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ACCORDING TO LIZ - Trump’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill – aka BBB or, more accurately, the 5Bs for Bastardized Budget, Bloated Beyond Belief for the rich, and ripping off of all other taxpayers – is now headed towards the president’s executive crayon.
Some of its approaches such as dumping responsibilities onto individuals and the states, many of which are, like California, facing their own budgetary crises may cut costs to the Federal government but excessively escalates the costs to ordinary Americans.
Others – get-out-of-jail-free cards for Big Oil expansion and the gutting of EV and green energy incentives – will grow America’s disproportionate contribution to the existential threat of global warming.
By funding fewer and fewer health and education programs the Republican trifecta in D.C. will propel states to scythe funds for other essential programs… since states aren’t allowed to run deficits or print their own money.
The 5Bs also attacks Medicare recipients and people with disabilities by driving up costs and cutting benefits.
Tax cuts aren’t supposed to leave the poor significantly poorer. And slashing the social safety net shouldn’t be for the purpose of providing benefits to the well-heeled. But this tax-less-and-spend-more bill the Republicans in both the House and Senate gifted the Supreme Leader does just that, reducing after-tax income for the bottom 30% but boosting it for the better-off, especially those in the top 10%.
Adventures with ICE will further drive up costs for food and manufacturing – who’s going to tend to and harvest all those fruits and vegetables, housing – oops, where’s the cheap labor gone, and supplies – demand will drop with those who may be targeted conserving their money and workers in ancillary businesses from hardware to clothing will also go bye-bye.
Every business from soda canning to ski hills are already feeling the pinch of TACO-Tariffs driving up expenses and cratering revenues – all of which will end up coming out of consumers’ pockets.
With nearly three-quarters of Americans panicking about further price increases this year due to the TACO’s turbulent tariffs, the 5Bs is threatening to make Americans bills bigger.
Without this bill specifically incorporating the extension of Trump’s 2017 tax breaks – the so-called “magic math” erasing its humongous impact from the bill’s bottom line – Richie Riches who earn more than $626,000 would face a 39.6% tax rate instead of 37%.
That 2.6% of earnings is on income exceeding that ceiling which is six times the median income for working men, fifteen times that for working women, and grants the top 1% an average after-tax income increase of $45,000 – more than many Americans make in a year.
Extending corporate deductions sounded great… until small entrepreneurs realized it didn’t apply to the vast majority of business-owners – those making less than $1 million.
And reeling the estate tax back to $7.14 million per person from $15 million isn’t going to impact the vast majority of families. What do the wealthy care that the poorest taxpayers will have to tithe the taxman more to make up the loss of that $8 million difference?
While across the country, nearly 60 electric and gas utilities are hiking or trying to hike utility bills totaling nearly $38.3 billion for electric customers and $3.5 billion for natural gas customers. The passage of the One Big But-no-so-Beautiful Bill would allow for virtually unfettered increases impacting over 80 million consumers. To start with.
The 5Bs would end federal tax credits for clean and affordable sources of electricity including solar, wind and geothermal, straining supply, increasing generation costs to generate renewable energy, driving up demand and therefore prices even for fossil fuels.
An estimated 10% increase in energy costs for businesses by 2026 will inevitably be passed along to customers.
It’s a monolithic one-size-fits-all compendium that doesn’t address the realities of life in many parts of America, disproportionately impacting transport, food support, and state budgets as well as contributing to domino destruction in other areas – healthcare, education, and communications.
With Republicans shifting healthcare responsibility to the states and refusing to extend tax credits in the Obamacare marketplaces, reputable sources believe as many as 17 million Americans could lose health coverage.
Adults ages 55 and older will have to pay $1,200 more in annual premiums to keep existing insurance plans. In some states, the average premium hike would exceed $10,000; as much as $15,200 in West Virginia and $16,700 in Alaska.
The Senate version, passed only by the intervention of JD Vance casting a tie-breaker vote, and by adding provisions to woo Lisa Murkowski, the Alaska Republican who had said the bill would hurt her state. Albeit that includes assistance for rural hospitals which would benefit many other states.
While removing some of the worst of the worst in the House version, the Senate Republican version proved to be even worse in magnitude and impact on Main Street America with far more aggressive cuts to Medicaid, requirements threatening food assistance for millions, policies denying people healthcare, all frosted with more giveaways to special interests.
Until the last possible moment in the name of addressing housing affordability – huh? – it would have sold off over two million acres of national public lands and forests to fund entitlements for the wealthy. Which would have really pissed off Americans who passionately view those lands as belonging to them, the taxpayers.
Lasting almost as long was the proposal pushed by Big Tech with fierce lobbying and cash sweeteners that would have tied $500 million allocated to increasing broadband access for Americans to its use for A.I. development and mandated funding be conditional on no regulation of A.I. for 10 years. A huge violation of states’ rights.
As Trump and his Republican brethren should know from indiscriminate leveraging of it in past elections, hungry people, people who are victims of discrimination, pissed-off people, people perceiving increased disparities everywhere they turn are truly angry people.
God Save America.
The section of the House Republican budget bill intentionally deceptively entitled “Working Families Over Elites” mixed giveaways to the affluent with spending cuts that further hurt middle- and lower-income Americans, taxing the poor to give more to the already rich.
Even Republican voters were appalled. A before-and-after survey flipped that demographic from 75% in favor to 76% against based on the distributional effects of the take-home income of the less well-off versus the top 1% as determined using the House bill.
This is so rooted in inegalitarianism that Trump’s signature policy crackdown, tarted up as a budget bill to avoid being filibustered in the Senate, should be renamed the “Elites Bilk the Bulk of Americans Bill.”
Like Trump’s attempt to rig the economy for his billionaire buddies in 2017, it repeals slews of programs benefiting the majority in order to shift more and more profits into the pockets of the uber-wealthy with epically regressive consequences.
Disposable income decreases among the bottom fifth of the population is equally matched by increases for the top fifth.
And when the bill’s magnanimity for the prosperous exceeds what can be squeezed from the working classes, the costs will be just more icing on top of the mountain of unsustainable national debt.
The interest on which will exceed $1 trillion next year, more than is spent on the Republican bugbear of Medicare.
The ballyhooed populist red-herrings of “no tax on tips” and “no tax on overtime” are pittances when put against an expanded and permanent deduction for “pass-through” business income (accessible to only the top 1% of taxpayers but excusing 45% of corporate income) and raising the cap on the estate tax to $30 million per couple which will add more than $1 trillion to what American taxpayers have to pony up.
While the richest 0.1% of taxpayers each reels in more than $120,000 on average from the pass-through change.
Add in the proposed further gutting of the Internal Revenue Service. Which would enhance the ability of rich taxpayers and their accountants to exploit the loopholes that currently account for half of all under-reported taxes.
By slashing IRS staffing in half, wealthy scammers could take home another $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years. Money that would have to be made up for by ordinary Joes.
Or be added to the national debt along with existing and future interest. An interest rate that will increase as the the United States credit rating tanks under the weight of its debt.
The more voters know about this bill, the less they like it. The real question is what the Elephant party’s lawmakers would think.
And how much twisting of Republican holdouts’ arms could Trump – complete with swag and photos, no less – and Johnson do before some breaks. If not now, then later.
Now it looks like it will have to be later.
After a marathon day and night of behind the scenes wrangling the 5Bs headed to the floor of the House at dawn for open debate before its members voted on whether to pass the Senate’s dog’s breakfast before El Emperador’s jingoistic July 4th deadline came and went.
And what Americans now see, as the dawn’s early light fades, is not pretty.
Despite Hakeem Jeffries’ 8-hour+ endurance speech enumerating the multiple dangers the bill poses in an unstinting attempt to delay the vote, and hopefully allow exhausted Republicans to come to their senses and grow some balls, it was all for naught.
The question of whether the Republicans are really the party of the working people or pawns of the rich and powerful came through loud and clear this July 3rd.
Legislation speaks louder than words.
(Liz Amsden is a former Angeleno who now resides in Vermont and is a regular contributor to CityWatch on issues that she is passionate about. She can be reached at [email protected].)
