President Donald Trump uses a gavel after signing the sweeping spending and tax legislation, known as the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," at the White House in Washington, D.C., July 4, 2025. REUTERS/Ken Cedeno
The One Big Beautiful Bill remains the single biggest legislative victory of President Donald Trump's second term, but while it has so far had a seismic impact on American life, NBC News reported that its "biggest consequences are still to come."
On Wednesday, NBC published a pre-emptive one-year post-mortem analysis of the bill, which Trump signed into law on July 4, 2025, after months of pained legislative back-and-forths to get the sprawling bill through Congress. As the outlet explained, the bill has so far had enormous implications for "who gets help from the government and who goes without."
"The most consequential legislation of Trump’s second term reaches into nearly every corner of American life," the report detailed. "It supercharges immigration enforcement, pouring billions into border security and deportations. It rewrites student loan rules. It dismantles tax incentives for electric vehicles and clean energy. It creates a national school-voucher tax credit."
Its biggest impact, however, has so far been its transition of wealth from the poorest Americans to the richest. The bill extended $4.5 trillion in tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthy, while also pushing through $1.1 trillion in cuts "from healthcare and food assistance programs serving poor and working-class people." Ultimately, these changes are expected to balloon the national debt by nearly $5 trillion.
As NBC's report noted, these impacts are not yet fully "phased in."
"Once all of the law’s major provisions are fully phased in, Congressional Budget Office estimates show, the poorest households will end up with roughly $1,200 less each year on average, while the wealthiest Americans will gain about $13,600," the report added.
“I don't think it could be much clearer,” Sharon Parrott, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities think tank, told the outlet. “They extended tax cuts for very wealthy people, they expanded tax cuts for very large estates, they put in new tax cuts for quite profitable businesses, and they did that in the same bill that they made millions of people lose food assistance and health coverage.”
NBC continued: "The political fight over its impacts is only beginning. Polling suggests Republicans may face an uphill battle selling a law that was unpopular with voters from the start, while Democrats are preparing to make it a centerpiece of their midterm elections message."
In a segment from April, CNN data guru Harry Enten said that public sentiment around the bill has been a massive bust for Trump, even as the GOP has attempted to rebrand it as the "Working Families Tax Cut."
"Trump is paying the piper when it comes to taxes and the American public," Enten said. "Look at this trend. I mean, again, what massive trends we're seeing from term one to term two. Look at this! If there are benefits that the American people are liking when it comes to the 'One Big, Beautiful Bill' act, they are not, in fact, giving the two thumbs up to Donald Trump when it comes to that."
Enten highlighted a Fox News poll at the time in which Trump's approval on taxes was 28 points underwater. In 2018, when the initial Trump tax cuts were still new, the same poll had him 2 points positive on taxes, showing a steep drop over the last eight years.