Decision time on the One Big Beautiful Bill

Washington Post

3 days ago

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On Monday, the Senate is voting on amendments to its version of the One Big Beautiful Bill. Leaders seem confident it will pass despite some expected 'no' votes and arguments over last-minute changes. It's a behemoth of a bill: headlined by an extension of President Donald Trump's 2017 tax cuts, steep cuts to health care coverage, and a potpourri of additional items that includes everything from a senior-citizen tax deduction to a new benefit for Alaskan whalers. Despite some popular provisions, the bill's overall polling is poor; it has also drawn bipartisan criticism over budget gimmicks that downplay its cost.
I'm joined by my colleagues Ramesh Ponnuru and Catherine Rampell to discuss what's going down on Capitol Hill.
— Benjy Sarlin, assignment editor
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Benjy Sarlin What's the one-paragraph summary you'd give to a voter trying to figure out what this bill means for them?
Ramesh Ponnuru This bill extends the tax cuts that passed during Trump's first term, so you will avoid a tax increase. It also makes some spending cuts, importantly including changes to Medicaid that will result in fewer people having health insurance coverage. And because the spending cuts are not nearly as large as the tax cuts, it widens an already large deficit with consequences that are unknown but seem unlikely to be happy.
Catherine Rampell Less access to health care. Less access to food assistance. More expensive energy. Bigger debt, which you or your grandkids will eventually have to pay back.
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Benjy Let's talk about the health care part. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) announced he was opposing the bill. Trump threatened him with a primary challenge, and now the senator is not running for reelection. Tillis gave a speech warning that Trump was betraying the Medicaid recipients he had promised not to harm. Is he right? And is this a bellwether for political problems to come in the midterms?
Ramesh First, a minor point: Some of the Medicaid recipients who will 'lose coverage' under the bill are people who don't have Medicaid now, but who the Congressional Budget Office thinks might get it in the future if the bill doesn't pass. That effect matters but may not be what people are thinking when they see the quoted numbers. Then the bigger point: This bill polls terribly and is unlikely to get better. And even without the bill there are reasons to think the midterms will go poorly for Republicans — as they usually do for the party in power. But they might go even worse if Republicans let taxes rise as they are scheduled to.
Catherine Tillis is correct. Trump and congressional Republicans have portrayed this bill as not kicking anyone off insurance, or only kicking off supposedly undeserving freeloaders — not, of course, any of their hardworking voters. In reality, nearly 12 million Americans will lose insurance. And many will be Trump voters. (Fun fact: About half of Medicaid recipients voted for Trump in 2024.) However, many of the significant changes don't start right away. So it's possible the actual harm to voters — and GOP candidates — arrives after the midterms.
Ramesh There's an odd House-Senate dynamic here too. The House has assumed that its narrow margin gave it the whip hand in negotiations. The Senate seems to be largely dismissing that idea. I think the net effect of Tillis's decision not to run for reelection will be to strengthen Trump's hand within the GOP — even if his poll numbers continue to be lackluster.
Benjy To that point: I'm a little surprised by the process on this bill. Going in, moderate Republicans sounded worried about the House's cuts to health care and energy; conservatives sounded worried about the deficit. The Senate bill somehow hits health care and energy even harder and adds even more to the debt. How did the talks end up here?
Catherine I think the reason we got a more expensive bill with even bigger Medicaid cuts is related to these slim majorities. Senate leadership is trying to give some concessions to Republicans who might stray, and that's resulted in a bill that's even worse on many dimensions.
Ramesh And yet they shrank the child tax credit increase!
Catherine What's that line that Joe Biden used to use — show me your budget, and I'll tell you what your values are?
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Benjy So, you've both been very critical of the procedural tricks around this bill, especially asking budget scorekeepers to ignore the cost of making existing tax cuts permanent. What do you think the implications will be for future Senates, beyond just the short-term hit to deficits?
Catherine I think this is effectively the end of any attempt at honest accounting. Politicians often use gimmicks to make their expensive goodies look cheaper — gaming the budget window, claiming gangbusters growth, etc. But this time, they're not even pretending to care anymore. I do wonder how much attention the bond market is paying to this. U.S. Treasury bonds have long been considered the safest assets to invest in. This is despite the fact that we've run big deficits before — people continued to lend to us because the dollar is the world's reserve currency and we were trusted to pay debts back. Now we are signaling we're not really attempting to keep track of how much debt we're adding.
Ramesh To the extent some Trump administration officials have wanted to see the dollar weaken — or other currencies strengthen, as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent put it — they seem to be succeeding. It will be interesting to see if this bill has any effect there, too.
Benjy This bill also challenges some political assumptions about these big policy bills. Elon Musk and others on the tech right are currently railing against it for not only cutting energy subsidies, but adding new taxes on wind and solar. Biden's idea behind passing those subsidies was that they'd get too much buy-in from businesses to be repealed. Yet even the top 2024 GOP donor is helpless to protect them. What's up there?
Ramesh Culture war trumps all.
Catherine It was a reasonable assumption, under any presidency other than Trump's. He has astonishing control over his party. There are so many Trump policies that I would have expected the business community to loudly object to (tariffs, immigration policy, general uncertainty), yet they have been astonishingly meek. Why should energy policy be different?
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Benjy It sounds like you're both expecting this bill to reach the president's desk in some form. Are there any last twists you expect on the Senate or House side, or do you think this is mostly what we should expect to see become law?
Ramesh It will probably pass, but I expect there to be some drama before it does. That margin in the House is still very narrow.
Catherine I think we know directionally what the bill will look like, but specifics may change. Will Medicaid cuts get more heartless? How much more red ink will they ultimately decide to spill? I agree with Ramesh that we'll probably have some continued drama over these details, but eventually everyone will cave.