Trump Has
Betrayed His Base With the Big Beautiful Bill
By Ross
Barkan, a political columnist for Intelligencer
July 3, 2025
Donald Trump
got what he wanted out of Congress; it’s possible, in the coming years, that he
is going to deeply reject it.
This isn’t
because Trump has any particular laments about the devastating policy in the
reconciliation package, which will gut social safety-net programs and cut
taxes, particularly on the rich. He won’t lament ballooning the deficit,
either. He doesn’t think too hard about any of that.
Rather, the
so-called One Big Beautiful Bill is bound to be a tremendous albatross for the
Republicans charged with shepherding his agenda through Congress. It may, too,
prove especially damaging for his plausible successor, J.D. Vance, who is still
somewhat likely to be the 2028 Republican nominee, despite Trump’s flirtations
with seeking an unconstitutional third term.
That’s
because, in the end, Trump and congressional Republicans didn’t pursue any
great policy commitments consistent with the populist, MAGA-infused realignment
that delivered him a commanding victory in the 2024 election. They didn’t, like
far-right populists across the world, marry social conservatism and immigration
crackdowns with a charge to safeguard the welfare state. Gutting health care
isn’t what the far right does outside the United States. Trump, at least, was
wise enough to not campaign on it last year.
But you
can’t spin Americans about their health care. Failed attempts to repeal the
Affordable Care Act in 2017 fueled a Democratic midterm wave the following
year. And these cuts, which are going into effect, will do a great deal of
tangible damage: $1.1 trillion stripped from the health-care system, including
nearly a trillion from Medicaid. Yes, the prototypical Republican politician
cares almost nothing about health insurance for the working class and poor —
this outpost of socialism in our capitalist economy — but they’ll understand
very soon that insulating their constituents from these cuts will not be
simple. They may fantasize about a world where Medicaid cuts merely torment
Blue America, those big cities stuffed with the urban poor who generally don’t
back their candidates. But Medicaid is what keeps rural America afloat,
especially the underfunded hospital systems. There’s a reason Thom Tillis, the
Republican senator from North Carolina, backed away from the reconciliation
bill: He saw the suffering that was coming.
The irony of
this legislation is that the movement of the working class and poor into the
MAGA coalition did nothing to save them from the brunt of these cuts. This is a
bill from the old-guard Republican Party, one forever partial to elites. That
party won this fight. It’s a reminder that fealty to Trump extends far more to
the person than to policy. Yes, Republicans will bend to Trump’s whims, but the
cannier conservatives always understood what mattered to Trump was the
spectacle of signing any legislation by July 4. Trump wants a win for the sake
of a win. He doesn’t much care what’s in a Big Beautiful Bill as long as he can
sign it and brag about it. He can preen. He can feel he has done something.
This is a
domestic-policy bill, ultimately, that could have been belched out by any
generic GOP administration — and in that sense, it doesn’t veer very much from
Trump’s first term, when he rhetorically moved his party leftward on questions
of economics and foreign policy but largely governed like the men he vanquished
in the 2016 primary. There are no great surprises here; it’s merely the tax
cuts generations of Republicans have brayed about. Adding spending on “border
security,” meanwhile, is no revolution. Little of it is a coherent outgrowth of
what happened last year, when Trump made tremendous inroads with Black, Latino,
and Asian voters, portending a realignment that he has done almost nothing
since to secure. The reconciliation package, above anything else, may be
remembered just for the trillions it added to the national debt with virtually
nothing to show for it. No budget holes are being blown open to give Americans
much of anything.
Americans,
on the whole, will be worse off for what just transpired in Washington. And
those beleaguered, feckless Democrats will be handed a road map back to the
House majority. The Senate is still the far tougher fight, but whatever
messaging problems the Democrats have now will be solved, to a great degree, by
next year. They know how to campaign on health care; they’ve done it for years,
and usually with success. A strong defense of Medicare and Medicaid always
polls well. They can blast away at the DOGE cuts to the federal government,
which very few voters actually wanted. Republicans will have full control of
Congress for at least one more year, and that may mean yet another
reconciliation package that causes a great deal of chaos and benefits the vanishingly
few. The only comfort the left can take is that MAGA will have no permanent,
longstanding majority in this country. It’s only downhill from here.
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