Alex Jacquez: The GOP Doesn’t Want You To Know What’s Actually In Their ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’
By Alex Jacquez
Last month, Republicans in the House of Representatives were busy ramming through the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act while most of America was sleeping. While the legislation may be big – to the tune of adding $4 trillion to the deficit over the next ten years – the plain and ugly truth is that the reason the House GOP passed it in the middle of the night is because they don’t want you to know what’s in it. And they definitely don’t want you to know how it’s going to make life more expensive for working families.
Voters sent a clear and resounding message last November — they want prices to come down. Instead of working to make that happen, Congressional Republicans and President Trump are focused on delivering a massive tax giveaway for their billionaire donors, like Elon Musk, and big corporations. Their bill doesn’t just fail to bring costs down — it raises prices on everything from health care and groceries to utilities and education.
Analysis by my organization, Groundwork Collaborative, found a baker’s dozen of different ways the GOP tax bill increases the cost of living for middle-class families at a time when they’re already struggling to make ends meet because of President Trump’s reckless trade war and tariff policies.
Let’s start with health care. Under the GOP tax bill, more than 10 million people would lose access to Medicaid by 2034 and more than seven million would become uninsured. Additional changes to the Affordable Care Act would kick another 6.1 million Americans off their coverage and drive up average premiums by $625 for those staying on Marketplace coverage, spiking average premiums to nearly $1,300. That means low-income families, kids, seniors, and people with disabilities will be forced to pay more out-of-pocket for basic healthcare services and prescriptions — or tragically forgo treatment altogether if they can’t afford it.
If you’ve been to the store lately, you know how expensive it can be to pick up burgers to grill this summer. Now, Republicans want to make it even harder for families to put food on the table. Their tax bill includes burdensome paperwork requirements that could reduce or eliminate Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for nearly 11 million Americans, including households with more than 2 million children. Right now, an eligible household of four can receive up to $975 in SNAP benefits. Without that assistance, families may face severe food insecurity and be at risk of going hungry.
As if cutting health care and food assistance weren’t cruel enough, Republicans also want to make it harder for kids to get a good education. The GOP tax bill includes massive cuts to Pell Grants, which help pay for college for kids who can’t afford it, resulting in 1.4 million students losing their benefits and reduced benefits for another three million. Today, the maximum Pell Grant award per year is $7,395. If a student becomes ineligible because of Republican cuts in the tax bill, that means students might have to pay an extra $30,000 to pursue a bachelor’s degree and start a career.
But the pain doesn’t stop there. The GOP tax bill nearly fully repeals clean electricity tax credits that help families save money on their monthly utility bills and transition to affordable, sustainable energy. Now, the average family will likely see their electricity costs go up by $400.
Under normal circumstances, when your power bill goes up, making your home more energy efficient would help. But nothing about the GOP tax bill is normal: it makes home energy efficiency more expensive as well by gutting the residential clean energy credits, which saved families an average of $2,230 on solar panels in 2023, and energy efficient home improvement credits, which provided up to $3,200 in tax credits to homeowners. In other words, Republicans are making you spend more to heat or cool your home.
So, who pays the price? It certainly won’t be the wealthiest Americans and corporate elite. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill represents the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in a single bill in U.S. history. Should it become law as currently written, the CBO estimates household resources would go down by about 2% for the poorest Americans in 2027 and by 4% in 2033. Conversely, resources would go up 4% for the richest Americans in 2027 and by 2% in 2033, primarily because of a reduction in their tax burden.
You read that right. Republicans are squeezing working families and seniors all across the country and driving their costs up to pay for tax breaks for billionaires, inflicting unnecessary harm on the very people they won an election promising to help. President Trump is taking money from his voters and giving it directly to his donors. That’s what’s at the core of the so-called big beautiful bill — and why the House GOP rushed it through under the cloak of darkness. They didn’t want you to see the betrayal and broken promises.
Americans are already losing money due to President Trump’s blanket tariffs; they shouldn’t have to pay for handouts for the super-rich, too. The Senate now has a choice to make: they can rubber-stamp a bill that raises prices on Americans and cuts basic needs programs like nutrition assistance and Medicaid to fund tax cuts for billionaires — or they can reject this cruelty and chaos.
Alex Jacquez is the Chief of Policy & Advocacy at the Washington, D.C. economic think tank Groundwork Collaborative. He previously served as Special Assistant to President Biden for Economic Development and Industrial Strategy at the White House National Economic Council, and as a Senior Policy Advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
