My disillusionment with politics began in 2005. I was interning at the White House, fresh off George W. Bush’s reelection, which also saw the GOP claim the Senate and House.
Optimism was in the air, at least for conservatives, but it didn’t last.
The Iraq War soon took a very dark turn, and Hurricane Katrina reminded everyone that government is often better at creating problems than solving them. The final straw was GOP Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) declaring “victory” in the war on budget fat, even as the government ran a $331 billion deficit and the national debt approached $8 trillion.
“After 11 years of Republican majority, we’ve pared it down pretty good,” DeLay said when asked if the government was running efficiently.
For all their talk of fiscal discipline and limited government, it was clear Republicans in D.C. weren’t particularly interested in practicing what they preached. Behind the rhetoric, they signed off on massive spending bills, expanded entitlements, and grew government.
Fast forward 20 years, and not much has changed. The Republicans’ latest flagship legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, continues to grow the federal debt, which has quadrupled to $36 trillion. Fiscal hawks, including Elon Musk and Sen. Rand Paul, blasted the act.
“Even using the math, even using the formulas that the supporters of the bill like, the deficit will grow by $270 billion next year,” Paul said. “That doesn’t sound at all conservative to me, and that’s why I’m a no.”
Paul’s not wrong. The bill, which the House passed last week and President Donald Trump signed on July 4, has serious flaws. Still, I’ve grown less hostile to the legislation in recent weeks.
One reason I’m warming to it? I’ve been reading what the loudest critics on the Left are saying.
“The legislation eviscerates Medicaid, stripping it of $1 trillion in financing and shrinking it by more than 10 million enrollees,” Annie Lowrey writes at the Atlantic. “The proposal would require 19 million childless adults to demonstrate that they were working or volunteering in order to qualify.”
Lowrey might see requiring able-bodied adults without children to work to receive Medicaid as an injustice. Most Americans, myself included, do not. Indeed, before the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid was limited primarily to low-income children, pregnant women, parents with dependent children, and the elderly or disabled.
The ACA transformed Medicaid from a safety-net program for the most vulnerable into an income-support system for millions of able-bodied, childless adults, many of whom do not work. That shift helps explain why Medicaid, which added 20 million such adults to its rolls between 2013 and 2022, is the fastest-growing federal program and in dire need of reform.
Work requirements are not a perfect solution to surging Medicaid costs, but they are an improvement from the status quo. The legislation also includes a roughly 20-percent cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Critics argue these cuts will “impose immense harm on tens of millions of Americans,” but they ignore how these programs can disincentivize work, the best poverty-alleviation tool there is, and create benefit cliffs that often trap people in poverty. These unseen costs are one reason America’s “war on poverty” has failed to make a dent in poverty rates, despite more than $20 trillion in spending.
The bill’s final version also preserves the 2017 tax cuts, which helped boost investment and economic growth by lowering corporate rates and providing relief to middle-income households.
Critics on the Left lament that Washington is cutting welfare while “giving” money to the wealthy, but this is flawed logic: allowing people to keep more of their income isn’t a giveaway.
Republicans like Sen. Rand Paul and Rep. Thomas Massie are right to say deeper spending reductions should offset the tax cuts. They are also right to denounce the increase in SALT deductions, from $10,000 to $40,000, which rewards the fiscal mismanagement of high-tax states and shifts the federal tax burden onto residents of more responsible states like Florida and Texas. And when folks finally get a close look under the hood of the 1,000-page bill, Americans of all stripes will likely be nauseated by the amount of pork tucked inside.
That said, extending tax relief and rolling back welfare programs that discourage work and trap Americans in poverty are improvements not to be brushed aside.
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To be clear, the GOP’s bill is not “beautiful.” Much more must be done to avoid fiscal oblivion. U.S. taxpayers spend more than $1 trillion annually on interest payments to service the national debt. Major entitlement reform is long overdue. In the end, the American voters will decide whether the country follows the path of Venezuela or Argentina. I hope the One Big Beautiful Bill is at least a small step toward the latter. But if I’ve learned anything since 2005, it’s this: don’t put too much faith in politicians.
Jon Miltimore is the senior editor at the American Institute for Economic Research. Follow him on Substack.