Trump as Pluto, mythological ruler of the underworld, with the three-headed dog Cerberus at his side. (Photo by Science Source/Photo Researchers History/Getty Images)
Even as the resident senior citizen around here, I find myself wishing that I could write off Iowa Senator Chuck Grasley’s latest gaucherie as the result of senility. But no such luck.
When Grassley raised doubts abouta bipartisan tax cut bill because it would make President Biden “look good,” and make it harder for Donald Trump to regain the White House, the remark hardly qualified as a gaffe in today’s GOP.
To be sure, the octogenarian seemed confused about some of the details. “Passing a tax bill that makes the president look good — mailing out checks before the election — means he could be re-elected, and then we won’t extend the 2017 tax cuts,” Grassley said. There are, however, no checks in this bill. It’s a tax credit. For children.¹ The bill is also packed with goodies for businesses, making it exactly the sort of thing that Republicans from the Before Times would have enthusiastically embraced.
The legislation is so popular that it passed a bitterly divided House by a huge margin — 357-70. Now it goes to the Senate where it faces Grassley. And Trump.
At this point, the details of the bill aren’t really that important here. What Grassley was saying was that helping Trump is more important than that passing any legislation. And, despite the House vote, he reflected the central dynamic of the GOP in 2024.
It’s why Republicans will likely kill a border bill that includes almost everything they want.
It’s why they have tanked proposals to aid Ukraine and Israel.
It’s why they consistently opt for chaos over the more mundane business of actual governing.
It’s just the GOP’s latest sop to Cerberus.
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I’m not sure if the book is still allowed in Florida schools, but in Virgil’s Aeneid, the hero descends into the Underworld, but has to get past the monstrous three-headed watchdog, Cerberus. Aeneas manages to slip by after drugging the hellhound with a special cake.
Thus, the phrase: throwing “a sop to Cerberus” means a “bribe or something given to propitiate a potential source of danger or problems.”
On our latest episode of the Trump Trials, Ben Wittes and I discuss how much money it really takes to get Trump’s attention. Plus, the big risk in the Georgia case, why MAGA will be rooting for San Francisco, and why I’m getting off the hamster wheel.
I’ll have more to say later, but I’m so grateful for the kind and generous messages from so many of you, in the comment sections here and elsewhere. And, really, I have no words for this, Ben.
The political prospects for the bill are at best deeply uncertain. House Republicans have tied the border compromise to Ukraine aid, and the speaker of the House has signaled that the compromise is dead on arrival. That would be a terrible failure of governance. Both of these measures would meaningfully advance American security and prosperity. It’s time for reasonable Americans — including reasonable Republicans — to summon up sufficient courage to defy the radicals, bigots and political cynics. Congress has before it an exceptional opportunity to ease the crisis on the border and start reforming the immigration system to be more rational and humane.
MAGA hates the immigration compromise, but MAGA doesn’t run America. It’s time for the adults to take charge. Address the crisis on the border. Address the crisis in Ukraine. Pass the bill.
THE RUSSIAN “PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION” scheduled for mid-March was supposed to be, like the last two votes in 2012 and 2024, a stage-managed event with no surprises: an empty national ritual in which the Russian people affirm their submission to the tsar, while a few well-vetted “rival candidates” (the Communist, the nationalist, the tame liberal) appear on the ballot in a quaint concession to the appearance of democracy. Certainly, no one expected this scenario to be disrupted in wartime, with the last remnants of freedom and civil society in Russia being snuffed out.
Yet the plan seems to have gone awry, with the tame liberal du jour, former Duma member and government official Boris Nadezhdin, apparently stepping out of his prescribed role to mount a real challenge—not so much to Putin, who is guaranteed a victory regardless of how many votes he gets, as to the Russian political system itself.
Most of the crises the United States faces overseas are not crises of capability (though the military does need more people and significant recapitalization), but of policy and will. We have the resources to stop Iran’s and the Houthis’ depredations in the Red Sea, if only Biden abandons his penchant for self-deterrence. We have the capability to deter Iran from further aggression in the Middle East, but only if we decide we’re serious about doing it.
There are no deep reasons why the United States cannot or should not remain the world’s preeminent superpower. There is only one explanation for why we are currently failing to meet that expectation, thus letting down Americans as well as our allies, and making the world less safe. It is our political dysfunction.
The $78 billion package wouldn't go so far as reviving the expanded child tax credit families were able to claim as part of the Covid-19 pandemic response. But it would raise the maximum refundable tax break to $1,800 per child for tax year 2023, up from $1,600.
The limit would rise again to $1,900 for tax year 2024 and to $2,000 the following year, along with adjustments for inflation.
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