Trump now has his Big Beautiful Bill. Who talks that way? The only people that come to mind are people like carnival barkers and con men trying to sell us snake oil. Is this what the Republican Party has become? A bunch of Snake Oil Salesmen? One thing I am sure of is that Snake Oil Salesmen were more interested in making a sale and turning a profit than they were in selling you something that would actually help you.  That is how I look at the Republican Party and Trump's Big Beautiful Bill.

I looked at what is being said about the bill, and the first thing that jumped out at me is the 5 trillion tax cuts. Spending cuts are intended to mitigate some of the debt these tax cuts will cause, but the cuts will still add approximately $3.6 trillion to the National debt, which is already at $36 trillion. Who benefits from these cuts? A whole lot of rich people will. There is a provision where overtime will not be taxed, and neither will tips, but those are temporary cuts that will end in 2028. I guess my point is, when there is a Democrat in the White House, the Republicans like to project themselves as fiscally conservative and the Democrats as spend crazy. When you have a Republican in the White House, all fiscal conservatism goes out the window. I have made this statement before; it was the tax cut that has gotten us into this mess, and if you look at what the Republicans have run on since Reagan is the tax cut. You will also notice most of the deficit has been accrued since then, too. They have tried to convince us that tax cuts pay for themselves, but the deficit continues to grow. They have called the rich job creators, but the deficit grows.  The Republicans seem to talk mostly about the deficit when the Democrats hold the White House, and then have amnesia about the deficit when the Republicans are in power, but no matter what, the deficit grows.

Another thing that is being repealed is the $200 tax on gun silencers that has been in place since 1937. Who benefits from the tax on silencers going away?  I would think silencers on guns would make the police’s job harder, not easier. Would having a silencer help me with home protection? I don’t see how. Do you know one group that would benefit from silencers on guns? That would be the criminals. Noise is a protector, just ask someone with a barking dog. Stealth is something that makes us less safe; that is the purpose of stealth. Silencers on guns just add to the stealth of the criminals. So, I ask again, who benefits from silencers for guns? It is the criminals who benefit. Why does that not surprise me?

One of the focuses of the bill is a reduction of $800 billion in Medicaid savings. Most of the industrialized world has Universal Healthcare, and we are still working at ways to deny people healthcare. There has always been that assumption by the supporters of the Republicans' attack on Medicaid that the people are just too lazy to work and are just mooching off the government. The truth is that two-thirds of the adults between the ages of 19 – 64 enrolled in Medicaid already work. Of the other third, most would not be subject to a work requirement based on having disabilities, caring for family members, or attending school.  In 2020, the Government Accountability Office, also known as the GAO, at the request of Bernie Sanders, studied who was using federal assistance programs and where they worked. They found that millions of full-time workers were stuck relying on federal medical and food programs to survive.

SNAP, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, is another program that is facing huge cuts, right along with Medicaid. According to the GAO, 70 percent of SNAP and Medicaid users in the study were full-time workers, with 90 percent of them working in the private sector. A significant number of them worked in the restaurants and department of grocery stores. The one company that is in the top four will surprise no one. That company, of course, is Walmart. Walmart, of course, is not alone. Other top offenders include McDonald's, Dollar Tree, Amazon, Burger King, and FedEx. The United Nations took aim at Walmart and others for their low wages. Olivier De Shutter of the U.N. wrote in an email to the retail giant Walmart and the U.S. government, stating he was “extremely disturbed that workers in some of the most profitable companies – in one of the richest countries on earth – are struggling to afford to eat or pay their rent”.  Of course, you can tell he was basically ignored. In Trump's Big Beautiful Bill, does any of that get addressed?

What I see in Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill is just another extension that has been happening for over forty years by the Republican party, with Trump's Big Beautiful Bill being one of the biggest abusers of the poor. The Billionaires are getting richer on the backs of working Americans, and the Republican party is just fine with that. Just think, just a couple of years ago, the Republicans were trying to sell themselves and the working man's party.