Whither the president’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’

Senate Republicans are currently considering this domestic policy (tax) bill recently approved by the House of Representatives with just a single vote margin. This suggests that the bill will undergo much scrutiny and perhaps some significant changes before being finalized and coordinated with the House version for a final vote. Here is where it’s at so far.

The legislation would slash taxes, providing by far the biggest saving to the wealthy;a current estimate is that more than forty percent of the personal income tax reduction will go to the top one percent of incomes. This tax cut is estimated to cost the government more than $4 trillion over ten years, a staggering amount that is being offset by cuts to various other programs for less affluent taxpayers.

The bill would also steer more money to the military and immigration enforcement while cutting health care, nutrition, education and clean energy programs to cover part of the cost of tax cuts. In addition there are several other measures that President Trump campaigned on such as “no tax” on tips and overtime pay and an increase to the standard deduction for Americans 65 years or older. These are all uncertain to pass because of conservative objections.

Businesses would receive several tax cuts including valuable deductions for research and spending.

The bill would also hike taxes on universities with a tax on the investment income that their endowments earn which would rise substantially, from 1.4 per cent to as high as 21 percent.

The cap on state and local tax deductions in the House bill has been raised from $10,000. to $40,000.

In a complex array of revisions, the regulations regarding Medicaid, the insurance program primarily for the poor and disabled population has been revised to reduce the cost to the Federal government by shifting much of the costs to states.The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that pushing these costs to the states will likely cause 16 million people to lose their healthcare and endanger rural hospitals. The Senate is currently investigating other possible health care cuts in Medicare, Obamacare and several other programs.

Like President Trump himself, the House bill is unfriendly to the environment. The bill would quickly end most of the big tax credits for clean energy contained in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.Many of those incentives were expected to last a decade.Tax credits for low emissions electricity sources like wind would be available in full only to power plants in service before the end of 2028.

Although Republican members of Congress have, at President Trump’s insistence, been trying to cancel most of the environmental provisions from Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act as well, as it happens more than three quarters of the environmental projects being funded are in the districts of Republican representatives and are not easy for those lawmakers to vote against.

It’s too early to know what effect the fallout between Trump and Elon Musk might have on the final budget.Trump’s insistence on cancelling subsidies for electric vehicles (including Teslas) will hurt both Musk and the environment and may weaken Trump’s hold over Republican senators and members of Congress, allowing some of the few who are unhappy with the current bill to vote against it.But who knows?

A number of conservative Republican senators have threatened not to support the ‘“big beautiful bill” unless enough additional cuts are made so as to not increase the overall national debt but at this point there is little left that might be cut without triggering massive objections over most all of the possible sacrifices. And fewpossible cuts offer enough to get even close to a balanced budget.

Despite the pleas of many Democrats thus far, not a single Republican except for Senator Josh Hawley has said publicly that he was against enormous tax cuts for the very rich.

But this giveaway together with major cuts to programs like Medicaid for ordinary citizens, if enacted, will worsen the ever widening income gap between rich and poor.

According to Evan Osnos in his new book, “The Haves and Have Yaghts,” un 1978, “the top .01 percent of Americans owned about 7 percent of the nation’s wealth; today, according to the World Inequality Database, it owns 18 percent.”

Is this what our country needs?

Architect and landscape designer Mac Gordon lives in Lakeville.