BOSTON: US President Donald Trump struck a chord recently when he urged congressional Republicans to consider raising taxes on the rich as part of his signature “big, beautiful bill.” Of course, the version of the bill that just squeaked past the Senate in a 51-50 vote, with Vice President J.D. Vance providing the tiebreaker, does no such thing. Still, Trump’s comments echoed the widely held belief among non-wealthy Americans that the rich pay too little in taxes and are not contributing their fair share.

That belief is rooted in the “ability to pay” principle that helped shape the federal income tax system when it was introduced in 1913. The idea is simple: those with greater financial resources should contribute more. In line with this view, Trump proposed reinstating the top personal income-tax rate to its Obama-era level of 39.6%.

But despite Trump’s knack for tapping into the concerns of his electoral base, Republican lawmakers were quick to shut down the proposal. Since the 1980s Reagan revolution, cutting taxes – or at least refusing to raise them – has been a core tenet of GOP policy.

Congressional Republicans, many of whom have signed anti-tax activist Grover Norquist’s “no new taxes” pledge, remain determined to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, no matter the consequences.

Trump himself may have campaigned as a populist, but the policies enacted under unified Republican control of the White House and Congress have been unmistakably plutocratic. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, currently making its way through Congress, is packed with provisions that take from the poor and benefit those at the top of the income ladder.

At the heart of the bill is the retention of key elements from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, including the permanent expansion of the deduction for “pass-through” business income taxed at the individual level. Roughly 70% of pass-through income goes to the top 1% of earners.

At the same time, the bill includes cuts to health-care and food-assistance programs – measures that would disproportionately harm low- and middle-income Americans. Most notably, Republicans are attempting to slash Medicaid, the public insurance program for lower-income individuals, and let the Affordable Care Act’s enhanced subsidies for private insurance expire, returning them to pre-pandemic levels.

Taken together, these cuts would increase the number of Americans without health insurance by 17 million, reversing nearly three-quarters of the coverage gains achieved under the ACA since its 2014 rollout.

And because Medicaid and ACA marketplace subsidies extend well into the middle class, the impact would be felt across a large swath of the population.

To be sure, the Big Beautiful Bill also throws some breadcrumbs to the GOP’s populist base, such as Trump’s campaign-trail promise to eliminate taxes on tips. By combining small tax breaks for working-class Americans with much larger tax cuts for high earners, the bill follows the playbook of George W. Bush’s tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. Back then, sweeping tax breaks for the rich, including cuts to income and estate taxes, were paired with modest rebate checks of $300-600 for middle-income taxpayers to help secure public support.

This time, however, the strategy isn’t working. The difference lies in what the public can see – and what it can’t. Under Bush, rebate checks were sent out immediately and were widely noticed, while the most generous benefits to the wealthy were delayed, since they could afford to wait. By contrast, Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill offers less visible perks to average Americans. Unlike the Bush-era rebates, Trump’s no-taxes-on-tips proposal benefits only a narrow segment of the workforce.

Meanwhile, the bill’s plutocratic tilt is highly visible. The gaggle of billionaires surrounding Trump – both at his inauguration and in his cabinet – has made it abundantly clear who is shaping the administration’s policy agenda. The political downside of Trump’s push for a single, sweeping tax-and-spending bill is that it makes the trade-off hard to miss: most Americans may not follow the fine print of legislation, but they can see when essential programs are being slashed to finance lavish tax cuts for the rich.

Another problem with trying to pass the entire Republican agenda through a single bill is the party’s slim majority in the Senate. To bypass the 60-vote threshold typically required to overcome a filibuster, Republicans must rely on the reconciliation process, which allows budget-related legislation to be approved with just 51 votes.

But reconciliation comes with strict limitations, and the Senate parliamentarian has already struck down several provisions that violate the so-called Byrd Rule.

Named after the late West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, the rule bars “extraneous” provisions that increase the deficit beyond the ten-year reconciliation window or fall outside the jurisdiction of the relevant committee. Its purpose is to prevent the reconciliation process from being used to push through sweeping policy changes unrelated to spending or revenue.

As a result, Republicans will need to find alternative paths – requiring 60 votes in the Senate – to pursue a wide range of policy goals they attempted to jam into the tax-and-spending package. These include banning ACA subsidies for insurance plans that cover abortion, selling off the United States Postal Service’s new electric vehicles, changing the federal employee retirement contribution system, easing offshore oil and gas regulations, selling public lands, and capping funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

With control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, Republicans have a rare opportunity to advance their policy agenda. But this agenda remains deeply unpopular, as it clearly prioritizes the rich over the lower- and middle-income Americans who rely on the healthcare and food-assistance programs Republicans are so eager to cut. Unlike the Bush administration, today’s GOP has made little effort to conceal its intentions or buy off public support. Whether it will pay a political price for that in the 2026 midterm elections remains to be seen.

Andrea Louise Campbell is Professor of Political Science at MIT and the author of ‘Taxation and Resentment: Race, Party, and Class in American Tax Attitudes’ (Princeton University Press, 2025).

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2025.