1/8 The focus on the stimulus portion of the spending bill Trump signed last night misses the much larger significance of Trump’s capitulation.

After the now familiar bluff and bluster signifying nothing, Trump signed exactly same omnibus bill he signed in 2018 under duress . ..

2/8 .. saying he would never do it again.

But he signed nevertheless. This spending bill, like every other, was jammed through Congress without Members having any chance to review it and therefore had little idea of what they actually voted for. ..

3/8 At $900B, the stimulus portion of the bill was larger than the one President Obama signed in 2009. Never mind the fact that people about to lose their home and people about to buy their second home will get the same $600, the stimulus package is not the real story. ..

4/8 The total bill, $1.4T in discretionary appropriations and nearly a trillion dollars in stimulus relief ran 5,593 pages. 2,000+ of those pages contained explanations to contort spending definitions to avoid spending constraints ..

5/8 .. Congress previously imposed on itself in order to pretend to be fiscally responsible, in other words, it’s full of accounting gimmicks.

The bill spends $153 billion above the caps set by the Budget Control Act of 2011. ..

6/8 No matter, just define around the limits or declare “emergency spending” despite the absence of an emergency.

Many fiscal conservatives and some Republicans (never confuse them) taken in by a snake-oil salesman had naively hoped Trump would disrupt Washignton and indeed ..

7/8 .. he did. But not where it mattered. Trump has as much understanding of the details contained in the bill he just signed as most Members on Congress. But in the end, for as much as Trump stress-tested our institutions, the law and even the Constitution itself, ..

8/8 .. he changed nothing. The excesses of the European Parliament in Brussels led to the rebellion that resulted in Brexit. But in the US, the status quo prevailed. Trump lost re-election but the bigger story is Washingotn won, again.