What’s In The Big Ugly-Ass Bill and What You Can Do About It
We might not be able to stop it, but we need to try. And Republicans need to own this flaming mess forever.
If you haven’t been paying a ton of attention, the Republicans are working right now to pass a piece of legislation called “H.R.1 - One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” Yes, it is actually called that, and it is a comprehensively awful piece of legislation. It passed the House (barely) and as of today, Monday June 30th, the Senate is debating it. We still have a chance to stop it, and even if we don’t, this is the first step in holding Republicans in the Senate and Congress accountable for going completely off the rails. But it’s good to call everyone, because our calls against it even to Democrats who are already voting no will give us more of a chance to undo the worst things.
We’re putting this post together quickly as a handy summary of why it’s terrible and what you can do about it. Leave other enraging aspects of this ugly ass disaster in the comments or and amplify #VoteNo on BlueSky and Twitter, and on other platforms!
What’s in this thing?
SHOCKING, HUGE budget increases for state terrorization of immigrants. $45B, on top of their existing budget of $3.5B, just for detention. $14B for “removal.” $8B just for hiring, while NASA is being told to cancel 19 active missions to save $6B.
MASSIVE CORRUPTION. This is about to be a gigantic problem. The amounts of money Trump and MAGA Republicans are proposing for both immigration militarization and defense projects are so huge no one will be able to spend it. The corruption is going to be incalculable.
SAVAGE, CRUEL cuts to health care ($930B from Medicaid) and food security ($186B from SNAP). This is going to devastate rural hospitals, nursing homes, and OB-GYN departments.
UNREAL tax cuts for the rich and crumbs for people who work for a living. The “no tax on tips” and “no tax on overtime” provisions are perfect examples of Republican policies: great marketing, actually delivers almost nothing.
A MASSIVE explosion in the deficit of $3.3 TRILLION. Running some amount of a deficit is fine, and it’s certainly not our top priority vs funding public goods that real people need. But running deficits so the incredibly rich can have even more money piling up in their bank accounts is completely ridiculous.
CRIPPLING cuts to investments and incentives for solar and wind energy, and tax breaks for coal.
It’s going to INCREASE the already utterly mind-bending transfer of wealth from everyone else to the rich that’s happening in this country:
Scary chart from G Elliot Morris: Republicans Want You To Pay More For Less
How Is This Happening? It’s So Bad!
For fifty years we have been living in an increasingly extreme right-wing social experiment where the rich use division and cumulative advantages in right wing media to take all our money. It’s up to $79 TRILLION so far. This bill will make all of this vastly worse.
EVEN REPUBLICANS HATE IT. Thom Tillis of North Carolina just quit the Senate rather than have to vote for it. The House Freedom Caucus HATES it, with the fire of 1000 suns. Even Elon Musk hates it.
This bill gives huge tax cuts to the rich, slashes health care, will throw 11 million people off of insurance and will close rural hospitals. Trump’s approach is also resulting in much slower economic growth than under Biden.
Republicans are terrible for the economy and people’s economic well being. Consistently. Always. But Americans are starting to catch on. The right wing agenda is increasingly unpopular and the wheels are starting to fall of their story:
Further terrorizing immigrants is particularly severely unpopular, and Democrats shouldn’t be afraid of saying so:
Change IS coming! As Zohran Mamdani put it in his shocking victory, this is what we stand for:
This campaign is for everyone who believes in the dignity of our neighbors and that the government's job is to actually make our lives better.
What Can We Do?
The absolute easiest thing: go follow threepointfivepercent on Instagram to be counted in the tally toward the 3.5% resisting authoritarianism.
CALL YOUR SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES! If you live in a Republican state or district, it’s most important, but everyone should call, because our Dem Senators and Congresspeople need to hear how strong our opposition is so we can stop the worst abuses and turn it around. There’s a great easy script and a nice video here!
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