There Ain’t Nothing Beautiful About the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’

“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing
would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrary wise,
what is, it wouldn’t be. And what it wouldn’t be, it would. You see?”
― Alice in Lewis Carol’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

I have been imagining Lewis Carol’s nonsensical upside-down world of Wonderland, where right is wrong and good is bad, where characters shrink, grow, and disappear quicker than a wink of an eye, where the Mad Hatter sings “a happy unbirthday to you,” and the Cheshire Cat correctly reminds us that “We’re all mad here.”

This strange world has resounded in the political discourse of the entire Trumpian era as the administration and the Republican Party lie, ghost, and gas light its followers into believing their so-called “populist” agenda.

Looking into the Republican Party’s so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill,” I seriously wonder what supporters find so “beautiful” about the bill. Frankly, I cannot see anything even hinting at beauty in any of its over 900 blood-stained pages.

As the plague of gun violence continues across the United States and as the tragic murders of two brave firefighters and serious injuries to a third by a sniper in Idaho hit the airwaves on Sunday, the Senate was undertaking the process of passing the Republican and Trump sponsored “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which if passed would have loosened gun regulations on silencers and short-barreled rifles and would have eliminate a $200 tax on these items as well as on shotguns.

Fortunately, for those of us who care about gun safety, the Senate Parliamentarian ruled that the House-passed bill, which removed silencers and short barreled firearms from the National Firearms Act of 1934, must be taken out of the bill as it violates the so-called “Byrd Rule.”

Named after former Senator Robert Byrd, the rule limits items that can be included in budget reconciliation legislation. It blocks “extraneous matters” from being inserted into reconciliation bills, which are provisions that do not clearly affect the budget. Congress adopted the rule in 1985 and amended it in 1990.

Congress passed the National Firearms Act to initiate gun registration, background checks, and fees for these weapons since the rate of danger and use in crimes of these weapons was of high magnitude.

This version of the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” the Republicans recently passed in the House by a single vote, which now is being debated in the Senate, cuts essential services like the SNAP program (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), formerly called “Food Stamps” for people in need of food assistance. Approximately 1 in 8 Americans receive nutrition assistance through SNAP, and most of them are children.

Though the president and most congressional Republicans promised ad nauseam not to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid in the current budget, surprise of all surprises, the House Republicans cut $600 billion to Medicaid and to the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). The bill makes significant reductions to Medicaid by imposing work requirements, mostly unreasonable and unrealistic, on many of those receiving benefits.

They also reduced the availability of government sponsored loans to middle- and working-class college students thereby pushing deserving people out of earning a degree.

The Republican bill also will raise household electricity costs by cutting federal investments in wind, solar, and energy batteries and will increase the possibility of failures to the many outdated older energy grids. At the same time, the fossil fuels industry will continue to receive billions in subsidies. The bill also includes a reckless and dangerous environmentally polluting rollback of green energy tax breaks from the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act.

The Republicans are making these cuts as the Earth undergoes increasingly higher temperatures, more severe and longer duration storms, rising ocean temperatures and tides, increases in the extinction of animal species, climate-related human mass migrations, and an ever bleaker prospect for all human life.

It also cuts “Meals on Wheels,” a vital lifeline program for seniors and people with disabilities.

While taking from the poorest and most needy, the bill provides a multi trillion-dollar tax breaks package with the majority going to the richest among us. The bill makes permanent the $4.5 trillion in enormous tax breaks for the rich, which was passed in Trump’s first regime. If passed, the bill will initiate the largest transfer of wealth to the top percentile in the history of the United States.

The massive budget package adds $350 billion in new spending, with approximately $150 billion set aside for the Pentagon, which includes funding Trump’s new “ Golden Dome” defense shield. The remainder goes to Trump’s draconian and often illegal mass deportation and border security agenda.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that if this bill is passed by the Senate in its current version, that approximately 12 million fewer people would have access to health care coverage, and 3 million less people a month would have SNAP benefits. In addition, it will increase federal deficits by $3.8 trillion over the decade adding to the already out-of-bounds nation’s $36 trillion debt.

So, Donald Trump and his Republican congressional sycophants who branded themselves as conservative “populists” are most certainly extremely popular among the super-rich, but what about all the middle-, working-class, and poor people who voted for them expecting the promise of a better economic future: of higher wages in better US-based jobs; of better and more affordable healthcare, groceries, and energy costs? What about them?

So, the “One Big Beautiful Bill” is basically doublespeak in the Alice in Wonderland style. While the bill is certainly “Big,” its beauty is only in the eye of the richest beholders.