Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ might be unloved and a mess – but it will still probably pass

President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” – which he on Thursday dubbed the “ultimate codification” of the MAGA agenda – is a paradox that shows how power works in a broken political system in which he’s the single greatest force.

As it stumbles through the Senate, the bill – which extends vast tax cuts, hikes border security funding and includes historic cuts to Medicaid – is perpetually on life support as chunks keep getting culled to fit the chamber’s budgetary rules.

The bill is the key to enshrining MAGA in American life

The president has strong-armed vast political change already, using expansive executive power in a blitz that has triggered multiple court challenges. But legislation is the way to make reforms stick. And his description of the bill as the “codification” of the MAGA project is about right.

Funding and manpower for the president’s mass deportation plans.

The measure is critical to boosting funding and manpower for the president’s mass deportation plans. It also withdraws swaths of benefits for certain categories of migrants. It includes one of Trump’s favorite campaign promises: the exemption from taxes for overtime and tips. In another nod to the president’s populist origins, the White House has argued that the bill supports Main Street over Wall Street, touting support for family farms, housing affordability and new Trump investment accounts for newborns. The administration says that the typical family with two kids would have a take-home pay raise of between $7,600 and $10,900 and claims the bill would save or create roughly 7 million jobs. But as is the case with most big budget bills, all this relies on creative mathematics, rosy assumptions of growth and low inflation. And like Trump’s tax bill in his first term, this measure is a feint that reveals the limits of his populism since it rewards higher earners handsomely. And the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the House version of the bill would boost the deficit by $2.4 trillion. Michigan Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Thursday that Trump was trying to disguise a transfer of wealth to the rich with populist flourishes. “He’s thrown in some little pieces here and there that will be, I think, really important but, man, he is preferencing the very wealthy in this bill, and he’s trying to hide it by becoming the middle-class hero. We need to call him out on that.”

Celebration and anger at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue

The mood of celebration at the White House contrasted with the growing acrimony on Capitol Hill as Republicans clashed with Republicans. Democrats are powerless bystanders in the fight. But they are watching and waiting to blast the GOP for throttling Medicaid and making the rich richer in next year’s midterm elections. Trump’s demand for a “big, beautiful bill” signing by America’s birthday is now in peril. The timeline, which was already ambitious, took a hit with the latest decision by the Senate’s top rules official that a multibillion-dollar slice of the measure was not allowed under reconciliation – the intricate process used to pass a bill with a simple majority, in this case with only GOP support. More bad news for GOP Majority leader John Thune: Thursday’s ruling concerned one of the most politically explosive aspects of the bill – a change to taxes that states can impose to pay for Medicaid coverage. This comes against the backdrop of the bill’s Medicaid spending cuts of hundreds of billions over a decade. Several prominent GOP senators, including Josh Hawley of Missouri and Susan Collins of Maine, who faces a tough reelection bid next year, have warned they won’t vote for the bill if it contains these tax maneuvers. They say the measure could be devastating to rural hospitals, especially in many red states.