As I predicted was likely, the U.S. House of Representatives succeeded in passing the fascist regime’s “one big, beautiful” budget reconciliation bill before recessing for Memorial Day. This is a very bad thing, and it removes one of the thornier obstacles to making the bill into law. But, it’s not the end of the game.

The way I described this in my last analysis was as the equivalent of a punt. It’s true that the legislation passed by the narrowest of margins (215-214), but that doesn’t mean that there is a true majority in the House for final passage. House Republicans know that the bill will now go to the Senate where changes will be made. Speaker Mike Johnson was never able to convince the skeptics in his caucus that he’d produced an acceptable compromise, but he was able to convince them that the House didn’t want to go on recess having failed to move the bill to the Senate.

Bond yields immediately spiked to the highest level in 20 years on fears about increased government debt. Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) warned that the exploding debt would trigger automatic PAYGO sequestration cuts of $490 billion to Medicare over the next decade. In addition, the CBO estimated that 7.6 million Americans will lose their health coverage over the next 10 years if this legislation becomes law. This is because over 10 million people will lose their Medicaid coverage and most will find no substitute.

There are parts of the bill that will be popular, like eliminating taxes on tips and overtime, but higher interest rates combined with cuts to Medicare and Medicaid are going to be political dynamite. This is especially true because Trump promised repeatedly not to touch those programs and it’s all being done to (only partially) offset the extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for the rich that were unpopular at the time and remain so.

One remarkable thing to note is that nearly every Republican member of the House just voted to raise the debt ceiling by $4 trillion dollars. This is an abrupt turnaround from last December when 38 House Republicans defied Trump’s demand that they extend the debt ceiling under President Biden’s watch. It’s especially noteworthy because the CBO estimates the reconciliation bill will not cut deficit spending but increase it by $2.4 trillion over 10 years. Historically, the House Republicans proved incapable of raising the debt ceiling without Democratic help, but here they have done so all on their own, thereby harming the country’s longterm solvency without the fig leaf of blaming their political opponents.

This represents a broken promise to the constituents of dozens of Republican members of Congress which will open them up to attacks from both their left and right. It’s really an extraordinary display of nihilism. Whatever principles they claimed to believe in ultimately proved to mean nothing when it came time to defend them.

But, again, a vote to pass the bill in the House is not the same as a vote on final passage after the Senate gets done making changes. Vulnerable Republicans representing purple districts are hoping the Senate reduces the cuts to Medicaid. Meanwhile, some of the last-minute concessions made to fiscal hawks, like moving up implementation of the Medicaid work requirement from 2029 to 2026, could be axed by the Senate.

Voting for this legislation has the potential to be absolutely deadly to many Republicans in both the House and the Senate, and they know this. The Senate will feel the heat of a thousand suns between now and the beginning of July when they hope to pass the bill back to the House for final passage. Their challenge will be not only to create something they can pass but that the House will still support, and that is going to be very, very difficult.

Join the fight, because they could still fail.