The “One Big Beautiful Bill” that Donald Trump got the House to pass is 1,116 pages big, but scarcely beautiful. It hurts lower income Americans while benefiting rich ones and adds big time to the national debt.
That’s just one of Trump’s latest outrages. Proving once again that he’s both a racist and a liar, he ambushed the president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa in the White House Oval Office with news cameras rolling and falsely charged that white South Africans are victims of genocide.
He played a video that showed hundreds of crosses he falsely claimed were burial sites of white farmers. The footage actually memorialized the death of one white couple, but also of all victims of violence in the country. White murders represent between 1.8 and 2.7 of that violent country’s total whereas in 2013, blacks constituted 81% of all murder victims.
He has also repeatedly exhibited the classic character trait of an authoritarian personality—treating persons he deems beneath him with contempt while fawning over allegedly more powerful or favored persons.
In 2018, he called non-white nations (including African) “shithole countries,” while favoring immigration from Europe. He has repeatedly favored Russia over weaker Ukraine and treated European allies and Canada with contempt while fawning all over the rich Mideast countries he recently visited—Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. Besides treating him with lavish ceremonies, flattering remarks, business deals for US companies, and billion-dollar investments, one of them, the UAE, has bought at least $2 billion in crypto currencies benefiting Trump and his sons.
The most controversial “gift” Trump received was a $400 million jumbo jet from Qatar, ostensibly for use as Air Force One. However, the transfer was initiated originally by the Trump regime, not Qatar, and facilitated by Attorney Gen. Pam Bondi, a former lobbyist for Qatar, a country the US has accused of financing terrorist groups.
Estimates are that it will cost the US $1 billion to refit the plane with security and communications improvements, which may not be completed during Trump’s presidency. Afterward, the plane will be given to Trump’s library, which may mean it is available for his personal use. Receiving gifts from foreign sources is expressly forbidden by the Emoluments Clause in the US Constitution.
That $1 billion expenditure, plus $3.8 trillion in tax changes, $150 billion in increased defense projects, $175 billion for immigration enforcement and a 10-15% increase in interest on the national debt, or at least $680 billion, all stand in stark contrast to the $1.5 trillion in cuts in domestic spending and entitlements in the GOP “Big-Beautiful” bill.
Trump hailed the bill in a social media post as “arguably the most significant piece of Legislation that will ever be signed in the History of our Country.”
But his working-class voters should not be happy with the disparity in impact on various income levels. The top 20% of earners will receive 60% of the tax benefits while a third of the total will go to people making $460,000 a year or more.
The top 0.1 percent will gain an average of $390,000, the top 1 percent, $44,190 and the top 20%, $21,000 to $44,000. A middle-class household with income between $51,000 and $93,000 will average $815. The bottom 20% with incomes below $25,000 will net $90 a year and the lowest 10% will suffer a 4% reduction in income, which includes Medicaid and low-income food (SNAP) cuts.
The bill does contain some gifts to the working class—$40 billion over four years for the elimination of taxes on tips (though most lower-paid service workers already pay no taxes), an increase in the standard deduction for seniors by $4,000, increases to the child tax credit from $2,000 per child to $2,500 and a new $1,000 MAGA savings account for parents of newborns.
Trump promised he would not cut Medicaid, Medicare or Social Security. The bill shows he lied—and the people he’s hurting are his own voters.
To help offset the tax cut bounty he and his party are bestowing on rich people and corporations, the bill imposes $880 billion in Medicaid cuts over 10 years, robbing 7.6 million people of coverage—childless adults who may not be able to meet new work requirements, low income people faced with stricter eligibility rules and people who are covered by Medicare as well as Medicaid. Senate Republicans are seeking even deeper Medicaid cuts.
The bill also imposes a 20% cut for the low-income nutrition program (SNAP), threatening loss of benefits to 11 million persons, including 4 million children.
There are no Medicare cuts, but the deficits created by the bill ($330 billion to $500 billion this fiscal year, $3.1 trillion to $3.8 trillion over 10 years) may trigger the federal so-called PAYGO regulations mandating across-the-board cuts, including health care, costing Medicare beneficiaries and service providers up to $500 billion over 10 years.
There also are no Social Security benefit cuts but 12% of the agency’s personnel have been cut and numerous local service centers have been closed. The result is delayed or missing payments and beneficiaries’ inability to get assistance by phone. Meantime, Social Security beneficiary files have been opened to the Department of Homeland Security to hunt illegal immigrants.
The bill’s increase in the national debt (currently $36.2 trillion) by $3 to $4 trillion caused Moody’s to lower the US Credit rating from AAA to Aa1. Bond yields and prices also reflected investors’ doubts about the nation’s solvency. And annual interest on the national debt will rise above its present 16% of annual federal spending.
Democrats believe the bill has helped them politically in the 2026 midterm elections. Rahm Emanuel, former Representative, White House chief of staff and ambassador to Japan, said Democrats can campaign on the slogan “tax cuts for the wealthy, health care cuts for the many.” He added that Trump’s and Republicans’ governance have been “beacons of the three C’s: corruption, chaos and cruelty” and the Big-Beautiful bill “represents the ripest opportunity we’ll have to lift the fog that can define 2026.” Trump’s job approval polls vary from 42% to 48%, but his approval on the economy is 39% according to Gallup, which also rates approval of the Democratic party’s Congressional leadership at 25%, its lowest level ever.
On the corruption front, Trump hosted a closed-door dinner for fat cats who bought a total of $148 million worth of $Trump crypto coins. Trump’s net worth has increased by $2.9 billion this year, largely due to crypto sales. Crypto holdings are secret, so they provide an ideal device for gaining influence (or bribing). Already since the dinner Trump pardoned a scam artist who stole $10 million. His mother had paid to attend the dinner and talk to Trump.
On the cruelty front, in addition to cutting food stamps and Head Start for poor children, Trump declared his intention to end the Digital Equity program, a $2.75 billion effort to “close the digital divide” by expanding broadband coverage, especially to rural areas, and teach people, especially seniors, how to use computers.
On social media (ironically) Trump called it “RACIST and ILLEGAL” and said it amounts to a “woke program based on race.” In fact, race is mentioned only twice in the Digital Equity Act, along with many other categories that were not to be discriminated against. Trump apparently was offended by the word “equity” in the legislation’s title.
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Thanks Mort for your continuing detailed accounts of the outrages of the lawless and overtly corrupt Trump regime. Daily horrors. It’s almost impossible to keep track. Reality now outpaces satire. Here’s Another outrage in the Big Beautiful Billionaire Oligarch Protection Bill. Section 70302 of the Bill disempowers federal courts leaving the judiciary with no mechanism to address the illegal edicts of Trump and other officials. Here’s an article on this hidden provision designed to devastate the federal courts and end the rule of law under the Constitution. https://www.thedailybeast.com/hidden-threat-to-democracy-slipped-into-trumps-big-beautiful-bill/. Best wishes.