What's in the House-passed ‘Big Beautiful Bill’
Polygraph | Newsletter n°304 | 22 May 2025
IN THIS NEWSLETTER: The winners and losers of Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ just passed by the House.
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Situation
Very early this morning, House Republicans passed Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” (yes, that’s the actual name) by a 215–214 margin. Two Republicans voted against it, including Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who cited its cost. He called the White House’s claim that the bill is deficit-neutral “a joke” and said it would actually add trillions to the deficit.
Massie’s right. The Big Beautiful Bill’s roughly $1 trillion in spending cuts doesn’t come anywhere close to offsetting the $3.8 trillion loss in government revenue from its tax breaks.
Winners and losers
Both amounts above — and all the ones in the table below — reflect changes to expected federal spending and revenue over the next 10 years. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analyzed the House-passed bill and estimated how much each provision would affect that baseline.
The order of the table is based on this projected effect. The parts of the bill that CBO estimates will result in the largest deficit relative to the baseline — either by slashing revenue (via tax cuts) or increasing spending — are at the top. At the bottom, you’ll find the parts with the largest spending cuts. The table is categorized by Committee, each of which contributed a section to the bill. For each, I highlighted one or two consequences I found especially noteworthy. I may have missed some, and it’s not an exhaustive list, but there’s enough there to understand why the GOP passed the bill in the middle of the night.
^Alt text for screen readers: House GOP’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’: tax breaks for the rich, aid cuts for the poor, bigger deficit. Ways & Means, 3% income boost for the wealthy, adds $3.8T to the deficit, $3.8T; Armed Services, $25B for a fantasy missile shield built by Musk's SpaceX, $144B; Homeland Security, $50B for a border wall, $67.1B; Judiciary, Bonus pay for ICE agents, additional ICE prisons & personnel, $6.9B; Financial Services, 60% cut to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, –$5.2B; Natural Resources, Expand coal mining and onshore/offshore oil drilling, –$20.2B; Transportation & Infrastructure, Eliminates $4B for green infrastructure projects, –$36.6B; Oversight & Gov't Reform, 5% pay cut for new federal workers who keep union protections, –$51B; Agriculture, 3.5M people lose SNAP benefits, $238.2B; Education & Workforce, 1.4M Pell Grant recipients lose funding, $–349.1B; Energy & Commerce, 8.6M people lose Medicaid coverage, $–987.8B. Data: H.R. 1 - One Big Beautiful Bill Act, CBO. Deficit effect is for 2025–34.
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