If you are among the shrinking number of Americans who rely on the major broadcast networks for news, it would be easy to conclude that the GOP budget reconciliation package – the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” – is nothing but a scheme by President Trump and congressional Republicans to rob you in order to further enrich their billionaire friends. The legacy media have provided an enormous amount of airtime to Democrats who insist that plundering the American people is the primary purpose of the legislation.
It’s easy to see why the liberal messaging machine is frantically trying to sell this narrative. The Big Beautiful Bill constitutes the foundation of President Trump’s agenda, and the Democrats are desperate to kill it.
Killing this legislation will be no easy task, however, despite some consternation among the Republican ranks. The GOP holds a majority in the Senate – albeit a narrow one. Assuming every Democrat votes against it, and even if they peel off a Republican or two, the math still doesn’t work. They don’t have the votes.
Moreover, because the Republicans plan to pass the bill using the reconciliation process, the Democrats can’t deploy the filibuster. Consequently, the Democrats have reverted to demagoguery and fear mongering based on fictitious claims about the bill’s contents.
Last Friday, for example, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) stood in the well of the Senate to denounce Trump and the bill in the following florid terms:
Donald Trump’s days of pretending to be a populist are over—his budget is an all-out assault on health care, education, public safety, programs that help small business. They want to axe domestic programs that help hundreds of millions of people by nearly a quarter. It’s radical to its rotten core. The budget is proof positive that the emperor has no clothes: Donald Trump is a con man who does not care one iota about the struggles of everyday Americans. He’d rather listen to his billionaire buddies than to the American people in terms of what the country needs.
This ridiculous rant contains so much balderdash that it is difficult to know where to start debunking
Let’s focus on the “all-out assault on health care.” In reality, the GOP budget bill will continue current funding for all federal health care benefits – including Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare – but only for those who are eligible to receive them. This is what the Democrats are really unhappy about. Consequently, they are waving around a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimate that the Big Beautiful Bill will eliminate health care insurance for 16 million people. However, as the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board writes:
The reason Democrats shout about CBO’s estimates is that they want Americans on government healthcare. Medicaid is one of their vehicles to put all Americans under Bernie Sanders-style single payer. Most Republicans want Medicaid to focus on the truly needy rather than able-bodied young adults. This is what’s really at stake in the Medicaid debate. The GOP’s mistake is settling for modest changes rather than the big structural reforms that would improve Medicaid coverage and make it affordable for the long run. Republicans will get hammered no matter what they do.
In other words, the health “insurance” the GOP budget bill would cut is primarily Medicaid coverage. The bill would make two main changes to Medicaid: add a 20-hour per week work requirement and remove all non-citizens from the program.
The Democrats asked the CBO to estimate the change in the number of uninsured people pursuant to policy changes associated with the Big Beautiful Bill. Its response reads as follows: “CBO estimates that the combined effects of those policies – two under current law and the others under H.R. 1 – would increase the number of people without health insurance by 16.0 million in 2034.”
The current number of uninsured Americans, according to the most recent CDC estimates, is 26.2 million. The Democrats and the “non-partisan” CBO expect us to believe the Big Beautiful Bill will drive that figure up to pre-Obamacare levels. This seems suspiciously convenient for the Democrat Party.
The CBO estimate also fails to account for a distinct possibility: faced with the prospect of losing taxpayer-funded insurance, able-bodied, working-age adults may finally be motivated to find gainful employment and earn health insurance for themselves. And illegal aliens, seeing the writing on the wall, may choose to take President Trump’s invitation and return to their home countries once the gravy train dries up.
Moreover, it is somewhat misleading to call Medicaid “insurance” in the first place. According to the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute of Health Economics, Medicaid’s “average pay is the lowest of any insurer, including Medicare.” Most primary care physicians can’t afford to accept new Medicaid patients. Many of these folks must get their primary care in the ER. That’s why the wait is so long when you are dealing with a genuine emergency.
This is one of the reasons new polling data indicates that the Medicaid work requirements in the Big Beautiful Bill enjoy strong public support, as does the provision ending Medicaid for illegal aliens.
As to Senator Schumer’s hysterical claims about education and public safety, Trump and Republicans control the high ground on both of those issues as well.
In the final analysis, no amount of Democrat balderdash is going kill the Big Beautiful Bill. A new Quinnipiac poll shows the approval rating of the Democratic Party among registered voters has fallen to a catastrophic 21 percent. Voters don’t take them seriously. Nor should they.
David Catron is a Senior Editor at the American Spectator. His writing has also appeared in PJ Media, the American Thinker, the Providence Journal, the Catholic Exchange and a variety of other publications.
When Obama came on the scene, I used to tell friends, “Don’t look at the shiny object in hand in front of him, look to see what’s in the hand behind his back. Snake Oil salesman.” the Dem party has adhered to Obama and Alinsky’s tactics: “Lie often and convincingly enough and the listener will believe the lie.” And…”accuse your opponent of that which you are guilty of”…Democrats…The Party of Snake Oil Salesmen.
If the Dumbacraps hate the bill then it needs to be passed. They are always wrong and have been for a long time. It must take money out of their pockets.
As usual, the Demos are employing negative rhetoric on this bill through MSM since it is threatening their domain of dominance. The Demos are on a downhill slide and continue to use all tactics to stop the flow against them. If the people continue in their slumber, the Demos might again win and that would be the end of our nation.
I really wish he and Pelosi and so many other democrats would just shut up and stop lying. I just cancelled my AARP membership (even though it ran thru 2028-kept because I like the magazines) because I was so SICK of them NOT calling out the Dem lies over social security. It is unconscionable that they let the dems lies cause a few million seniors to have sleepless nights over fear of losing their SS. Absolutely unforgiveable!!
chuckles schumer the lead clown of the democrat senator’s. he’s a lying joke.
Leftist ideology and the Leftist agenda are, and have always been, based on lies, misinformation, and deception. The Democrats criticize, lie about, and call their opponents/enemies all sorts of names, but they never offer any alternatives that would be helpful to anyone but themselves. They never want to really debate the issues because they know they have nothing to offer, and having a debate would expose them as the liars and frauds that they are. If it weren’t for the media whores who work 24/7/365 lying and covering up for the Democrats, the Democrat Party would have ceased to exist long ago because they would be seen by all for what they really are: anti-freedom, anti-American, dictator wannabes. Regardless of when or where, the political Left throughout history has always had but a single goal: Power and control, at any price, at any cost, by whatever means necessary.
Any depiction of a Democrat speaking on any topic should be accompanied by the illustration or video of their pants on FIRE!
Yup! They’re desperate because when this bill passes, and it’s going to, they will be exposed for the liars and gas-lighters that they are! They’ll be dreaming of the good-old-days when their approval rate was 21%!
Chuck Shumar is find one to talk, he has never work in private sector, out of college he enter Congress! Has no idea as to what work is!
There are LIES, and there are DAMN LIES. And the MEGA CORRUPT DAMNOCRAPS own,them and are masters at telling them.
BELIEVE NOTHING THAT SPEWS OUT OF THEIR DIRTY, DESPICABLE, LYING PIE HOLES.
DAMNOCRAPS have ALWAYS BEEN and ALWAYS WILL BE HABITUAL, CORRUPT, DECEIVING LIARS.
That party is rotten and corrupted to the core, voter either can’t see it or refuses to see it but votes them in every time, beyond hopeless, pathetic.
Scummer and crew LIE about everything! too bad there are so many media outlets who simply PARROT socialist talking points rather than REPORTING facts!
I’ve found that both California and New York vote in the best liars and least intellectual people they can find. Followed by several communist states.
We have to stick with Mr. Trump and his if we want America to be MAGA. If you wish to destroy the constitution, creatre a rich and poor society, give up our freedoms then go to the left. The democrats embraced the woke technology which is of course anti-american and hs been destroying everything even the democratic party itself. It is like science fiction which unbelievably became a reality. It is subtle powerful demonizing human emotions
The whole government insurance program is crazy and riddled with fraud. It causes rates to increase, hospital bills to be exorbitant, and denial of legitimate claims. Scrap the whole thing for something sane.
If the Democrats are against the Big Bill than it must be even better than I thought it was! The Left is never on the right side of any issue as they have painstakingly proven over and over again!
Don’t count your chickens before they are hatched! Today there is way too many RINO’s in the ranks laying in the weeds just waiting to upset the cart, I fear. Keep a close watch on the usual suspects.
Screw Schumer and the rest of the DEMORATS! They are worthless and weak, and do nothing to help this country. For those of us with common sense, stop wasting our time with your nonsensical rhetoric BS. Either do your job for this country or get the hell out of the way. They will all be exposed soon, Thank Goodness! I grow tired of it all!
This bill should not be passed as it is if it raises the Federal Debt another few $Trillion. And the little bit that I know, the bill is plus 1000 pages and sneaks in several bills that need to be removed and not shoved thru by Trump.
Simply put, the “BBB” in its current state will massively increase the nations debt at a time when our financial situation has left us with few foreign buyers of that debt. What will we have to do? Print money and buy our own debt. Sweet deal that the citizens might want to get in on……..oh wait, that would be called “counterfeiting”.