ANGELO LYNN

Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill” is big, but not so beautiful. Even some Republicans, who rushed it through the House by a single vote, are regretting they voted for it. Rep. Majorie Taylor Green, R-Georgia, one of the staunchest supporters of Trump and his MAGA policies, said she regrets casting her vote for the bill because she was unaware it would block states from regulating artificial intelligence for a decade.

According to a report in the New York Times, Taylor posted on social media: “Full transparency, I did not know about this section,” calling it a violation of states’ rights and adding that she “would have voted NO if I had known this was in there.”

The Times also reported that Rep. Mike Flood of Nebraska “admitted during a town hall meeting in his district that he did not know that the bill would limit judges’ power to hold people in contempt for violating court orders. He would not have voted for the measure, he said, if he had realized.”

The 1,037-page bill is so full of non-related legislation that it appears few members have read the entire bill and fewer understood its full ramifications. In general, the bill extended tax cuts, boosts spending on defense and immigration, and cuts spending on President Biden’s significant climate-related initiatives.

Without a doubt, the bill does more damage than the president or House Republicans are willing to acknowledge.

The bill not only ties the nation to outdated energy policies dependent on fossil fuels, but limits America’s ability to lead in renewable energy technology and the certain growth that industry will see for the next century — not to mention setting back efforts to combat the rapid heating of the earth.

Financially, the bill costs $3.8 trillion in tax cuts and $400 billion in extra spending, while adding $2.4 trillion annually to the national debt. It’s that soaring debt that has been capturing headlines throughout the world, degrading the value of the dollar while prompting inflation, and casting doubt of the stability of America’s economy. The dollar has recently dropped 10 percent in value and analysts suggest it could fall another 9% if the bill is passed. Moody’s joined the two other global credit agencies in downgrading the nation’s credit rating. It’s the first time ever that all three major credit rating agencies have downgraded US credit below their top rating.

To try to balance the huge tax cuts (largely to the wealthiest Americas), the bill’s largest cuts are to Americans’ health care. Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act will see cuts of roughly $1 trillion and will result in 10.3 million more Americans losing health insurance. As importantly, the added burden to the national debt is enormous. The U.S. government currently has roughly $29 trillion in public debt, which would grow by $21 trillion over the next decade to $50 trillion by 2034. The interest on that debt will consume more revenue than spending on Social Security, Medicare and national defense combined.

And the cuts to health care are just a fraction of what’s at stake. Cuts to higher education, labor programs, school nutrition and agriculture programs, efforts to protect shorelines, wildlife and sensitive environmental land, and cuts to almost anything related to science and the accumulation of knowledge is under threat by Trump’s bill. Plus, the bill would cut 4 million Americans off food stamps (the SNAP program), while adding greater burdens for those in need to apply.

It is, as several pundits have said, a bill to undermine the very basis of what has made America great, or as columnist Max Boot recently wrote of Trump’s cuts to science, “we are witnessing the suicide of a superpower” by this president and his MAGA faithful.

Hopes that Elon Musk’s recent change of heart, calling the bill “a disgusting abomination,” may put some pressure on Republicans in the Senate, but thoughtful Americans would be foolish to put much hope in Musk’s comments or in Republicans paying much attention to them.

The facts are clear enough: Trump’s bill, in reality, is “the big ugly,” and would be more accurately called a Bill to Benefit Billionaires, while letting the rest of America, as France’s Queen Marie-Antoinette infamously said, “eat cake.” Readers should note the queen reportedly uttered the phrase during the French Revolution, which soon overthrew that monarchy, partly because of its callous disregard of the working class. While Trump does his best to pretend he supports working Americans, his gilded policies hurt the poor and middle-income while adding vast wealth to those already wealthy. As more and more Americans finally realize Trump’s policies don’t match his rhetoric, maybe they will start rebelling too.

Angelo Lynn