This week will be megabill week. Politico reports that HELP and Energy will release their text on Tuesday, Agriculture on Wednesday, and Homeland Security and Judiciary on Thursday. "Agriculture text though may slide to later this week or possibly into next week as several governors are now raising concerns about plans for federal food aid."

Everyone worries that the Senate may not be able to pass the bill before July 4th.

Senate Finance must finalize and release their legislative text by next Monday. This requires resolving the most contentious issues, including SALT, Medicaid, IRA tax credits phase out, and full expensing.

The schedule Senate Republicans are now talking about involves having the Senate parliamentarian review the legislative text for Byrd Rule compliance next week. They expect the process to take about a week for the Finance Committee portion alone, with other committee texts being released and reviewed simultaneously.

And so, the week after that, floor action would begin, including debate, voting, and the dreaded "vote-a-rama," during which Democrats will try to force politically damaging amendment votes.

The timeline is extremely tight and faces several obstacles given the internal division of the caucus over all the key provisions of the bill. We'll see…

Policy News You Need To Know

#EnergyDominance #DOGE — R Street's Devin Hartman has an outline of the damaging cuts DOGE has done with its "sledgehammer" at DOE. "A true efficiency agenda would lower DOE’s budget and increase results. This includes pivoting public funds toward better uses like basic research, bolstering performance metrics and program evaluation, and phasing-out government investment when the private sector is willing to commercialize technologies. Contrary to DOGE’s modus operandi, additions to understaffed, essential agency functions are necessary to make government efficient. For example, industry promoted hires at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to provide expertise to modernize regulations for advanced reactors. Without it, hopes for a nuclear renaissance diminish." This accords with what we've seen. In nuclear, especially, "just getting out of the way" will not be sufficient.

#Ed #DOGE — Speaking of… Here's AEI's Rick Hess kvetching, also rightly, about DOGE cuts at Ed, specifically to the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), which put out very useful research, and not just woke stuff. But, he says, the "upside is a chance to rebuild a more agile, cost-effective, valuable agency." Here are his ideas on how to do that.

#BBB #Deficit — The Economic Policy Innovation Center, or EPIC (what a great name for a think tank), has a good item on the fiscal effects of the Big Beautiful Bill. As they point out, "one challenge with this reconciliation process is that the House and Senate are using two different baselines." They go over the differences between the House's CBO baseline and the Senate's "current policy" baseline. We know you know about this stuff but sometimes it's good to bone up on the basics.

#Housing — Arresting sentence: "If the U.S. housing stock had expanded at the same rate from 2000-2020 as it did from 1980-2000, there would be 15 million more housing units." This is from a very good NBER paper (PDF) by the great Ed Glaeser and Joseph Gyourko.

#Opioids — One big problem with opioids is overprescription by doctors, which creates addicts who then turn to illegal, and even more dangerous, drugs. Here's a new RAND study on what they call "a simple and effective intervention" to help ameliorate that problem: send surgeons an email reminding them of the guidelines on opioid prescriptions. Really. According to this study, "Two types of emails to 'nudge' surgeons to prescribe in ways that more closely adhere to recommendations (…) led surgeons to overprescribe significantly less often, and the reductions persisted for at least 12 months after the nudges stopped. Effects were largest for surgeons who performed a relatively high volume of surgeries. Many surgeons who received the emails found the nudges helpful in raising their awareness of overprescribing." Yes, most of these "nudge" policies don't work out over the long run or at scale, but sometimes they do, and every bit helps.

#Boom #Concorde — Very important: President Trump signed an EO instructing the FAA to repeal the 1973 ban on overland supersonic flight. The order requires the FAA to withdraw the ban within 180 days, establish interim noise-based certification standards for supersonic aircraft, and issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) within 18 months to define acceptable noise thresholds for take-off, landing, and en-route supersonic operations. In the meantime, the new policy allows supersonic flights over U.S. land as long as the aircraft do not produce an audible sonic boom on the ground. This is great news for those who hope to a return of supersonic passenger flight.

#AI #Cybersecurity — Important new report from the good folks at R Street on "the rise of AI agents" and the risk they pose to cybersecurity. "In cybersecurity, AI agents are already proving to be valuable copilots to human analysts—enhancing threat detection, expediting incident response, and supporting overstretched cyber teams." Of course, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. That AI agents are good at cybersecurity means they're also good at hacking.

#Trade — Take it with a grain of salt, but, striking headline: "Japanese Negotiators: We Can’t Reach a Deal Because Trump’s Negotiators Disagree Among Themselves"

#SecondAmendment — The Firearms Policy Coalition is doing a big push on H.R. 38, which would create a Federal law mandating reciprocity between states on concealed carry rules. However, they don't like the current version of the bill. "Without fixing and passing H.R. 38, you could be arrested and federally prosecuted for merely driving through an unmarked 'gun-free' zone on your way to work or the grocery store." Interstate carry rules are a nightmare, so this is a legitimate area for Federal policy to fix. It would also help improve policy in crime-ridden blue states that try to restrict the right to bear arms. See their FAQ here.

#GoWokeGoBroke #VibeShift #DEI — If you are a veteran or have a veteran family member, or know veterans, you know about USAA. And whoever that person you know who is at USAA, they probably rave about it. The credit union for veterans and their families has a very good reputation for quality and customer service. But maybe that reputation was not so deserved in recent years. Writes Chuck DeVore at The Federalist, "I left USAA after a long slide in customer service crystalized when I heard of USAA’s debanking of conservative lawyer John Eastman." He notes: "the 1792 Exchange, which evaluates companies for their risk of viewpoint discrimination, rates USAA as 'high risk' for canceling clients or contracts based on political beliefs." Why is this relevant, you may ask? As you know, we like to track the so-called "vibe shift" in institutions moving away from wokeness. USAA, a conservative-coded institution, "going woke" sounds typical of the crazy days of 2020. Well, apparently USAA is paying a financial price for it, with a recent credit downgrade by Standard & Poor's. If "go woke go broke" continues to be a reality, this points to a healthier future.