Trump’s ridiculously named “Big Beautiful Bill” is a page out of the Right Populism 101 textbook: a massive transfer of wealth to the very richest Americans disguised by some small tax cuts for ordinary workers. A real tax break for service workers and blue collar workers would be simple—“no tax on tips” and “no tax on overtime,” paid for by repealing Trump’s 2017 tax cuts on the super wealthy and increasing their taxes.
Instead, Trump’s massive bill extends those 2017 tax cuts, which will give stunningly large gains to the billionaire class while slashing social safety net benefits that millions of poor and working people rely on. The “no tax on tips” and “no tax on overtime” are not only temporary measures with restrictions, but are there to try and fool ordinary working-class people that Trump fights for us.
The crisis of affordability since the pandemic has hit the US working class hard. Workers are paying much more out of their pockets for essentials like rent, food, childcare and transportation. Total household debt is at record levels. The percentage of people who are behind on their credit card payments is at nearly the same as it was during 2008-9’s Great Recession—and that’s when there was sky-high unemployment. Workers are getting poorer while the billionaire class is getting much, much richer—a trend that will be intensified by the “Big Beautiful [read: Billionaire] Bill.”
Democrats in Congress have all opposed the bill, but they won’t be able to stop it from passing in the Senate. During Biden’s administration, his would-be legacy legislation “Build Back Better”, as it was originally proposed, would have included measures like extending the child tax credit, free community college, 12 weeks of paid parental leave, and lowering the age of eligibility for Medicare to 60.
While “Build Back Better” fell well short of a comprehensive program of pro-worker measures paid for by taxing the rich, it would have represented a significant improvement in the lives of working people. But despite controlling both houses of Congress and the presidency, the Democrats refused to actually fight for the bill, and allowed the Democratic politicians who are most cravenly subservient to their corporate masters, like Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, to sink the entire thing, opening the door even wider for Trump and the right.
Pandemic checks and other benefits like the pause on student debt payments and an eviction moratorium aren’t coming back. Covid lockdowns represented an economic emergency for capitalism, so the ruling class took measures to stabilize the system. Today’s situation doesn’t require giving money to the working class—in fact, quite the opposite. “No tax on tips” and “no tax on overtime” are a little bit of eye candy for what is a monstrously harmful program that will, if passed in its current form, make big sections of working people poorer.
And it’s using a time-honored technique in the ruling class toolbag—divide and conquer. Workers who aren’t tipped or who don’t work overtime don’t have a thing to gain from this bill, but like all working-class people, they have plenty to lose into the already overstuffed pockets of the billionaire class.
Trump’s bill will force 8.6 million Americans off of their healthcare plans by cutting Medicaid and Obamacare subsidies, and it might even trigger cuts to Medicare. The bill contains serious attacks on transgender people by banning Medicaid from covering gender-affirming care and excluding that care from a list of essential care for private insurance.
Denying healthcare for trans people won’t bring down healthcare costs for anyone else—healthcare in the US is inaccessible and unaffordable because of billionaires making a profit off of our health and our lives. And yet Trump thinks those same billionaires are in need of a nice big tax cut.
While Trump talks big about lowering costs for workers, his bill makes it harder to stay on food stamps and reduces total SNAP benefits by a third, at a time when workers can barely afford to buy eggs. It also cuts funding for affordable housing programs and homeless shelters, cuts funding to public schools, and cuts federal programs to help people pay back student loans. The bill includes tax breaks for oil and gas companies, and as summer fire season approaches, it cuts funding for wildfire management.
Trump 2.0, in its short existence, has dealt extremely serious blows to federal workers and their unions, trans people, immigrants and student protesters. Now this bill threatens to make permanent a tax system that has set working-class people farther and farther back financially, plus institute a wide range of new attacks on working people and the services they depend on.
The Democrats, for their part, helped lay the groundwork for this viciously right-wing Trump regime by refusing to pass legislation that would have represented real improvement in the lives of working people. The two-party system is bent on the further immiseration of poor and working people, with only the slimmest of bones to throw to voters: throw your life away to a soul-crushing job, and you won’t have to pay federal taxes on your overtime pay.
Working-class people are incredibly diverse, but we have one crucial thing in common—the billionaire class requires our labor to make their billions. The Democratic and Republican parties more than ably represent the interests of the super wealthy and their system of capitalism. We need a political party of our own that can organize the fight for working-class people’s interests. We’ve never had a mass working-class party in the US that was fully independent of the Democrats and centered on fighting for a program that benefits working people, and that is daunting. But building a new party of and for the working class is required if we are to reverse Trump’s attacks, including this tax plan, and go on to win gains that genuinely improve the lives of all working-class people.