Workers and other critics of the plan called it the “big ugly” bill, because they consider it the largest legislative theft of wealth from the working class and transfer to the richest top 1% in U.S. history. Trump infamously dubbed it the “Big, Beautiful Bill,” and the commander-in-thief signed his administration’s 900+ page tax and budget policy document into law on July 4.
Originally called the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,” the first draft passed in the U.S. House on May 22. The Senate made amendments and passed it by Vice President JD Vance’s tiebreaking vote. It went back to the House floor for a second vote, where the finalized version passed in the early hours of July 3 by 218 to 214.
Trump had given Congress a July 4 deadline, so he could sign it at the White House as Republican Congress members stood behind him with U.S. flags and fireworks in the background making it a jingoistic spectacle.
Murderous ‘Robin Hood’ in reverse
The budget policy is an omnibus bill, because it encompasses a wide range of issues. The driving force behind the bill is to cut taxes on multimillionaires and billionaires and balance this by cutting benefits for Medicaid and Medicare, as well as food subsidies such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The bill is designed to extend tax cuts to the rich and corporations, set to end this December, put in place in 2017 during Trump’s first term, and make them permanent.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill could add $3.3 trillion to the federal deficit over the next 10 years and leave more than 10 million people without health coverage. (BBC, July 4) The bill places severe obstacles on the poorest people who now receive Medicaid and SNAP benefits. The onerous task of applying for these benefits will obstruct many people from access.
The Senate Medicaid work requirement is the strictest ever proposed. For instance, Medicaid is shifting a required re-enrollment from once a year to once every six months. Unmarried adults and adults without children are especially singled out and penalized by the changes.
Meanwhile, SNAP benefit reforms could impact forty million low-income workers, as the burden of funding this benefit will be shifted from the federal government to each individual state.
Cuts in Medicaid reimbursements will close between 300 and 800 rural hospitals, plus nursing homes and other health care facilities such as walk-in clinics, during the next 10 years. Whole communities across the country could collapse, and millions of people could die from lack of care if rural health care facilities are forced to close.
Workers World spoke with a registered nurse active in National Nurses United who works at a “high risk” rural hospital near Harlan, Kentucky, who emphasized: “Supporters of the bill want to focus on the ‘no taxes on tips,’ desperately arguing people will ‘have more take home pay.’ But what they fail to mention is that insurance premiums will go up, and prescription costs will increase. Access to health care in rural areas like Appalachia will be more limited than it already is, and people who can’t afford food will starve.”
Money for racist police state, military
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency’s annual budget will rise from $8 billion to $100 billion a year. This will make ICE the largest and highest funded federal law enforcement agency in the country. ICE has stepped up its recruiting efforts to attract white supremacist applicants to terrorize migrant families. Additionally, members of neofascist groups like the Proud Boys are openly volunteering to be enforcers for ICE.
Trump gleefully announced the July 1 Senate passage of the bill during a visit to a new concentration camp for migrants in Florida he named “Alligator Alcatraz.” The internment camp near Miami is surrounded by the Everglades, which is home to alligators, crocodiles and pythons, and Trump is using it to make propaganda for ICE recruitment.
The budget bill also increases military spending. Despite his promises about “staying out of ‘never ending’ wars,” Trump’s bill gives the Pentagon an historical financial boost of $150 billion to its budget. This new windfall comes in light of recent U.S. attacks against Iran.
Money from the budget bill will be used to bolster the U.S. military’s warship building capacity, as well as to fund Trump’s nonsensical “Golden Dome” missile defense project. The “Golden Dome” is described to be made up of militarized, space-based interceptors, and its title sounds similar to Israel’s “Iron Dome” program.
Congressional chaos and capitalist bribery
The finalized version of the “big ugly” budget bill passed July 3 amidst chaos inside the U.S. House and Senate chambers. While the original draft passed swiftly through the House of Representatives, it faced pushback in the Senate. Three Republican senators — Maine’s Susan Collins, North Carolina’s Thom Tillis and Kentucky’s Rand Paul — voted with all the Democrats against the bill. As a supporter of unregulated and unfettered capitalism, Sen. Rand Paul and his ultraright, libertarian “Freedom Caucus” argued the bill didn’t go far enough in cutting health care and SNAP benefits.
The Senate briefly stood at a standstill with a 50-50 tie. After 48 hours of readings and debate, on July 1 Vice President JD Vance broke the tie, as vice presidents can in Senate voting.
Following the Senate’s approval, Trump nominated West Virginia Senator Shelley Moore Capito’s son as the next U.S. attorney for the state’s Southern District. This selection was apparently a “trade off” for Capito’s vote. West Virginia’s Democratic state delegate Mike Pushkin called the appointment a “blatant quid pro quo.” (journal-news.net, July 1)
A handful of House Republicans, including far-right members of the “House Freedom Caucus,” initially threatened to either vote against the Senate’s draft of the bill or not vote at all.
Reports indicate Trump called all Republican holdouts to offer a “swag bag” of signed merchandise. “House Freedom Caucus” members and some original House Republican holdouts openly confessed they changed their vote upon receiving signed MAGA hats and trinkets. After changing his vote, House Freedom Caucus member Tim Burchett of Tennessee said, “Yeah, he signed a bunch of stuff. It’s cool.” (New York Times, July 2) The final House vote was 218 to 214, with all but two House Republicans voting “yes.”
Build a people’s fight-back against the neofascist attacks!
Democratic Party leaders failed to mobilize any serious opposition to Trump’s budget bill. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries did present a record-breaking speech, by talking for over eight hours on July 3 to delay the vote. He had little help.
Democratic Party leaders are opportunistically using the bill’s success to promote their campaigns in the next midterm elections rather than take serious measures to prevent the bill’s passage.
Working-class and oppressed people are fed up with requests to call or send emails to Congressional members’ offices only to realize no one is listening. Some activists held a direct action on June 25, nine days before the bill passed. Thirty-three people were arrested by Capitol police in Washington, D.C., including seniors and/or people with disabilities, for conducting a “sit-in” outside Congress members’ offices that day.
Six other people, including two Charleston City Council members, were arrested on June 25 in Charleston, West Virginia, for committing civil disobedience at Sen. Shelley Moore Capito’s state office.
This bill shows that big tech billionaires, vulture capitalists and white Christian nationalists have jointly declared war against working-class and oppressed people. A united front to mobilize mass resistance is the preferred course in defeating the ruling class and their far-right enablers. Revolutionary collective unity is the only way to successfully counter the neofascist terror currently being waged against our class!
The author is a labor representative who works with nine unionized rural hospitals in West Virginia and Kentucky that are at risk of facing massive cuts and possible closures because of the neofascist budget bill that targets migrants, people of color and all of the poorest workers and hurts the entire working class.