s split.
One of their priorities should be election integrity. As we’ve seen, without cheating, Democrats have little to nothing to fall back on and we’ll have a super majority after the midterms.
Of course, deportation of all illegals is part of election integrity.
The WSJ is obviously upset that Trump won. Expect more articles like this from the now irrelevant legacy media.
It is owned by Australian liberals, and their op-ed “congratulating” Trump included gems like “he should pardon Hunter Biden”. The WSJ has ceased to be a serious news source since the late 2000s.
362 AIPAC-endorsed candidates won their primaries and 11 anti-Israel candidates were defeated. So, if the “key legislation” benefits Israel, the answer is a resounding YES! And what legislation could be more important than that regarding Israel?
Plus Zion Don has named a few of those candidates to his cabinet (Rubio, Waltz and Stefanik).
Next year, in Jerusalem! And Beirut, Tehran, etc.
I wondered why he got the arab vote in MI considering how pro Isreal he really is. Also wonder why the jewish vote was predominately democrat considering this.
Lots of people just want the conflict to end. Biden was too old and senile to do much of anything in terms of facilitating an end to the conflict. So they voted for Trump who at least got the Abraham Accords rolling.
Seems like American Jews are leaning more to the left and Israeli Jews more to the right, and they aren’t necessarily agreeing these days. And we know which side Trump favors.
Get Vance to hold a conference on threats, resources and opportunities in global policy. Ditch many foreign bases. Announce that the US will limit any aid or intervention to any nation that is demographically dying (why bother?) Negotiate for a free port in Cuba, say that we don’t hate the common people there.
Those ‘pulls’ from the House are from +20 GOP districts. A quality candidate and a Trump rally in support and it’s over.
That (10 year) $7.75 trillion is the “central” of that outfit’s 3 guesses. The “low” guess is $1.65T, and the “high” is $15.55T.
Are these 10 year predictions accurate? With a span from 1 to 16 trillion, these guys may be very accurate!
Wouldn’t it be instructive to see the actual calculations these outfits do? Starting with the Fed.
It would be great to really go after the deficit and spending…Would love to see Trump take it on but I don’t know if there’s really enough political will for the GOP to set itself on fire in order to do so. Don’t say this happily, but in spite of gold’s recent pullback and the insane happy Trump dance in the markets, I figure inflation and sovereign debt crisis is still baked in the cake of our 4th Turning administration. Perhaps they’ll pull a rabbit out of a hat and make it happen but there’s been so much financial grift, rot and can kicking for so many years…Now I’m going to shake my head and hold my hands out like the stereotypical Italian and exclaim “But What the Hell do I Know”?
No need to worry. Elon will cut 2 trillion from the budget and Trump’s tariffs will eliminate the debt. I am looking forward to our new Golden Age!
Still not pissed Papa? Lol.
Nope. I am looking forward to the Golden Age. Bring it on!
Hakeem the regime change is Newt Gingrich inverse. He will be against everything. Trump doesn’t need congress. He might order an Anti Martingale budgets cuts of all gov branches. First a big cut before smaller and smaller. A $36T gov debt is a threat to our national security. The Fed might stays the course and cut rates in order to ease debt payments. Higher wages, higher tax collection. A thriving economy lift all wages. Trump can cut gov debt without Hakeem until JD Vance takes over. JD Vance, whenever he takes over, will follow Trump’s footsteps in an inhumane way focusing on one thing : cutting debt.
Ilan ==> Andrew Mellon.
No harm in promoting House members from safe districts.
I trust that they will be able to accomplish a lot of what they promised now that they control things to a reasonable extent. And if they make a great start over the next two years, they will be able to crush it in the next mid-term election, get their super majorities, and have cart blanche to finish the job in their second term.
I am looking forward to Trump eliminating my taxes and making inflation disappear. I certainly don’t mind paying my share of the higher tariffs on everything.
I read this on oilprice.com today. They seem to think that Trump won’t put tariffs on Canadian energy.
“ Donald Trump’s victory in last week’s elections has worried many people. The reason they are worried is the word tariffs. Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on every country he sees as having an unfair trade advantage over the United States. One country is lucky, however. That county really does have an advantage—and tariffs will not erase this advantage.
Canada is the biggest foreign supplier of crude oil to U.S. refiners. Canadian supply is especially vital in heavy crude, which U.S. oil companies do not produce anywhere near the necessary volumes for refineries along the Gulf Coast. American crude is light and sweet. A lot of Canadian crude is heavy and sour. And U.S. refiners need both—at low prices.
“We import a lot of energy from Canada. I can’t imagine that the president would want to tax that because all it would do would be to raise our costs and not help anything with more American jobs,” former Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross told CBC this week, “So I think it’s easy to have the fears be overblown.”
Indeed, per Bloomberg, Canada’s energy exports to the United States were worth close to $160 billion—most of that in the form of crude oil, refined products, and natural gas. A year later, crude oil exports alone hit a record of some 4 million barrels daily. Of those, 97% went to the U.S., the Canada Energy Regulator reported in August. All that because the U.S. may be the biggest producer of crude oil but it does not produce the full variety of grades that its refineries need in order to churn out petroleum products.
It is a symbiotic relationship, really. Canada has all this heavy crude and a neighbor that needs all the heavy crude it can get its hands on, especially after it sanctioned the other two big heavy crude producers: Venezuela and Russia. The United States has all these refineries configured to work with light and heavy crude, and a neighbor with some of the biggest oil sands reserves in the world. That neighbor has been eager to diversify its export outlets, but it mainly has increased shipments south of the border.
Spring 2024 in Canada marked a historic moment. The Trans Mountain pipeline put into operation its expanded capacity of close to 900,000 barrels daily. That’s up from just 300,000 bpd, meaning the Trans Mountain can now carry three times what it could carry previously. Numerous attempts were made to cancel the project, but in the end, demand for energy won and TXM was completed—and thanks to that, Canadian oil exports to the United States broke their record this year, hitting 4.3 million barrels daily in July, per U.S. Energy Information Administration data.
U.S. refiners need Canadian crude and have nothing to replace it with, not in the necessary volumes. Even if some future U.S. administration decides to lift all sanctions from Venezuela and Russia, Canadian heavy crude will likely remain the cheapest, most convenient sort of heavy crude for U.S. refiners. Unless that is, the Trudeau government pushes its draconian emissions cap through and makes local crude oil production a lot more expensive.
Until this happens, however, Trump is unlikely to point the tariff weapon north. Tariffs only work from a position of power. They don’t really work in a symbiotic relationship where the partners need each other equally.“
This makes me like my Canadian oil and gas stocks even more.
TM is good to go. Canadian oil will be less dependent on the US. West Canadian Select might rise above WTIC.
Unlikely. TM capacity is just 0.9 mbpd. Canadian exports to US by other pipelines is 4 mbpd. Build another 2 or 3 pipelines to the coast, and then WCS can be on par with WTI.
0.9 : 4 = 25%. In a thriving economy demand for Canadian oil will rise, especially if US
oil extraction will decline.
1. Over 50% of TM capacity is going to the US west coast refiners already. Less than half to overseas markets.
2. US oil production is still rising, though it should plateau in the next few years. It won’t decline in the near future unless oil prices drop below $60 WTI. New shale production costs more than $60.
3. US oil demand has stabilized at 20.5 mbpd. Efficiency gains have been compensating for economic growth. The exception is natural gas. Strong growth is still expected in NG demand.
Of course, but most big spending legislation will get passed with help from Dems. Maga
republicans will be marginalized.
Maga republicans will do whatever Trump wants.
They will become part of the deficit problem.
Sure, but they have to be very serious about it. To assist in finding out if this will be a problem, they must go for some BIG things quickly, that need to be done of course.
Now knowing where your weaknesses are, you start hammering any of them that you can, with a clear understanding of what they are, when voted for as a Republican.
Now that you were fair in your intentions, you can also turn the Mid-Terms into a “correction solving ground” for those that were in the way of the overall “Republican Agenda” as they were elected to do.
Purging the tax load of the American public sector by laying off 75% of it, might make a dent; as will halting “aid” to illegal proxy wars.
I predict nothing will be done because Donald Trump is officially a lame duck president. Everyone knows he can’t run again so why cave in? Heck he may age out before he even finishes his term.
The “resistance” republicans may pretend to go along but will block half the crazy crap Trump wants to get done and the other half won’t ever be happy because it’s not extreme enough. We are already seeing infighting in the senate over majority leader and the house will be far worse.
The comments on the last post reeked of defeatism already and Trump hasn’t even set foot in the oval office yet and just look at the infighting there by his own supporters!
I also predict a stock market crash because they always seem to happen on a repub presidency so we’ll wait and see. Still holding Jun 2025 ATM puts on SPY.
The good thing Trump has accomplished is push bitcoin over $80k and it may go to $170k if the stars align just right.
Gotta run and check on crypto and Asian markets, see ya tomorrow.
A lot of breathless wishful thinking by you.
It doesn’t matter to me which clown show runs the government, the dem elitist took care of the elites and the maga elitist will take care of the elites. Billionaires across the board have gotten richer since trump took office, that’s both dem billionaires and repub billionaires.
Don’t kid yourself that it will be different this time.
If you want to be “taken care of” by these parties, become an elite. You do that by profiting the same way the clowns in charge are doing it.
Do we break 5 percent on the 10 year again?
5 is the floor not the ceiling.
That would get some attention for sure
Absolutely. The 60 year interest rate cycle is in its up-phase for the next 10 – 15 years. The bond market is consolidating.
Yields are falling everywhere, the synthetic inflation is melting away to reveal the real deflation.
Quarterly Net private saving: Households and institutions
Net private saving: Households and institutions (W986RC1Q027SBEA) | FRED | St. Louis Fed
Is close to the deficits run by the Federal Government:
4th qtr. $546
1st qtr. $823
Both President Trump and Elon Musk have enough campaign finance resources to primary any Republican who does not play along.