Trump‘s 'big, beautiful bill' delivers decades-long conservative wish list, if it outlasts bickering
The bill funds and codifies many of President's priorities and could help GOP approval on Capitol Hill at a time when many voters aren't pleased by lack of progress.
The "One Big Beautiful Bill" that President Donald Trump personally lobbied Congress to pass Tuesday delivers on decades of conservative wishes, but first it must survive bickering over two very different issues: deductions for high-tax state voters and the size of spending cuts in an era of record debt.
Speaker Mike Johnson was working feverishly Tuesday night to eliminate one of the roadblocks — demands to increase the State and Local Taxes (SALT) Deduction cap — while fiscal hawks were being pressed to trust that Trump and his DOGE-infused, regulation-busting team can deliver more than the $1.6 trillion in spending cuts the current legislation enacts over the next decade.
A final push will require some conservatives to make a leap of faith, like Rep. August Pfluger, R-Texas, the chairman of the House Republican Study Committee, is taking.
"Look as a conservative, I want to save as much money as I can, and we have pushed for that in the Republican Study Committee," Pfluger told Just the News on Tuesday. "But the President was pretty clear that we've worked five or six months straight on this, and it is time to get it done.
"That doesn't mean that a guy like me doesn't want more. Yes, of course I do. But I also want to govern, which means you don't get 100% of everything you want every single time. You have to come back and do it again, and we will," he said during an interview on the John Solomon Reports podcast.
There were signs of progress Tuesday night as blue-state Republicans who want more than the legislation's tripling of the SALT deduction (from its current $10,000 cap to $30,000) were negotiating with Johnson toward a deal. A tentative agreement was reportedly reached late Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Rep. Gabe Evans, R-Col., told the Just The News, No Noise TV show, that conservative hawks were already making deeper cuts through the traditional appropriations process outside the "One Big, Beautiful Bill" and succeeding in lowering spending from the targets set for some programs in a budget blueprint passed just weeks ago.
"I think we've already seen some of that happen already. In the reconciliation process, you actually have to pass the bill twice. The first time you pass the bill, you're setting those top line numbers for how much either cuts or spending is going to occur under those committees of jurisdiction," Evans explained.
"But then when you come through and you actually build the policies to meet those top line numbers, there's no mandate that you actually have to spend all of the money that you're allocated."
Therefore, if this administration and Congress start treating congressional appropriations as ceilings, not floors, that will allow Trump to spend less when the job is done efficiently and for less money.
Rep. Rudy Yakym, R-Ind., told Just The News that spending will likely be reduced again this summer and fall after the reconciliation bill passes in the form of clawbacks of prior approved spending.
"He [Trump] can do that through rescission packages, which we would expect that he'll be sending us some rescissions here sometime later on this year," Yakym explained.
Meanwhile, high-profile conservatives like House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan were imploring colleagues to appreciate and message to voters just how many conservative agenda items are stacked in the bill already, many which have been on wish lists for years or decades.
"What I think we really need to be doing as Republicans, is talking about how good this bill is," Jordan said on the Just the News, No Noise TV show Monday. "I mean, there's a reason Democrats hate it. Democrats hate it because it's all about Republican principles.
"We're the party that says cut taxes. We're the party that says secure the border. We're the party that says we should require work for able-bodied adults who are getting taxpayer money. This bill does all three of those," he added.
The White House sent out an email from the Office of Communications outlining specific reasons it feels Republicans in Congress must unite behind the funding package. At the top of the list of 20 reasons why sits Trump's tax cuts, which would be the largest in history and an extra $5,000 on average for Americans through a double-digit decrease to their tax bill. It also includes Trump's "No Tax On Tips" and "No Tax On Overtime" and "No Tax on Social Security" provisions.
The list also prioritizes "Big, Beautiful Deportations," permanently securing borders by making the largest border security investment in history. Much of that investment will be allocated to funding at least one million annual deportations of illegal immigrants.
The immigration allocation also includes funding to finish Trump's border wall, which began construction during Trump's first term. It also empowers immigration authorities to carry out their duties with an additional workforce of about 10,000 new ICE personnel, 5,000 new customs officers, and 3,000 new Border Patrol agents. For border workers on the front lines, they'll receive $10,000 bonuses.
Trump has also been adamant that this bill, with his backing, will protect Medicaid by removing at least 1.4 million illegal migrants off the rolls, saving taxpayers' money. Additionally, it requires able-bodied Americans to work if they receive benefits starting in January 2029.
The bill, according to the White House, also "reverses the spending curse plaguing Washington, D.C." and delivers the largest deficit reduction in nearly 30 years, amounting to $1.6 trillion in mandatory spending.
This bill also reportedly puts an end to taxpayer-funded sex changes for minors. Under the Biden administration, Medicaid covered so-called "gender transition" procedures for minors. The provision in this bill reverses that.
The legislation also allows for historic modernization and a complete overhaul to air traffic control after several recent accidents and harrowing near misses.
Joe Biden's massive climate change spending — derided by the GOP as the "Green New Scam" — is effectively a thing of the past too. This bill repeals every "green" corporate welfare subsidy and ends the electric vehicle mandates imposed by the Biden administration.
The bill provides for "MAGA Accounts" for newborns to allow parents to start saving money, and it also increases the child tax credit and strengthens paid family leave.
In the growing gig economy, it repeals the requirement that Venmo, PayPal and other gig transactions over $600 be reported to the IRS.
And family farmers are prioritized in the bill, cutting their taxes by over $10 billion and eliminating so-called death taxes that keep some farms from being passed down through generations.