By Steve Benen
As the GOP’s inaptly named One Big Beautiful Bill clears Capitol Hill and heads to Donald Trump’s desk for a presidential signature, many of the foundational questions have been answered. We know what Republicans did, where they did it, how they did it and when they did it.
But it’s worth dwelling on the why.
The most basic question surrounding any legislative proposal — regardless of party, ideology, merit or era — is simple: What is the problem the measure is trying to solve? Or put another way, there has to be a point to the endeavor. A bill’s proponents have to have a reason in mind when pushing their legislation.
With this in mind, Americans should come to terms with the fact that while GOP officials haven’t explicitly answered the underlying “why” question, their proposal tells us everything we need to know: Republicans, from Capitol Hill to the White House, see a status quo in which the wealthy have too little, and the poor have too much.
The New York Times’ Thomas Edsall wrote a good summary this week on the bill and the degree to which it reflects a twisted and punitive vision of “populism.”
[T]he measure, known popularly as B.B.B., would provide the upper classes, including Trump’s allies and donor base — corporations and the rich — with tax cuts worth approximately $4.45 trillion over 10 years. The measure would offset the cost with the largest reductions in safety net programs in recent decades, if not all time, for those on the lower tiers of the income distribution. This pared-back social spending would adversely affect a large bloc of rural and exurban Republicans who played a crucial role in putting their party in control of the House and Senate and Trump in the White House.
Under normal circumstances, advancing such an endeavor would be politically impossible, but the American electorate put a radicalized Republican Party in control of all of the levers of federal power, and GOP leaders decided to take full advantage of the opportunity.
The reason to pursue such a goal — indeed, the only reason — is to transform the United States into a different kind of country.
Some might see this and think, “Good. The status quo in the United States needs a dramatic shake-up.”
Perhaps, but those who believe this tend to want a fairer and more just society, with greater opportunities, and the Republicans’ megabill does the exact opposite. The entire package is rooted in the idea that those with the most actually need even more, and those with the least are lazy parasites who will have to wait for prosperity to trickle down to them — maybe, at some undetermined point in the future — while struggling families and communities suffer in the meantime.
This is the “problem” that GOP policymakers set out to “fix.” The result is a generational step backward for the United States and the most regressive legislation in recent memory.
