Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Shutdown
2. Affordability
3. Health Care
4. Mortgage
5. BBC
6. Virginia
7. Stranded
1. Shutdown. President Trump signed legislation ending the 43-day long government shutdown Wednesday night. HR 5542 kicks the can down the road another 75 days, retaining funding at 99% of previous levels. That number drops by an additional percent for each additional 30-day period without a new budget after Jan 31, so the incentives are in it to not pull this particular stunt again. Not to worry, for there will be other stunts.
- Among other things, the legislation funds the VA, military construction and the USDA though the end of FY 2026 next Sept 30, along with SNAP and WIC, though it looks like the USDA is going to require all 42 million SNAP recipients to reapply for benefits so as to sort out duplicates, dead people discovered during the shutdown and at least start addressing the massive fraud that publicly documented then. As usual, layoffs of government employees was reversed. Don’t know if this also applies to the army of contractors. Backpay for all federal employees will be paid. New mass layoffs are blocked through the end of Jan 2026. States will be reimbursed for federal expenses paid during the shutdown. There was no permanent extension of expired O’BamaCare subsidies, though the House promised a vote on extending them by mid-Dec. More about this later. Final new provision was additional funding for security for lawmakers and SCOTUS justices.
- Eight democrat senators voted for cloture to the silent filibuster. None of them are up for reelection in 2026. Another 4-5 were reportedly ready to vote in favor if the 60-vote threshold wasn’t reached. The most important vote was Democrat whip Dick Durbin (D, IL), the second ranking democrat in the senate. This sent the message that leadership supported this vote ending the shutdown. He was joined by both democrats from NV and NH, along with Fefferman (D, PA), former Hilly VP nominee Kaine (D, VA) and King (I, ME).
- Reaction from the certifiably insane portion of the democrat party was predictably unhinged, with most of the vitriol aimed at Senate Majority leader Schumer, who is rumored to be considering not running for reelection in 2028. As of this writing, it does not appear that democrats got anything they demanded for voting to end the filibuster. I would strongly caution Republicans not to spike the ball, do a Snoopy dance of joy, or otherwise rub democrat noses in their failure. Much better to exploit the opening just presented them in the first half of 2026. And trust me, there are some bodacious openings.
2. Affordability. What better way to defeat democrats in an off-year election than to co-opt what they think is their most powerful issue, affordability? There is an old Curtis E LeMay story from the time when he was a 4-star in the Pentagon. As the story goes, a seeing eye Colonel rushes into his office after the Soviets did something scary. LeMay listens, takes a puff on his ever-present cigar, leans back and says something along the lines of ‘Son, this is not a problem, it is an opportunity’. The problem is the long-term effects of a couple decades of democrat foolishness, flushing the garbage injected into the economy by the Biden regime, blue states, and cities, out of the body politic before that poison can do more damage. It is essentially a persuasion argument presented to one of the great persuaders ever to hold political office. Better yet, it opens up a real opportunity to at least start working the affordability problem with healthcare, an issue handed Trump on a silver platter by recalcitrant democrats during the shutdown. This is going to take some real skill, as the media (not unlike what they did during the 2020 and 2024 elections), will do everything humanly possible not to report any positive news. We are also in the midst of a bubble in beef prices that everyone sees at the store on a daily / weekly basis. While I have long learned not to bet against Trump, he does have his work cut out for him on this.
3. Health Care. Democrats opened the door for this discussion when they put a sunset on federal subsidies for O’BamaCare premiums. Their thinking was similar to that used by Republicans for decades with sunsetting tax cuts, making it a recurring issue for future elections. They never considered an actual president willing to shake the box of rocks and see if he could come up with another solution. Of course, demanding O’BamaCare for illegals didn’t help them either. Given the complexity of the issue and the fact that literally nobody understands anything about it, we are either faced with a incomprehensible mess or a Gordian know begging for a sword. Trump has a sword. What follows are bits and pieces that may or may not end up being a solution. I suspect all of them are starts rather than global solutions. I also point out that this current state of affairs was not broken until forced by passage of O’BamaCare in 2012. That was the culmination of a process that started with passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. We have been breaking things for over 60 years. We now have the opportunity for a solution.
- Over the last week, Trump has started addressing exorbitant drug prices. This is not the old Clinton technique of bullying drug companies into writing them campaign checks. Rather, it involves deals with various drug companies aimed at ensuring the companies charge Americans what they are charging international customers. Historically, the companies have offered those products overseas at a cut rate price while charging American higher (and in some cases much higher) prices for the same drugs. The first company to agree was AstraZeneca Oct 10. That number was up to three within a week.
- The second round of agreements was with Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk last week allowing Medicare and Medicaid to cover diabetes type 2 / GLP weight loss drugs at perhaps a third to less than the current cost. Why would these companies agree with this proposal? Because they will be able to sell a LOT of these obesity controlling drugs. Why is this good for the American taxpayer? Because the less obesity there is, the less heart disease, high blood pressure, cancer, arteriosclerosis, diabetes type 2 and related diseases there are. Skinny, healthy people don’t need the expensive end of life health care. And these drugs once they are available in oral form are going to be VERY popular.
- At the most basic level, with all government spending, the closer control of money spent is to the actual citizen, the better it is spent. Despite the known rampant fraud of SNAP, I can make a great argument that the fraud associated with public education and public health spending is much, much worse. At least the SNAP bozos buying steak and caviar for themselves get fed, while the kiddos in the public schools and universities are never educated. With this in mind, Trump during the latter stages of the shutdown proposed paying health care subsidies directly to Americans rather than to the insurance companies. Democrats recoil at the suggestion much like Dracula to a cross. There are at least two pieces of legislation under construction that should be ready to offer when the House holds their votes on O;BamaCare subsidies mid-December. Trump mentioned MSA-style accounts. One of the (intentional) problems with O’BamaCare is that there is no marketplace for health care. Trump and his supporters in congress aim to create one.
4. Mortgage. Not all Trump ideas are positive, though I do appreciate at least having the discussion of options. Trump threw out the suggestion that a 50-year mortgage would be a way to open home purchase opportunities for young home buyers. If you run the math, a 20-year increase in mortgage length would drop annual payments a bit but end up with the buyer paying roughly twice as much interest over the lifetime of the loan. As an opening bid, perhaps it has some merit. As a long-term plan, the shorter the mortgage period, the better. Other options would include a portable mortgage that would move with the buyer as they moved from property to property. Trump is also working other things that make home ownership difficult. First and most importantly, he is removing illegals from the nation, freeing up low-end properties. He is also working the environmental restrictions that make it more difficult to build, renovate or otherwise modify properties. I tend to think that the collapse of the commercial real estate market will go a long way toward freeing up land for new construction as strip malls and larger malls go the way of the economic dodo.
5. BBC. The BBC may end up being the next large dollar donation to the Trump Presidential Library by virtue of a $1 – 5 billion defamation lawsuit for editing his Jan 6 speech giving the impression that he told the crowd to march on the capitol and attack it. The edit spliced together chunks of the speech separated by around 54 minutes. This sort of edit is called a Rupar, where you chop out the chunk that you want, remove context before / after, so it ends up saying what you want it to say. BBC initially ignored the complaint. This was closely followed by a written apology to Parliament and resignation of at least two BBC executives. They thought they had it mostly tamped down until a second fraudulent edit of the same speech aired on the same show was discovered last week. Expect Trump’s lawsuit to drop next week.
6. Virginia. When you elect a democrat governor and give her a legislative majority there is what is fast becoming a standard democrat shopping list of constitutional amendments and legislation that will be passed and signed into law. We saw this the last time democrats were completely in charge in Virginia. We saw it in 2019 when Tim Walz was elected governor in Minnesota with a fully compliant legislature. And we are about to see it in Virginia, with Abigail Spanburger Expect to see constitutional amendments on abortion, gay marriage and voting rights and an amendment to allow the new legislature to redistrict congressional maps if any other legislature changes those maps between Jan 2025 and Oct 2030. This reverses redistricting done by the last legislature in 2025. I expect the four amendments will get great support from the Beltway hate Trump crowd that installed these clowns into office. Along with the amendments, the anti-gun crowd is slavering at their chance to pass a variety of new laws aimed at harassing law-abiding gun owners Colorado managed to pass 12 such bills during this year’s legislature. Governor Polis signed all of them. Expect legislation further penalizing ownership of firearms on a university campus, criminalizing leaving firearms in vehicles, extending waiting periods for purchase, mandatory storage requirements and the ever-popular limits on rifles and magazine sizes. As usual, this wish list is aimed squarely at gun owners and ignored by criminals, which is the whole point of the exercise.
7. Stranded. File this one under poetic justice with a side helping of irony. A week or so ago, astronauts on the Chinese space station noticed one of their attached space capsules suffered a debris impact which was bad enough to crack one of the windows. At the time, they were involved in a crew swap, with a crew of three that had been in orbit for 6 months being replaced by a new crew. The old capsule was damaged. It took the Chinese a few days to decide to bring the old crew back on the new spacecraft, leaving the new crew stranded until China can scramble a replacement capsule for them. The irony here is that China operates one of the dirtiest space programs on the planet, strewing garbage behind every single thing they put into orbit. And they aren’t a bit bashful about dropping chunks of their rockets any and everywhere on the planet without recourse. The only good thing here is their quick decision making, which is impressive when compared with months long navel gazing angst that NASA went through with the stranded Starliner crew earlier this year.
More later –
- AG