The Archive

IN THIS EDITION

Taking the stage to talk taxes

Demo democracy

DOGE debut begins on a quiet note

Thursdays with Dimon

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Taking the stage to talk taxes

Welcome to The Readback, our weekend digest featuring the best of Punchbowl News this week – a quick roundup of all our scoops, analysis and Capitol Hill insight you won’t find anywhere else. We’ve also included a few of our favorite outside reads from the week.

This week, Republicans’ push to pass a tax bill and other key pieces of President Donald Trump’s agenda entered a whole new phase.

Both House and Senate Republicans passed competing budget resolutions through the budget committees to kick off the reconciliation process. Reconciliation will allow the GOP to dodge a Senate filibuster and go ahead on policies without Democrats’ support. Taxes, big spending cuts, border security money, defense funding and energy policies are all in the mix.

And just an hour before the House Budget Committee convened to take up its budget blueprint, we kicked off our event, The Summit: Tax Policy. I got on stage with Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.). Sometimes, you get a little timing magic!

Hern is a member of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, so I’m used to talking taxes with him in the halls of the Capitol. But it was great getting the chance to sit down with him on stage and go much deeper on where the tax debate stands.

We covered a lot of ground, from taxes and reconciliation to tariffs and Trump’s role in talks on how to pass his agenda on Capitol Hill.

For one, Hern had some interesting notes on how Trump is leading on taxes now in his second term. He said the president is “hands on” in the tax negotiations. He added that Trump is serious about going after carried interest — a form of pay for private equity and hedge fund managers that’s taxed less than ordinary income — after failing to scrap it in 2017.

And as a tax reporter, you know you’re talking to someone who’s steeped in tax policy knowledge when you can really dig in on international taxes. That covers the U.S. taxes that multinational companies pay on their foreign earnings. Hern was tossing around the key international tax acronyms — GILTI, FDII.

Hern had some interesting takeaways on international tax, saying that Republicans may need to look “to see where we can go get some money here and there” with $4.5 trillion of room for taxes in reconciliation. He added that the international tax system from 2017 has worked well.

Hern also brought some quips to the stage. When I asked about whether the GOP’s budget blueprint had a shot, he said, “The first text I sent this morning was to [Budget Committee Chair] Jodey Arrington, my dear friend, saying I’m praying for you today.”

The Budget Committee is stacked with House Freedom Caucus members and deficit hawks, the type of members who’ve been pushing for more spending cuts to get on board with a budget resolution. And House Republicans can only lose one vote on the floor. So it’s a tough road for the GOP, and there’s a lot more work ahead.

In fact, after our tax event, I was over in the Capitol and covering the Budget markup until after 10 p.m., when it finally wrapped up. You could sense the relief. Arrington and GOP members clapped, shook hands and hugged after a successful vote along party lines.

The House and Senate GOP now need to get on the same page at some point to move forward on reconciliation. The Senate’s budget blueprint is narrower and would save tax cuts for later.

We’ll have more on the policy decisions, political pressures and leadership dynamics for you every step of the way.

Read more about our tax event here.

What I’m watching: SUPER BOWL CHAMPIONS!!! I’m rewatching clips from the Eagles Super Bowl parade and from the game, which I got to watch from Philly, and still soaking it all in! So happy for Jalen Hurts to have his MVP moment, and such an incredible team.

– Laura Weiss

You can find The Readback in your inbox every Saturday at 8 a.m. And don’t hesitate to reach out to readback@punchbowl.news with feedback. Enjoy The Readback.

Demo democracy

The air in the Rayburn House Office Building is pinging. I don’t know how else to describe it. The alien creature I’ve been waiting for is apparently thumping through its dimension into ours, the one with U.S. lawmakers. A knee-high spaceship, where I’m supposed to trap this thing once it bursts through, just landed on the cold marble behind me. And then the air cracks…

My coffee hasn’t been spiked. I’ve just sneaked away to check out a demonstration by a trade group that represents virtual and augmented reality tech-makers. My headset from Meta is overlaying a video game onto my actual surroundings. In it, bouncing fuzzies are pouring out of a cartoonish desert world.

Alongside issue briefings, product demonstrations are a semi-regular feature of Hill life — part spectacle to break up staffers’ days and part educational undertaking for a branch of government that’s often behind the times. It’s also all soft-lobbying and relationship-building.

I’m a tech policy guy, and not much of a product reporter, but the actual gizmos and gadgets are part of the policy questions. I try to keep up.

It helps that virtual, augmented and mixed reality are fairly uncontroversial. The group’s policy priority is a bipartisan bill from last Congress that would create an interagency panel to promote immersive technologies. That’s not the sort of thing that launches fireworks up here.

Still, it’s not all spectacle. My colleague Mica Soellner did a medical training from another company. It walked her through the fatal consequences of poor decisions while treating a pregnant woman. Mica honestly seemed a little dazed after trying it.

Then the smart glasses I tried, which were also from Meta, took pictures nicely and piped music into my ear. For some reason, though, the glasses simply refused to answer when I asked about the temperature or the weather. (It was visibly snowing out the window, too.)

Meta in particular would like Congress to have glowy feelings about virtual and augmented reality. The company would love it if lawmakers see immersive tech as a way to broaden access to medical training and play fun games in Capitol Hill buildings.

Meta, you may remember, used to be called Facebook, but changed its name to signal it was going all in on immersive “metaverse” (before going all in on open-source artificial intelligence).

But there I go bringing policy into it again. The alien fuzzy creature eventually did bounce into the Rayburn world. It was actually pretty cute. I nabbed it for the spaceship-trap and a good number of the ones that followed after. Honestly, I got pretty good at it.

What I’m listening to: The smart glasses I tried were playing Beyoncé’s Album of the Year-winning “Cowboy Carter,” specifically the song “TEXAS HOLD ’EM.” I wasn’t in charge of the music, but since the demonstration, the song’s been (back) on repeat on my Spotify.

– Ben Brody

DOGE debut begins on a quiet note

The highly-anticipated DOGE subcommittee began on a rather quiet note as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), made her debut chairing a committee for the first time.

The hearing, which focused on improper payments, welcomed a crowded room full of reporters and interested members of the public. But while some may have come for fireworks, what we got was an overly civil back-and-forth between members across the aisle.

Only a couple of moments stuck out in my mind. Of course, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) raised some eyebrows when he brought in a “dick pic” to the hearing, which featured a blown-up photo of Elon Musk. Garcia later went on CNN to double down on his move.

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), a frequent sparring partner of Greene’s, made a point to say that the Oversight Committee held hearings on the same topic last Congress, but Greene didn’t attend those. Other than that, Crockett and Greene didn’t war as usual.

I sat down with Greene this week to talk about her goals for the subcommittee as well as her personal evolution in Congress.

When Greene came into Congress four years ago, she was immediately stripped of her committees by Democrats for incendiary comments she had made in the past.

Now, she’s leading one of the most high-profile subcommittees in Congress and has one of the closest relationships with President Donald Trump in the House. And she met with Musk, the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, at the White House earlier this week ahead of her hearing.

In my conversation with Greene, she said she didn’t believe she had changed, but the environment around her had. She also hinted that her loyalty to Trump has paid dividends, getting her to where she is now.

Here’s what she had to say:

It’ll be interesting to see how this subcommittee evolves this Congress. We will be sure to keep you in the loop.

What I’m watching: I’m planning to watch Season 3 of White Lotus, set in Thailand, this weekend.

– Mica Soellner

Thursdays with Dimon

One of the consistent joys of this job is being able to bump into all kinds of folks who find themselves on the Hill — especially the ones who matter on my beat but aren’t the most accessible.

This week’s special guest was Jamie Dimon, CEO of the largest American bank, JPMorgan Chase. Dimon arrived with other bank CEOs to meet with Senate Republicans.

Dimon is no stranger to Washington or Capitol Hill. He’s been a de facto spokesperson for the banking industry since he took the helm of JPM in 2006.

A lot of executive-types spend time on the Hill. Few are willing to talk much to the press in the hallways of the Capitol, at least in the way that congressional reporters are accustomed to with lawmakers.

The last time I saw co-founder and former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, just outside the Senate subway, I asked what he was doing for the day. He smiled politely and said nothing as a security detail pulled him toward the elevators.

When I watched United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain walk out of the office of Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) earlier this month, Fain answered my questions as briefly as possible — yes he’d met with the senator, no he wouldn’t talk about the contents.

And just this week, when I tried to ask PNC Financial CEO Bill Demchak a question as he was leaving the Capitol, the regional bank leader waved me off with what I can only describe as a grimace.

But Dimon has no fear of the press. I knew that, and Bloomberg’s Steve Dennis and Alicia Diaz also knew that, and Dimon happens to be the most important bank CEO in the world. So, when Dimon arrived with a small posse and gravitated toward the Senate appointment desk for a badge, we drifted in that same direction.

The three of us moved slowly and in sync toward Dimon, a walking speed best described as “painstakingly nonaggressive” — not unlike how you might approach a spooked horse outside of its stable.

Then, we found ourselves in the small crowd with Dimon and his staff at the appointment desk. I re-introduced myself and said I worked for Punchbowl News. Dimon replied: “Oh, Punchbowl!,” followed by, “how many Bloombergs are there?” We went from there, talking about regulatory reform, the CFPB (kind of) and debanking.

What I’m reading: Another excellent investigation from the Wall Street Journal’s Rebecca Ballhaus, Dana Mattioli, and Annie Linskey about the immediate profits steered toward Donald Trump’s family after the president’s return to power. “The pace and volume of the family’s moneymaking efforts so far are unprecedented, surpassing even the activity of Trump’s first term,” the Journal writes. Read it here: How the Trumps Turned an Election Victory Into a Cash Bonanza.

– Brendan Pedersen