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President Donald Trump has insisted that Republicans get his so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” to his desk by the Fourth of July. With only days left before the self-imposed deadline, the White House is now scrambling to do damage control around the deeply unpopular legislation produced by Congress.
A series of recent polls shows that the bill — which will force millions off of Medicaid, restrict access to food assistance programs, and cost the poorest Americans billions over the next 10 — is underwater with the public. A Washington Post survey recently produced a net favorability rating of -19. Fox News clocked in at -21, a Quinnipiac poll produced a -26 rating, and KFF — formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation — found net favorability to be at -29 points.
In the face of this widespread public disapproval and the GOP’s inter-party squabbling over the bill, the White House is pushing “fact checks” insisting that the legislation would not hurt low-income families or the economy at large, and that it is not just a dressed-up tax break for billionaires at the expense of everyone and everything else.
In a “fact check” sheet issued Sunday night by the White House Communication Office, the administration claimed that the legislation would “put more than $10,000 a year back in the pockets of typical hardworking families,” that the “OBBB protects and strengthens Medicaid for those who rely on it,” and that the suggestion that people will “literally die” if denied access to health care is “one of the most egregious deranged attacks from the Left peddling fear over the facts.”
The document repeatedly emphasized that American households would be taking home an extra $10,000 in income a year. Huge, right? Unfortunately — but not unexpectedly — the figure is a gross misrepresentation. The figure, which was circulated in several communications released by the White House and touted by Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt during a briefing earlier this month, is the high end of a projection produced by the Council of Economic Advisers – an internal White House agency.
According to a Politifact review, the Council’s range of a $7,600-$10,900 increase in annual take-home pay for a family of four was based on uniquely optimistic projections about how much total economic stimulus the “Big Beautiful Bill” would produce. Where other independent agencies have predicted a maximum GDP increase of around 0.5-2 percent over the next 10 years, the counsel assumed an almost five percent increase over five years and a weighted 2.9-3.5 percent increase over 10 years. The $10,000 figure isn’t a tangible change in income based on rewrites to the tax code, but rather a fantastical number carved out of an imaginary GDP boom.
According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Trump’s enshrinement of his 2017 tax cuts, along with the exclusionary reforms being made to programs like Medicaid and SNAP, will cost the lowest-earning tenth of American households about $1,600 a year.
“Federal and state in-kind benefits would decrease household resources by $1.0 trillion,” the CBO wrote. “Primarily because federal spending on benefits provided through Medicaid and SNAP would be lower. Changes to program benefits that states made in response to changes in federal policy would also reduce household resources.”
Meanwhile, the richest Americans would see “resources would increase, on average, over the projection period by about $12,000,” or even more given to the favorable pro-corporate policies packed into the bill.
During Monday’s press briefing, Leavitt insisted that “this bill strengthens Medicaid,” and that rural hospitals were exaggerating the potential fallout of spending cuts to the program. According to the CBO, 11 million Americans could be squeezed out of their health care coverage over changes to Medicaid, bureaucratic red tape, more stringent work requirements, and changes to public insurance marketplaces.
According to KFF, “an estimated 1.5 million fewer people could be covered by Medicaid in rural areas under the reconciliation bill in 2034,” and the resulting drop in Medicaid enrollment could force rural hospitals and clinics — often the only nodes connecting rural Americans to the health care system — to close down.
The bill “protects” Medicaid only in the sense that the program will continue to exist, but it in no way protects the Americans who rely on it for their health. Millions of them will be forced to find care elsewhere if Republicans pass the “Big Beautiful Bill.”
