By Nia-Malika Henderson / Bloomberg Opinion
For President Trump, getting the “big beautiful bill” through a compliant GOP Congress was the easy part. Now comes the hard part. Trump and his Republican allies must now effectively sell the law to voters, an effort the president highlighted when he signed the bill with characteristic flair and falsehoods.
“This is a triumph of democracy on the birthday of democracy,” Trump boasted during Friday’s signing ceremony at the White House. “This is the single most popular bill ever signed.”
It is not.
The 900-page bill, passed on a party-line vote, is unpopular and potentially a political albatross for the GOP. The coming battle over messaging pits Trump’s giant megaphone and knack for branding against Democrats, who have a head start.
According to a late June Quinnipiac poll, some 55 percent of voters oppose the bill, up slightly from a previous poll. The numbers suggest that Democrats’ “Robinhood in reverse” framing of the bill has worked, a bright spot for the party as they seek to gain control of Congress. The ads practically write themselves as the law will add an estimated $3.3 trillion to the deficit over the next decade and leave upwards of 10 million people without health insurance.
Republicans themselves were among the most critical of some of the provisions and Democrats are already seizing on their words.
“Meet the DCCC’s Newest Surrogate: The Republican Senator from Missouri” stated a May press release from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in reference to Sen. Josh Hawley, who ultimately backed the bill after criticizing its cuts to Medicaid.
A headline from the Center for American Progress sums up the Democratic messaging:
“$1 Trillion in Medicaid Cuts, $1 Trillion in Tax Giveaways for the Richest 1 Percent.”
It’s a simple message, and in politics, simplicity works.
Still, the midterms are a long way off as are some of the cuts. Republicans, looking to defray some of the political cost, delayed Medicaid funding changes until 2028. But it might not matter, as health care providers could announce closures and rate hikes as early as next year. Already, a rural hospital in southwest Nebraska announced it was shutting down in the coming months because of the Medicaid cuts. State legislatures are scrambling to find ways to fill the budget gaps hospitals will face, some calling emergency sessions.
That will break through to ordinary voters and is hard to message against.
Some 20 percent of voters have no opinion of the law, according to Quinnipiac, which means they are persuadable; if they are reachable. Working-class voters, those making under $50,000, are the least likely to have heard much about the act, with 45 percent saying they either heard not too much or not much at all about the law, according to Quinnipiac.
This constituency is increasingly Republican and could be hit by some of the cuts in the social safety net. Estimates by the Yale Budget Lab suggest that the bottom 20 percent will lose more than $500 per year, while the top 20 percent will see gains of over $6,000. The bill’s gains are skewed toward the richest of the rich, with the top 1 percent netting about $30,000 a year and the top tenth of 1 percent saving over $97,000 annually.
The airwaves have already been flooded with pro-Trump ads from various outside groups touting the law’s tax cuts, particularly on tips and overtime, and the billions that will flow to Trump’s mass deportation efforts. This is part of the GOP’s piecemeal strategy, an effort that will downplay the massive cuts to the social safety net and highlight the benefits, particularly to working families.
Yet that could get complicated as tipped workers discover the law’s limitations. As a headline in the Wall Street Journal put it, “Trump Promised ‘No Tax on Tips.’ Then Came the Fine Print.” The reality is that many tipped workers earn so little that they don’t pay any federal taxes. They won’t see any savings from the new law, and they will still have to pay 7.65 percent in payroll taxes to cover Medicare and Social Security.
Polling from the Democratic-run Working Class Project surveyed 1,000 registered, self-identified working-class voters in swing states and found that Democrats would benefit from messaging around health care cuts and tax breaks for upper-income earners. This demographic voted for Trump by 7 points.
“Vulnerable House Republicans’ incredibly cruel vote to jeopardize hospitals in their districts and across America is going to cost them their jobs and the majority,” said DCCC spokesman Viet Shelton in a statement, adding that the cuts were “all to pay for massive tax breaks for their billionaire donors.”
The group launched a digital ad campaign on Monday that targets 35 districts; Democrats only need to net three seats to flip the House.
In politics, it’s often said that if you’re selling, you’re already losing. As one lawmaker once told me in the run-up to the 2010 midterms, when Democrats were trying to message the Affordable Care Act to skeptical voters, if you have to explain it, it hasn’t been done. In that cycle, Democrats wanted to campaign on the popular parts of the bill, dubbed Obamacare, as Republicans argued that the law was a massive government takeover that would wreck the health care system and the economy. Republicans won on that simple, fear-based message, delivering a shellacking to Democrats and the Obama White House.
Democrats now see 2026 as an opportunity to campaign in a similar way, reversing their fortunes with the working-class voters they’ve lost.
Nia-Malika Henderson is a politics and policy columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A former senior political reporter for CNN and the Washington Post, she has covered politics and campaigns for almost two decades.
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