BUT YOU SAID THIS PRESIDENCY WAS THIRTY DAYS FROM COLLAPSE

Do-nothing Democrats in Congress who heard us begging them to do something to slow the progress of second-term Trumpism told us not to worry -- they had a plan. The plan was to withhold votes when "fractious" House Republicans were struggling to pass money bills. Republicans have a tiny majority in the House, and the party has 53 senators. If Republicans ultimately want to pass a budget under reconciliation rules, which requires a simple 51-vote majority in the Senate and thus no Democratic votes, they need to unite. Do-nothing Democrats and nearly every elite political reporter and pundit in America told us that this would be a heavy lift, because extremely-far-right Republicans would demand bigger budget cuts and Republicans in swing districts would reject some cuts as extreme. This would be Democrats' big chance to show that Republicans can't govern!

Well, so much for that:

The House on Tuesday narrowly passed a Republican budget resolution that calls for $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and a $2 trillion reduction in federal spending over a decade, clearing the way for major elements of President Trump’s domestic agenda.

The nearly party-line vote of 217 to 215 teed up a bitter fight within the G.O.P. over which federal programs to slash to partially finance a huge tax cut that would provide its biggest benefits to rich Americans.

It won't be "a bitter fight." We were told that this would be "a bitter fight" among House Republicans, and it wasn't.

It came after a head-spinning hour in which Republican leaders tried to put down a revolt among conservatives who wanted deeper spending cuts, failed to do so, canceled the budget vote and then reversed course minutes later and summoned lawmakers to call the roll....

A group of centrist Republicans from competitive congressional districts who had initially balked at the plan over concerns that it would lead to deep cuts to Medicaid, which provides health care to more than 70 million Americans, ultimately fell in line and voted yes.

Of course they all fell in line. If they didn't do it last night, they would have inevitably done it in the next few days.

Republicans may disagree with one another on some things, but they hate us more. Also, opposition to government debt and hatred of "big government" has been core parts of the Republican brand for half a century, even though previous Republican presidents and Congresses haven't actually shrunk the government's size and have greatly increased the debt. (This budget framework would also increase the debt, because of the size of the tax cuts.)

Republicans vote in lockstep on nearly everything -- look at President Trump's Cabinet confirmations -- so this should be no surprise. Now the far-rightists get to tell their voters that they pleased Daddy Trump. The moderates avoid primary challenges funded by Elon Musk -- GOP members of Congress were terrified of primary threats even before Musk's money was a consideration -- and they avoid death threats from Trump supporters. And they all get closer to Grover Norquist's goal of making government so small they can drown it in the bathtub, a goal millions of Americans share, even if they're not right-wing, because most Americans have fallen for decades of propaganda that tells us government is extraordinarily wasteful.

Republicans still need to flesh out these budget numbers, and finalize an approach that reconciles this bill with the Senate's bill. There's an opportunity for Democrats and citizen activists to draw the public's attention to horrible budget cuts and plutocrat-skewed tax cuts. When we see how much they want to cut from Medicaid, for instance, it's possible that public outrage will compel them to back off.

But I doubt it. I've seen this movie before, in Wisconsin in 2011. There were massive protests against the "budget repair bill" and other Republican legislation early in Governor Scott Walker's term. Republicans ignored the anger and did as they pleased. They had Fox News and Koch network money on their side. An effort to recall the governor failed. They got what they wanted, and they got away with it.

We need to fight, because I could be wrong about the inevitability of all this. We might at least persuade Republicans to back off from some of the worst cuts to popular programs like Medicaid.

But I'm gloomy -- and another reason I'm gloomy is that this shifts the focus away from the unpopular Elon Musk and the obviously extralegal way he's been attacking government agencies. For perhaps the first time in the second Trump term, Musk is not the main character. Congressional Republicans are now giving Musk's meat-ax cuts an aura of legality.

Some weak polling has led many observers to believe that the Trump administration is on the verge of collapse. I predict that the budget process could actually lead to an improvement in Trump's poll numbers, even if the final bill includes provisions voters strongly oppose. He and congressional Republicans will be seen as doing something about "big government."

I hope I'm wrong. I hope that, for once in their lives, the American people can get angry about right-wing policy while it's still theoretical. But I suspect that the public won't truly hate Trump and congressional Republicans until we're all living in the miserable, mean-spirited, fifth-rate America they're creating for us.