There is much to like about the recently passed Big Beautiful Bill (BBB). To list just a few of its great merits, it will preserve Trump’s tax cuts from his first term, increase funding for deportations and border security, issue child tax credits, empower school choice programs, and boost military defense. It will also cut the tax dollars going to Planned Parenthood and work to reduce the waste, fraud, and abuse in welfare services like Medicare and SNAP.
The stakes for passing this bill were high, and Trump was only able to secure the votes he needed because failure was simply not an option. Had the bill not passed, Republicans would have had to explain why they raised taxes on their constituents and did so little to fix the problems left by the last administration.
But now that the BBB has passed, many otherwise useless and unknown legislators will have something to show for their time in office. As writer Daniel McCarthy explains, “The GOP passed two make-or-break tests here: one of party discipline, the other of political principles. And the party saved its life by getting this bill enacted.”
Of course, besides the perfunctory whining of leftists that this bill will “kill people” and prevent more mothers from murdering their unborn children, the main criticism of the BBB is that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, it “would increase deficits over the 2025‑2034 period by $3.4 trillion.”
For deficit hawks, the U.S. Congress has once again decided to kick this proverbial can down the road, leaving it to younger Americans to bear the burden of a continually ballooning deficit. As such, the libertarians Sen. Rand Paul and Rep. Thomas Massie remained true to form and voted against the bill.
All this seems to follow a familiar script on how
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