Trump's 'big, beautiful' tax bill is a big, beautiful opportunity for the Democrats

New Statesman​

3 days ago

Photo by Jim Watson / AFP via Getty Images
Donald Trump hawks legislation like he promotes hotels: with garish simplicity. The 'big, beautiful bill' is the president's moniker for a behemoth Republican wish-list stumbling its way through Congress. I counted some 242 individual measures, including everything from a new $100 fee slapped on asylum seekers and cuts to solar energy to $300m for police to guard Trump's private residences and $28bn to build warships.
The sheer number of changes means few details will penetrate the public consciousness. But the general thrust is that the tax cuts from 2017 will be made permanent and military spending will rise, while federal money to pay for poor people's healthcare under Medicaid will shrink. Most of that is to be funded by borrowing: Trump's signature bill will jack up America's debt by $3.1trn dollars.
What happened to the president's promise to cut spending? It was a mirage, a plaything for his former new best friend, Elon Musk. Promises of cost-cutting served as a Trojan horse to decimate institutions that repelled the Maga mind, such as foreign aid and the Department of Justice. Musk was packed off back to Silicon Valley in a flurry of angry tweets, and has now promised to create a new 'America Party' if this bill passes.
On a veranda at a Maga house party in May, I asked one Doge agent about Musk's exile. Picture an urbane 23-year-old with a floppy fringe parted into curtains. He spoke in vocal fry, like Kim Kardashian, and puffed on rollies as rats fought and screeched in the dank garden beneath us. His new role was to ensure Doge's efficiencies outlasted Musk's sojourn in Washington. He told me that some of his colleagues want to 'change the memetic structure of government, others want to do cost-cutting – you need one to get the other'.
This now looks quixotic. Juicing the military and handing a blank cheque to Trump's masked migrant hunters reorders the functions of the state; it does not shrink the state itself. Instead of reining in the debt, Trump's revealed preferences are to rearm the military, gut environmental protections, make the rich richer and doggedly pursue mass deportations.
And yet this is set to be passed by a Congress with an (albeit shrinking) cohort of fiscal hawks with the power to vote it down. Trump has cowed Republicans into quiet obedience over the past six months. He scares rebellious members of Congress by threatening to field Republican challengers at the next election. His promiscuous splurge of executive orders was a power grab at the expense of the lawmakers scuttling through corridors a mile down Constitution Avenue. The movie that is Trump's second term has been directed from the West Wing.
His hoarding of attention means that without the high drama of impeachment, which animated the Capitol during his first term, Congress often drifts free from public consciousness. One poll suggested only 8 per cent of those surveyed knew this bill would hit Medicaid, for instance. Neither is the rising deficit likely to cause consternation around the country. Debt cannot outshine the things it pays for. It's an abstraction which will only become real to voters once a financial crisis hits.
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Remember that Trump rose to fame on a pile of debt. Whether as tycoon or politician, he has never taken fiscal prudence to heart. He borrowed to build slot-machines for punters in New Jersey in the 1990s. Now he is borrowing to deport millions of undocumented migrants, probably with a similar aim to thrill. Politics is now entertainment, a contest for eyeballs. Fox News has replaced spinning cherries.
This bill means tax cuts for the rich and more expensive hospital trips for the poor. Small victories for the working class – such as axing taxes on tips and overtime – are dwarfed by the upward transfer to the wealthy. While anger over national debt is a niche position, anger over rising inequality isn't. Trump's rhetoric of economic populism is contrived, fake and opportunistic.
All of which enables the left to shout that Trump is taking from the poor to give to the wealthy. The Senate voted on Trump's bill the weekend after the socialist Zohran Mamdani left the party's old guard flailing and won the Democratic nomination for the New York mayoral race. Mamdani, 33, promised free buses, rent freezes and state-owned supermarkets. He wants to pay for his plan through levies on the city's plutocrats. The fact that he went from zero per cent in the polls to beating the former governor Andrew Cuomo by nearly ten points in the first round reveals a hungry appetite for left populism.
As woke wanes, a new focus on economics might create a political opening for the Democrats. Mamdani must still beat the incumbent Eric Adams, around whom distressed Wall Street bankers are anxiously coalescing. This fight won't be won in the dusty halls of Congress. The Democrats' leader in the House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries, has so far not endorsed Mamdani. Congressional Democrats have stuck to painting Trump as a tyrant. Put veracity to one side for a moment: this is a tactic that is unlikely to persuade those who were told Trump was an autocrat for a decade and still voted for him. But Trump's 'big, beautiful bill' is ripe to be exposed for its hypocrisy, if only the Democrats can persuade voters of its ugliness.
[See also: Is Thomas Skinner the future of the right?]
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