For all the trillions of US dollars bandied about like poker chips at a Vegas bachelor party, few Americans turned up to protest against Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill as it passed through the Senate on Tuesday. Of the measly number that did, 38 were arrested by the US Capitol Police and ludicrously charged with crowding, obstructing, and “incommoding”. It seems to me that Trump is counting on the fact that MAGA America suffers from the same case of attention deficit disorder as he does. Perhaps, if a few more citizens understood the tyranny of the new tax law, they might remember that the 250th birthday of their country is right around the corner — and revolt against their would-be king.
The Big Beautiful Bill — or the Big Bullshit Bill, or Beautiful Billionaire Bailout, depending on who you ask — qualifies as the fullest articulation of Trumpism yet, revealing the President’s disregard for debt and love of profligate spending, his worship of the plutocrats and his contempt for those who might need a hand. It’s a bill in which rape and pillage and a dozen more private planes and real estate deals for Eric and Jared could be ensconced somewhere among the 940 pages that took nearly 16 hours to read aloud on the Senate floor, and no one would know. Here is a bill that will add a 10-digit number to the debt limit, inspiring the arch-budget conservative from Texas, Chip Roy, to comment, “I don’t think the math is correct yet” — as if Trump’s thirst to achieve for himself the moment that would ever after define him as the most consequential figure in United States history had anything to do with maths.
“The Big Beautiful Bill — or the Big Bullshit Bill, or Beautiful Billionaire Bailout, depending on who you ask — qualifies as the fullest articulation of Trumpism yet.”
That said, a few sums are worth mentioning: billions for border and national security, while billions are subtracted from wind and solar investments in green energy. The biggest cut in the history of Medicaid, totalling around $1 trillion, stripping coverage from almost 12 million lower-income Americans. An extra shot of $150 billion to the Pentagon for bombs and missiles — to be allocated by chat-group addicted, ex-Fox anchor Pete Hegseth, the one with the Crusader tattoos. Billions deducted from food assistance, most notably school lunches for hungry kids, and more than $100 billion in tax cuts for the top one-percent.
The BBB will see $3.3 trillion added to the national debt over the next decade, enough to make even the most ardent acolyte of modern monetary theory blanch, and more than enough to make Elon Musk descend into a rant and against, in the Republicans, the “Porky Pig Party”, whose representatives should “hang their head[s] in shame”.
Musk threatened any member of Congress who voted for “the biggest debt increase in history” with an ominous promise: “They will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this earth.” Not a single “No” vote came of it, although the GOP may rue the day.
Infuriated by yet another betrayal from his erstwhile bestie, the President vowed to launch a DOGE investigation into the world’s über tech-bro, threatening that the MAGA minions over at ICE might send Musk “back home to South Africa”. (That said, the end of Americans’ $7,500 credit for buying Teslas will likely be punishment enough.) On the White House lawn, Trump went so far as to muse metaphorically: “DOGE is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon.”
During 27 hours of voting and debate, the drama of the Big Beautiful Bill ascended to the heights of tragedy. “It is inescapable that this bill will betray the promise Donald Trump made,” the Republican senator Thom Tillis said on the Senate floor. Knowing full well the fate that awaited him and his party, Tillis prophesied that the Republicans would get trounced in the 2026 midterms. Then he announced that he would not run for re-election. Such roadkill not only satisfied Trump (“Great News!” he wrote), but delighted the Democrats, who view the Tillis retirement as a chance to fill the North Carolina seat with one of their own.
The retirement of Nebraska’s conservative centrist, Don Bacon, similarly made headlines. There were also episodes of comic buffoonery, typified by Joni Ernst, Senator from Iowa, who dismissed fears that the bill would mean that upwards of 80,000 Iowans would lose health insurance. “We’re all going to die,” she flippantly told her critics.
Hours of strong-arming, horse-trading, side-dealing, intimidating, coercing, and internecine negotiations between the true believers, the last of the fiscal hawks, and what was left of the wonk coalition — those who might actually care about the alternative minimum tax and foreign-derived intangible income — lasted until the dawn’s early light.
By that point in the debate, weary members of the media had been whipped into a strung-out frenzy of cliché. There was a “needle to thread”. It was “make-or-break” time. The vote would be “a real nail-biter”. While the press called play-by-play, exhausted interns munched pizza and played cards, and Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama lit a cigar.
But as everyone knew from the get-go, the BBB — now the somewhat less sonorous “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” — would squeak through the Senate with a sombre Vice President JD Vance casting the deciding vote. The pandemonium has now transferred to the House of Representatives, where the one-trillion dollar addition to the deficit has brought frustrations to a climax. As one moderate Republican asked incredulously: “How did it get so much fucking worse?”
It’s “very complicated stuff”, Trump acknowledged, then got on a plane to Florida, leaving the drone of roll-call votes behind him.
“It’s a shitshow,” said Georgia Congresswoman and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Whether or not the ceremonial signing will occur on the evening of the Fourth of July, as Trump has demanded, remains a matter of speculation, but despite the rhetoric of suspense there is no doubt that the bill will eventually wend its way to the Oval Office, where it will at long last be graced by the touch of Trump’s omnipotent Sharpie.
So much for the views of the American people. Harry Enten, CNN’s data guru, described the public opinion ratings gathered by Pew, Quinnipiac, and Fox as “terrible, terrible, terrible”. “The American public, at this particular point, hates, hates, HATES the Big Beautiful Bill,” he said. No matter, so long as the President can deliver $10 billion more for his ready-for-primetime immigration raids.
“It’s bad legislation,” concluded Arizona Senator Mark Kelly. “This is a political gift for Democrats.” Everyone on both sides of the aisle knows Kelly is right — that is, everyone but the fanatics blinded by their loyalty to the king — but everyone also knows that for the time being, Trump’s agenda will in some redacted and compromised form prevail, the dollar will sink to new lows, and the rich will prosper like pigs at the trough.Which is all according to MAGA plan.
But politics are not foolproof. Trump’s opus may backfire, as the Democrats now have an arsenal of images and rhetoric, and are already planning to inform every American that Republicans cut school lunches and Medicaid and sent their hairdresser and housekeeper to a dungeon in the Sudan.
As if to prove the point, just as I was finishing this piece, I received a text from none other than Nancy Pelosi: “Democrats will respond to Republicans’ attack on the most vulnerable Americans,” it began. “I’m calling on a historic 5,000 donations in the next 24 hours to have a HUGE fundraising day for Democrats…”
Will the Republicans finally self-destruct into the long-anticipated splintering, as Elon Musk joins the Freedom Caucus to forge a new, post-Trump juggernaut? Will the Democrats attract the neo-liberal leftovers of the GOP, benefit from a backlash to the behemoth bill, take the House, and impeach what will be a weakened and aged post-2026 lame-duck President? Have the last twenty years of American populism finally hit a tipping point? As lawmakers rush to return to their latest nightmare, as the only certainty that awaits American politics is heavy weather.
