Republicans hoping 'wordplay' and 'pretending' saves them following wildly unpopular plan
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) speaks to the press, as he leaves for a meeting at the White House on the budget, on the day of the House Rules Committee's hearing on U.S. President Donald Trump's plan for extensive tax cuts, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 21, 2025. REUTERS/Nathan Howard
Atlantic writer Jonathan Chait says House Republicans worked all night to deliver a piece of legislation that might “carry out the largest upward transfer of wealth in American history.”
“That is not a side effect of the legislation, but its central purpose,” he reports. “The ‘big, beautiful bill’ would pair huge cuts to food assistance and health insurance for low-income Americans with even larger tax cuts for affluent ones.”
The budget bill barely passed a House floor vote along a partisan 215–214 margin, and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y) predicts it will “mark the moment the Republicans ensured the loss of their majority in the midterm elections.”
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Chait argues House Republicans are “fully aware of the political and economic risks” of what they’ve done.
“Cutting taxes for the affluent is unpopular, and cutting Medicaid is even more so,” but Republicans “are pretending it will do neither,” despite warning themselves against cutting Medicaid because of their own constituents’ reliance upon it, particularly in low income red state areas.
They’re banking on “pretending that their scheme of imposing complex work requirements, which are designed to cull eligible recipients who cannot navigate the paperwork burden, will not throw people off the program — when that is precisely the effect they are counting on to produce the necessary savings,” Chait says.
They share the same denial about how badly extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts will blow the deficit by dedicating “more money to lining the pockets of lawyers and CEOs than it saves by immiserating fast-food employees and ride-share drivers.”
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But Congressional Republicans are willing to “endanger their hold on power to enact policy changes they believe in,” said Chait. “And what they believe … is that the government takes too much from the rich, and gives too much to the poor.”
Read the full Atlantic report here.
