Who Benefits from Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill?
Editor’s note: The opinions expressed here are those of the authors. View more opinion on ScoonTV
By J. Simpson
The Big Beautiful Bill certainly lives up to much of its name. It’s definitely a bill, and well on its way to becoming a law after passing a vote in the House of Representatives. It’s definitely big, touching on everything from welfare programs to immigration reform. It even addresses AI regulation, all contained within its 1000+ pages.
The Big Beautiful Bill is full of big talk, wild promises, and outright contradictions, all of which are par for the course for the Trump Administration. To try and make heads or tails of it all, to make it easier to keep track of whether or not President Trump’s administration is living up to their promises, we’ve broken down the Big Beautiful Bill to help you make sense of it all.
American Families and Workers Thrive Again
At its heart, the Big Beautiful Bill is about making the changes brought about by President Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 permanent. Most notably, it makes the seven-bracket tax scheme, with 10% on the low end and 37% on the highest, permanent. It also maintains the doubled standard deduction, from $1,000 for singles, $1,500 for heads of household, and $2,000 for married couples. It also makes the $2,000 child tax credit and $500 credit for dependents who aren’t children permanent, as well as expanding its income thresholds. Finally, it increases the estate and gift tax exemption to $15 million for individuals and $30 million for couples.
Already, we’re starting to see some of the Big Beautiful Bill’s sneakiness, where enormous cash grabs are smuggled in along with more moderate policies. With a title like American Families and Workers Thrive Again, this policy seems targeted towards working-class families. How many working-class families are going to be writing off $30 million inheritances, though? Right from the start, the Big Beautiful Bill seems to be benefiting the uber-rich using populist language and rhetoric.
Additional Tax Relief for Families and Workers
This section of the Big Beautiful Bill promises to make tips and overtime exempt from taxes for certain workers. It also introduces new deductions for seniors and a capped $10,000 deduction for car loan interest. It also expands employer-provided childcare credits, making it easier for working parents to get affordable childcare.
This section is less controversial and seemingly more in good faith. Some critics feel that the $10,000 car loan deduction might encourage consumer debt while simultaneously artificially propping up the automotive industry. It’s difficult to prove these criticisms ahead of time, as analysts will most likely need accurate financial data to prove their efficacy one way or the other.
Making Rural America and Main Street Grow Again
One of the Big Beautiful Bill’s main themes is revitalizing rural and small-town America. Towards this end, the Big Beautiful Bill allows farmers and business owners to declare 100% of qualified business equipment for rural businesses. It also expands the definition of rural production and includes experimental procedures. Finally, it redefines the Opportunity Zone program, making it more selective and focusing a greater share of benefits on rural areas. Under the new rules, at least one‑third of these zones must be rural, with incentives increased accordingly.
Helpful, in theory, although the cynic might wonder if this is an underhanded way of allowing rural areas to be exploited by big business. Especially when you consider Trump’s recent proposal to offer vast stretches of government land, almost all of it rural, available for sale.
Make America Win Again
The Make America Win Again may be the most controversial part of the Big Beautiful Bill. It eliminates the clean energy and electric vehicle credits introduced under the Inflation Reduction Act in favor of traditional industries. It also increases scrutiny on nonprofits, universities, and private foundations. It expands the enforcement provisions for Medicare fraud, introduces AI tools for screening improper payments, and imposes tougher penalties for unauthorized disclosures of tax information. The Make America Win Again section also proposes to strip away taxpayer benefits from illegal immigrants, such as receiving Medicaid.
The Make America Win Again makes some of the contradictions and outright lies laid out in the Big Beautiful Bill abundantly clear. Penalizing clean and renewable energy promises to harm the rural communities it claims to want to help, as many of these communities are already using renewable energy. Green industries can also be an important source of jobs and income in rural communities. Regarding the increased scrutiny on universities and nonprofits, it’s difficult to predict the impact these stringent policies will have on the American economy.
Robin Hood in Reverse: Cuts to Medicaid and SNAP
Buried beneath the flashier elements of the Big Beautiful Bill, the corporate tax breaks, the regulatory rollbacks, the patriotic branding, is a far grittier reality for working families and the poor. The bill includes significant cuts to safety net programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), programs that form the backbone of survival for tens of millions of Americans.
These aren’t marginal trims or bureaucratic efficiencies. These are deep, structural reductions that will force states to scale back eligibility, restrict benefits, or both. Fewer people will get the medical care they need, and more families will struggle to put food on the table.
The justification for these cuts is framed in the usual political language: “fiscal responsibility,” “reducing dependency,” “encouraging self-sufficiency.” But when set against the backdrop of simultaneous tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans, the story becomes harder to defend as mere budgetary prudence. It begins to look like what it is: a wealth transfer. Not the mythic one that gets trotted out every election cycle, the idea that the government is bleeding dry the wealthy to support the undeserving poor, but the reverse. This bill takes real, tangible support away from those who need it most and redistributes that value upward to those who need it least.
Medicaid, for instance, isn’t just for the unemployed. It covers low-wage workers, disabled veterans, children, and seniors in nursing homes. Cuts to it mean hospital closures in rural America, longer wait times in emergency rooms, and families choosing between insulin and rent. SNAP isn’t a lifestyle subsidy. It’s food. Cutting it doesn’t promote dignity. It promotes hunger.
These are not abstract concepts. The money saved from reducing Medicaid and SNAP doesn’t vanish into a vault labeled national debt reduction. It directly offsets the cost of the bill’s tax cuts. In effect, the poor are paying for the tax breaks of the rich. Some literally with their health, others with their dinner.
In political terms, this is Robin Hood in reverse. A legislative pickpocketing of the working class and the vulnerable, dressed up in patriotic language and wrapped in the flag of economic growth. But growth for whom? For Wall Street? For the private jet class?
It’s one thing to debate the role of government in economic life. It’s another to design a policy that deliberately shifts resources from the sick and hungry to the investor class and call it reform. That’s not trickle-down economics. That’s a flood of wealth moving uphill.
Increase In Debt Limit
The final component of the Big Beautiful Bill expands the statutory debt ceiling, raising the legal limit on how much the federal government can borrow. This provision is not simply a bureaucratic formality; it is an essential structural change designed to accommodate the sweeping fiscal adjustments introduced in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The tax cuts, particularly for corporations and high-income earners, result in significantly reduced federal revenue without corresponding cuts to mandatory or discretionary spending. In effect, the only way to make the math work without cutting popular, politically untouchable programs is to borrow more.
At first glance, this may appear less controversial than other elements of the bill. Historically, debt ceiling increases are often necessary to avoid default and maintain basic government operations. However, in this context, the increase is not a stopgap to maintain solvency; it is a green light for expanded deficit spending. It structurally locks in a fiscal future dependent on perpetual borrowing.
Critically, this debt ceiling hike reveals the internal contradiction in the rhetoric surrounding the bill. While proponents of the legislation argue that it sets the stage for leaner, more efficient government, the mechanics of the bill do the opposite. By forgoing offsets, whether through reduced entitlement spending, defense cuts, or new revenue mechanisms, the legislation eliminates any serious path to budget balance. It reflects a strategic decision: rather than make hard fiscal choices, the government will simply finance the gap with more debt.
Over time, this approach transforms the federal budget process from a discipline of tradeoffs into an exercise in political wish fulfillment. Lower taxes? Check. Increased defense spending? Check. Avoiding cuts to Social Security and Medicare? Check. But each checkmark comes with a corresponding cost added to the national credit card. The result is not a temporary spike in debt, but the institutionalization of deficit finance as the default mode of governance.
In this light, the debt ceiling increase is not a minor or necessary technicality. It is a declaration of intent: that the United States government, under the logic of this bill, will prioritize immediate political wins over long-term fiscal sustainability.
As we have seen, the Big Beautiful Bill may be the biggest, boldest example of this administration’s tendency to frame everything in populist language and rhetoric. This is nothing new in American politics – see the Patriot Act – but it is especially egregious with the Trump administration. If the Big Beautiful Bill is essentially a Trojan Horse smuggling in yet more tax breaks for the ultra wealthy, regardless of how many times “the elites” are referenced in its sprawling, labyrinthine pages. What exactly will come of the sweeping changes caused by the Big Beautiful Bill remains to be seen, provided it gets passed. We’ll have to see what happens if the bill passes before the July 4 deadline.
Curtis Scoon is the founder of ScoonTv.com Download the ScoonTv App to join our weekly livestream every Tuesday @ 8pm EST!
