Pulling Apart the GOP Budget.
Red States and Deficits.
We’re experimenting with something. As we work toward a complete breakdown of the federal budget in a comprehensive essay and companion episode, we’re bringing our audience into the content creation process. We have a feeling this is going to be one of our behemoth entries into the canon (and potentially a two-parter.) So rather than overwhelm everyone with information in one shot, we thought it would be useful to break it apart as we go. The first two entries made it to YouTube already but I’m packaging them up in a single episode today. The first is how the GOP budget disproportionately impacts red states. And not in a good way. The second brings us back to our Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) discussions and reframes the way we think about the national debt. Both are crucial building blocks in our understanding of the federal budget.

Show Notes
Resources
- Congress: H.R.1 - 119th Congress (2025-2026): One Big Beautiful Bill Act
- Bipartisan Policy Center: Federal Balancing Act
- White House: Fiscal Year 2026 Discretionary Budget Request
- Jacobin: Trump’s Budget: Starving Everything Except the Military
- Bloomberg Television: Millstein on US Downgrade, Tariffs, Trump Tax Bill
- PBS News: What’s inside the House GOP’s budget bill? Here’s a look
- Congress: H.Con.Res.14
- PGPF: Chart Pack: The U.S. Budget
- PGPF: What Is Budget Reconciliation?
- The Conference Board: Reforming the Broken Federal Budget Process
- NACO: U.S. House passes reconciliation bill: What it means for counties
- Bipartisan Policy Center: What’s in the FY2025 Senate Budget Resolution
- Georgetown CCF: Medicaid and CHIP Cuts in the House-Passed Reconciliation Bill Explained
- Reuters: US Treasuries: Who owns US debt?
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