What's next for the big beautiful bill?

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Quick hits.

1. BREAKING: Rep. Gerald Connolly (D-VA) died on Wednesday. Connolly was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in November. (The passing)
2. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recalled the top members of Israel’s negotiating team from hostage and war talks in Qatar. The United States has reportedly pushed both sides to accept a 45–60 day ceasefire in exchange for the release of 10 living hostages and an unspecified number of imprisoned Palestinians. (The recall) Separately, the United Kingdom halted trade talks with Israel and announced new sanctions on West Bank settlers in response to Israel’s expanded military operation in Gaza. (The pause)
3. Leaders at the Food and Drug Administration announced the agency would adopt stricter guidelines for approving new Covid-19 vaccines, requiring randomized, controlled trials for approval for healthy children and adults under 65. (The announcement)
4. A federal judge said the Trump administration’s decision to deport a group of migrants to South Sudan on Tuesday may have violated a previous order and suggested he could hold the administration in contempt of court. (The warning)
5. The Senate unanimously passed a bill that would eliminate federal taxes on tips. The bill now goes to the House, where it can either be voted on individually or as part of the larger budget bill. (The vote) 
6. A spokesperson for former President Joe Biden said Biden’s last known screening for prostate cancer was in 2014. (The statement)

Today's topic.

The House budget bill. On Tuesday morning, President Donald Trump met with House Republicans in a closed-door meeting to urge them to vote in favor of a massive spending bill to advance the president’s legislative agenda. The bill, named the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, was approved by the House Budget Committee 17–16 largely on party lines on Sunday, with four Republicans voting present. Now, the spending package has moved to the House Rules Committee, which House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) wants to approve the bill as it stands so it can be sent to a floor vote via reconciliation.

Back up: Republicans are seeking to pass the bill via reconciliation, a legislative process spelled out in the Congressional Budget Act to expedite legislation that changes spending, revenues, or the federal debt limit. Reconciliation requires the House and Senate to agree on a budget resolution, setting requirements for spending targets that individual committees must meet. Once out of committee, a bill under reconciliation heads to a simple majority floor vote in each chamber, which allows the Senate to bypass the 60-vote threshold required to overcome a filibuster.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act is currently 1,116 pages long and includes an overhaul of tax policy, increased spending for border security and immigration, work requirements for Medicaid, and more. Features of the proposed tax policy include a permanent extension of the 2017 tax cuts, an increase to the standard federal tax deduction, an expansion of the child tax credit, no tax on tips, and a state and local tax (SALT) deduction increase. If passed, nonpartisan analysts say the spending bill will increase the national debt by about $5 trillion over the next decade.

Speaker Johnson said that the bill would be modified to appease Republican holdouts who are concerned about its fiscal impact and are pushing for more cuts to Medicaid and green energy programs. Two of the four Budget Committee holdouts also sit on the Rules Committee; Rep. Ralph Norman (SC) said that he planned to vote for the bill in committee as is, while Rep. Chip Roy (TX) has said he will not.

Meanwhile, House Democrats are united in opposition to the bill, which they say will take away benefits and only help the wealthiest Americans. “They literally are trying to take health care away from millions of Americans at this very moment in the dead of night," House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY) said on Monday.

In the Tuesday meeting on Capitol Hill, President Trump pushed blue-state Republicans to accept the bill without increasing the SALT deduction and told the gathered Republicans not to approve any changes to Medicaid. “We're not touching anything. All I want is one thing — three words, we don't want any waste, fraud or abuse,” President Trump said ahead of the meeting. 

If the bill passes the Rules Committee and the House of Representatives, it will still require 50 Senate votes before it is sent to President Trump for approval. Senate Republicans have signaled their intent to make significant changes to the current version of the House bill. 

We’ll cover what the right and left are saying about the bill below, and then I’ll give my take.

What the right is saying.

• Many on the right support the bill’s provisions and criticize the House GOP holdouts. 
• Some suggest those withholding support over SALT are undermining President Trump’s agenda. 
• Others worry that the bill would accelerate the U.S. fiscal crisis. 

In The Daily Caller, Jason Lewis wrote about “reconciling reconciliation.”

“Much of America is tuned out to the inside baseball over a reconciliation package that aims to preserve existing tax cuts, control federal spending, boost energy supplies and strengthen border security—but should it fail the country will start paying attention very quickly,” Lewis said. “It goes without saying that Democrats want to let the clock run out on [Tax Cuts & Jobs Act]. Since many of its provisions expire at the end of the year, no action on the reconciliation bill means a massive tax hike on the American economy. That is, as usual, what liberals desire. Yet what’s really threatening the domestic centerpiece of Trump’s second term is once again Republicans circling the wagons—and shooting inward.”

“Having far less to do with principle and far more to do with self-preservation, GOP ‘moderates’ on the left and a few LINOs (‘libertarians in name only’) on the ‘right’ are holding the ‘one big beautiful bill’ hostage,” Lewis wrote. “Getting the tax cut extensions to the President’s desk is not a heavy lift, no matter what ‘baseline’ you’re operating off. Indeed, finding modest budget reductions from federal outlays that will total over $54 trillion through 2035 shouldn’t be difficult. There are more than enough offsets to comply with ‘pay-go’ provisions to get the job done.”

In Blaze Media, Christopher Bedford explained “why the GOP is so frustrated trying to negotiate with the ‘SALT Caucus.’”

“The self-styled SALT Caucus lacks formal structure, but its members share a common trait: They all represent deep-blue, high-tax states like New York, New Jersey, and California,” Bedford said. “The funny thing about the SALT faction’s rejection of a $20,000 hike is they've not provided an actual number that would please them. They’ve only said that $30,000 ‘is insulting’ and that without their votes for the president’s budget, the caps expire along with Trump's 2017 tax cuts. They’ll tell you this fact makes their hand stronger, but the reality is that the tax cuts expiring would mean a massive tax hike, and the small number of wealthy but influential citizens who would benefit from no cap would end up paying more in the wash.”

“If you don’t have a proposal — just a demand for more — it's hard to see how you’re actually in a caucus at all, unless the SALT Caucus is just united by opposition to Trump’s budget. How, for example, are they different from the California Republicans who don’t want the Congress to talk away former President Joe Biden’s energy handouts? Or those who want this tax credit or that one?,” Bedford asked. “Don’t forget this whole thing is going to the Senate when the House is finished. Several Republican senators have signaled they’re a ‘no’ on the House bill right now, and that’s fine because guess what: It’s going to be changing!”

In National Review, Veronique de Rugy called it “the big but not so beautiful bill.”

“The bill has two redeeming features: It extends expiring provisions of the 2017 tax cuts, preventing a major tax hike on working Americans. It also holds the line against Bernie Sanders–style tax increases on high earners and small businesses. But that’s where the good news ends,” de Rugy wrote. “This isn’t tax reform, it’s a political spending spree wrapped in a tax-cut ribbon. There’s barely any Medicaid reform, not even immediate work requirements. And forget about other health-care subsidies. Republicans are either capitulating to left-wing talking points or protecting special interests.”

“Everyone in Washington admits it now: We’re on a ruinous fiscal path. The national debt is racing past $30 trillion. Annual deficits are nearing $2 trillion… If rates settle closer to 5.5 percent instead of the CBO’s 3.8 percent forecast, debt service will explode, triggering a vicious cycle of rising deficits, rising interest payments, and rising inflation risk,” de Rugy said. “And what are Republicans doing in response? Not targeting the $26 trillion in tax expenditures. Not ending wasteful programs. Not repealing open-ended regulatory statutes. Not even trying to claw back Biden’s bloated spending.”

What the left is saying.

• The left criticizes the bill’s tax plan as fiscally irresponsible. 
• Some say the GOP’s refusal to compromise may doom their effort.
• Others question whether Republicans can get the bill over the finish line.

In The New York Times, Jason Furman called the bill’s tax plan “more complicated, less fair, totally unaffordable.”

“There was much to dislike in the package of large and regressive tax cuts advanced by President Trump in his first term, but I’ll give it this: By expanding the standard deduction, it simplified the process of figuring out what you owe, and by cutting the corporate rate, it made American businesses more competitive,” Furman wrote. “The latest effort, which I can think of only as tax deform, is a tremendously expensive effort to make the tax code less efficient, less fair and more complicated.”

“The House bill is estimated by Congress’s nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation to lower tax revenue by $3.8 trillion over 10 years, but even that eye-popping figure understates its likely cost… Between now and then, the uncertainty about the outcome would make it harder for businesses to plan and invest. And if the push would succeed, it would bring the total cost of the tax cuts to over $5 trillion,” Furman said. “The growing debt would drive up interest rates, forcing families to pay more for mortgages and restricting the funds businesses need to invest and grow. The United States would depend more on foreign lending, which would swell our trade deficit. All of this would lead to slower economic growth.”

In The Atlantic, David A. Graham wrote about “Congressional Republicans vs. reality.”

“The Budget Committee voted again [on Sunday] and this time advanced the bill—an unusual weekend vote, in which four hard-liners agreed to vote ‘present’ rather than ‘nay.’ Few details have emerged about what exactly had changed to satisfy or at least pacify them,” Graham said. “But none of the structural contradictions in the bill have gone away…. Republicans are determined to extend Trump’s tax cuts (most of which were set in his first term to expire at the end of 2025), but they are unwilling to raise other taxes, notwithstanding the president’s flirtation with a millionaire’s tax. They are also unwilling to really make spending cuts: Though they plan to slash Medicaid, they realize that attacking Medicare and Social Security is politically toxic.”

“The Republican bill still has quite a long way to go before it passes the House, much less the Senate. The fact that Republicans scheduled a Rules Committee vote for 1 a.m. on Wednesday does not suggest a great deal of confidence in either the substance or the viability of the bill. When markets opened this morning, stocks sank, the dollar was down, and yields on Treasury bonds rose—a sign of dropping confidence in the U.S. government,” Graham wrote. “Congress is trying to wrangle this while Trump’s tariffs have drastically increased the chances of recession—a truth that many of his aides refuse to acknowledge. Reality can be denied, but it always gets the last word.”

In Slate, Jim Newell asked “can House Republicans govern?”

“The bigger question before the House GOP this week is one that has been asked of the party since November’s election: Can this majority, with its notoriously vocal factions and historically slim margin for error, function? A significant reason all of this is packed into one bill, instead of two or three, is that there were doubts about the House’s ability to pass multiple pieces of major partisan legislation,” Newell said. “The centerpiece of the bill is an attempt to permanentize expiring tax cuts from the GOP’s 2017 tax reform law. It also introduces new, temporary tax cuts pushed by Trump on overtime and tips, while giving seniors a ‘bonus.’ And it increases spending on defense and border and immigration enforcement.”

“The Senate finds much of what the House is doing to be adorable. Look at them, playing grown-up legislature! The Senate fully intends to sand off the sharp edges of whatever overly aggressive product the House sends its way—and takes great pleasure in doing so. This will certainly be the case on the House’s Medicaid cuts,” Newell wrote. “Which is to say, so many of the final decisions being made in the House to be more aggressive on various fronts are unlikely to reach the finish line. Their main effect will be to produce more material for House campaign ads next fall.”

My take.

Reminder: "My take" is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

• This bill is a nearly complete betrayal of Trump’s promises.
• It increases the national debt, favors the rich, and will remove millions from Medicaid.
• I can only hope that the Senate makes major reforms.

In 2017, President Trump passed a tax bill that — even according to his critics — simplified the tax code and spurred economic growth. 

Today, the president is steamrolling a bill through Congress that will worsen our debt and deficit, will cost millions of Americans their health insurance by breaking his promise not to touch Medicaid, and will pass tax reforms that benefit the rich more than the poor or middle class. It is, in simple terms, a nearly complete betrayal of his campaign promises.

Let’s take these issues individually, starting with the debt and deficit. For decades, Republicans have been warning (rightly) that our routine federal deficits are stacking our national debt to insurmountable heights. Yesterday, President Trump called himself the biggest “fiscal hawk” in Washington. Even some liberal economists have joined the chorus and started to panic about the national debt. In short, the fiscal issue has generated a lot of real urgency. Well, here’s a round-up of how this bill responds to that urgency:

• The Joint Committee on Taxation says it will increase deficits by $3.8 trillion by 2034
• Penn Wharton’s Budget Model projects a ten-year deficit increase of almost $3.3 trillion, even with generous economic assumptions
• Moody’s Ratings says that extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts by itself would add $4 trillion to the deficit in the next decade

Typical political language calling these numbers a “problem,” describing the debt’s rise as a “small increase,” or saying we’re “continuing on the unsustainable path we are on” doesn’t do the situation justice. If passed, this spending bill would cost more than the 2017 tax cuts, the pandemic CARES Act, Biden's stimulus, and the Inflation Reduction Act combined. It would be a complete budget buster. And these estimates assume that many of the proposed tax cuts will expire after four years, which is unlikely, or that the economy will be strong, which is unknown. 

I’ll remind you that similar budget models estimated that Trump’s 2017 tax cuts would spur growth, although not enough to “pay for themselves” (as the Trump administration claimed at the time). Their models were correct; the Trump administration was not.

Trump, despite the claims he is making this week, has never been a fiscal conservative. And on the campaign trail he never promised to balance the budget. But he did promise to course-correct, reduce waste and fraud, rein in spending, and improve our fiscal standing. He is not. On the basic numbers — the fiscal reality — this bill provides an insubstantial veneer of budget cuts to accompany a decrease in federal revenue, a basic arithmetic that will spur our debt and deficit dumpster fire to conflagration. 

I do not want to be hyperbolic: A bill like this, passed as-is, takes us perilously close to a debt spiral that has the potential to upend the U.S. economy. 

Let me make this more tangible. Consumer interest rates closely track the Treasury’s rate; so if our debt grows, our interest rates will grow, and you’ll pay more for mortgages or credit card debt or any other kind of loan. The federal government will need to spend more money servicing our debt and devote fewer resources to investing in growth or services or infrastructure, which is likely to cause an economic slowdown — which means layoffs, more economic downturn, and a higher deficit as a percent of GDP. 

Next up is Medicaid. On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly and overtly promised he would not touch Medicaid. This makes sense — many of Trump’s supporters number among the 72 million Americans who rely on Medicaid for health insurance. Just yesterday, Trump again told Republicans unequivocally not to touch Medicaid (his language was a little more evocative). He claimed he will only cut waste and fraud (the waste and fraud DOGE had such a hard time finding). Which, since he’s pressing Republicans to just pass the bill as it is, invites the question: Does he know that this bill already cuts $625 billion in Medicaid spending? 

That, according to the Congressional Budget Office, would cause more than 7 million Americans to go uninsured. It’s really hard to square Trump’s warning to preserve Medicaid with how the bill is already gutting the program

Finally, tax reforms. Trump has also promised that his administration — and this bill specifically — would take care of those forgotten men and women struggling with low wages. He pledged to “graciously accept” a tax increase for the rich, while giving tax cuts to the lower class. Maybe he’ll follow through eventually, but this bill — his administration’s first real piece of significant legislation — does none of that. It offers no tax increase on any wealthy Americans, nor does it close any of the many loopholes for wealthy hedge funds and private equity managers that Trump said he would close. 

Let me make this issue more tangible, too: If this bill does indeed get ratified, the one million American households with incomes above $1 million a year will pay $96 billion less in taxes in 2027 than they pay right now; more than what the combined savings will be for the 127 million Americans making less than $100,000 a year. On average, it’s a tax cut of about $750 per person in the lower and middle class, and $82,000 per million-dollar earner. That’s as much a commentary on our vast income inequality as it is on Trump’s tax bill — but as a share of income, the tax breaks are larger for the rich than the middle or lower class. This all just makes clear that he is not keeping his promise.

Now, to his credit, Trump successfully mainstreamed no tax on tips to the point that it passed the Senate unanimously last night. House Republicans also pulled together a higher standard deduction for seniors, which they said they would do. So the “nearly complete” betrayal of their campaign promises is just that — nearly complete. 

I just don’t know how Republicans can justify all this. None of the above even gets into the reality that the (actually named) Big Beautiful Bill Act doesn’t simplify the tax code, continues the unfair and absurd SALT deduction, and is packed with devilish little unrelated provisions like preventing federal courts from enforcing contempt rulings against federal officials.

Of course, this isn’t over. The bill will go to the Senate, and we’ll see how much spine is left in the upper chamber. Populist senators like Josh Hawley (R-MO) have promised not to cut Medicaid; longtime fiscal hawks like Rand Paul (R-KY) know the reality of the numbers; Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) doesn’t want cuts to renewable energy subsidies. I’m unsure if one or all of them will do anything about it, but I’m also confident this bill — if it passes — isn’t the one we’ll see signed into law. 

And for that, we should all (for now) be grateful. 

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Your questions, answered.

Q: How do Supreme Court decisions come about? Obviously hearings are held and arguments are made, but what about after that? Do the justices go their separate ways to come to their decisions? Do they collaborate as a group like a jury? Do they discuss in smaller groups, maybe within their “partisan” divides?

— Joe from Westmont, IL

Tangle: That’s a great question. We’ve discussed before how cases work their way through the federal judiciary to the Supreme Court, but not what happens after a case makes it to the court.

First, the court hears oral arguments. It keeps a surprisingly regimented routine. They discuss Monday cases on Wednesday, confer over Tuesday and Wednesday cases on Friday, always start their conferences by shaking hands, then always speak in the same order. While the nine justices may discuss the cases before the court with their law clerks, only the court justices participate in the private conferences. 

These conferences begin with a discussion of which cases the court should hear, before getting into the arguments the court has heard that week. Each justice states their current opinion on the case uninterrupted, starting with the chief justice and then proceeding in order of seniority. Then the chief justice calls a vote, which also proceeds by seniority, and then either the Chief Justice selects the person who will write the court’s opinion, or the most senior justice will decide if the chief is not in the majority.

At this point, the court is only partway to reaching its final decision. The justice will confer with their clerks (perhaps too much so) to author the opinion and then circulate their draft to other justices for them to suggest edits, add their concurring or dissenting opinions, and eventually sign on to the final result. These opinions may circulate among the court until the deadline at the end of the court’s term, but for unanimous cases these opinions may be released more immediately following arguments. The court’s ruling is not final until the written decision is released to the public.

Justices may have their minds changed at any point in these deliberations, either in private conference or when considering a written opinion. They confer in private, but outside of that, they can discuss the cases with their colleagues or clerks in whatever manner they choose.

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Under the radar.

On Monday, President Trump signed the “Take It Down Act,” which makes posting real and fake sexually explicit imagery of people online without their consent a federal crime. The law requires social media companies and other websites to remove such images and videos within 48 hours of a victim’s request, and establishes penalties (including prison time) for those convicted of intentionally distributing explicit images. Major social media platforms like Meta, TikTok and Snapchat voiced support for the legislation, though some digital rights groups warned that ambiguities in the law raise free speech concerns. NBC News has the story.

Numbers.

• $2.67 trillion. The current projected federal deficit in fiscal year 2034 (assuming the 2017 tax cuts expire).
• $2.95 trillion. The projected federal deficit in fiscal year 2034 if the House GOP bill becomes law. 
• 15 million. The estimated number of U.S. taxpayers who used some form of a state and local tax (SALT) deduction in 2022.
• $13,000. The average annual SALT deduction before the $10,000 cap was instituted in 2017.
• 81%. The percentage of Americans who say they worry a “great” or “fair” amount about federal spending and the budget deficit, according to a March 2025 Gallup poll.
• 76%. The percentage of Americans who say they worry a “great” or “fair” amount about federal spending and the budget deficit in March 2017. 
• 63% and 19%. The percentage of U.S. adults who say tax rates on large businesses and corporations should be raised and lowered, respectively, according to a January–February 2025 Pew Research poll.
• 58% and 19%. The percentage of U.S. adults who say tax rates on household incomes over $400,000 should be raised and lowered, respectively.

The extras.

• One year ago today we wrote about the CFPB Supreme Court case.
• The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was the first unauthorized migrants who opted in to self-deportation.
• Nothing to do with politics: The accent most Americans hate, including those who have it.
• Something to do with politics: Tangle Editorial Fellow Hunter Casperson breaks down the debate on the timing of President Joe Biden’s cancer diagnosis in this short video.
• Yesterday’s survey: 1,721 readers answered our survey on the Supreme Court considering federal injunctions and birthright citizenship with 40% saying they expect the court to limit universal injunctions in some way and block the executive order. “Universal injunctions should be used when federal or constitutional issues are involved,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

Chimney Rock Village, a beloved mountain town in North Carolina, was devastated last September by Hurricane Helene. Local and distant communities have rallied to help, with over 2,000 volunteers assisting in recovery efforts since the disaster. In particular, an Amish nonprofit group in Pennsylvania has played a key role, working every day to rebuild and restore the damaged community. “It just fills my heart with joy, watching people get their life back again," one volunteer said. WCNC has the story.

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