Next year, the average American family will keep $2,100 more of what they earn, courtesy of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that Congress just passed. The alternative, endorsed without hesitation by every Democrat, was a $4 trillion tax increase.
Having lost that vote, the Democrats are already trying to distort the legislation as dangerous or extreme, hoping voters won’t remember which side wanted to massively raise their taxes just as they’re starting to recover from the Biden economy.
But it’s unlikely people will fall for the Democratic Party’s misleading narrative, especially if Republicans who are returning to their districts effectively explain the bill’s remarkable successes.
The bill makes permanent the tax relief people have relied on since 2017, restores accountability in welfare programs, secures the border, and pulls back billions in Biden-era green energy handouts that have done more to enrich left-wing activists than reduce emissions.
Republicans delivered on the policies people elected them to implement. During the recess, they must share this incredible story with the people, touting all the benefits of the “big, beautiful bill” and the true dangers that would emerge if the Democrats had gotten their way.
For starters, had Congress failed to act, families would have seen tax bills jump sharply beginning next year. Small businesses would have lost access to the 20% deduction that has helped keep them afloat in a high-cost, high-regulation economy. Provisions that encouraged domestic investment and job creation would have been allowed to lapse just as manufacturers and entrepreneurs are trying to regain momentum. The bill keeps those provisions in place and makes the Trump-Pence tax cuts permanent for millions.
It also made a credible attempt at discipline in federal spending, putting guardrails on a federal budget that hasn’t seen one in years and reducing projected spending by more than $1 trillion over the next decade. It restores work requirements for able-bodied adults in welfare programs and restructures eligibility rules that had become more about politics than need. And it finally ends the practice of rewarding states that hand out Medicaid benefits to illegal immigrants by cutting their federal reimbursements accordingly.
The bill also delivers on public safety and national security. It invests $46.5 billion in wall construction, authorizes 3,000 new Border Patrol agents, and offers $10,000 bonuses for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection officers who are somehow still showing up to do the job that blue states keep undercutting.
On defense, the bill makes overdue investments in nuclear modernization and naval shipbuilding, reversing years of deferred maintenance and prioritizing a renewed focus on strategic deterrence in a world that has become far more dangerous than Washington is often willing to admit.
Energy policy gets a similar correction. The bill eliminates green energy subsidies, electric vehicle tax credits, and other politically favored carve-outs embedded in the Inflation Reduction Act. It mandates quarterly federal leases for oil, gas, and coal production and authorizes new energy development lease sales in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. These are structural reforms that will expand supply, lower costs, and reduce reliance on imports without new mandates or bureaucracy.
And last but not least, the bill defunds Planned Parenthood. Although only for a year, it’s at least a start and a policy for which pro-lifers have been fighting for decades.
In short, the “big, beautiful bill” delivers on five major Republican promises to the people: extending tax relief, reining in spending, reviving American energy, enforcing the border, and defending life.
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Democrats, meanwhile, voted against every single one of these achievements. That message should be front and center in every town hall and district visit this August.
If Democrats want to keep mischaracterizing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, so be it. But Republicans must not let them do so unchallenged. Voters deserve to hear the truth from the people who delivered it.
Tim Chapman is a senior fellow at Advancing American Freedom.