On Tuesday, President Donald Trump met with House Republicans at the Capitol to whip up support for his tax and spending package, officially known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” The more than 1,100-page monstrosity is a blueprint for social counterrevolution at home and world war abroad which House Republicans are aiming to advance before the end of the month.
Efforts by the corporate media to present the legislation as a routine policy measure are a deliberate smokescreen, aimed at concealing the historic scale of the assault on social programs. If passed—requiring only a simple majority in both Republican-controlled houses of Congress—the bill will result in millions of people, including children and the elderly, being denied healthcare and food, condemning many to premature death.
At the center of the budget is $3.8 trillion in tax cuts, including the permanent extension of the 2017 Trump tax cuts. These measures would lock in the corporate tax rate at 21 percent—less than half the 46 percent rate in 1970—and eliminate other taxes on corporations.
To fund this massive handout to the rich, the bill targets deep cuts to vital social programs, including:
- The largest cuts in the history of Medicaid--the main health insurer for the elderly and poor--with $715 billion eliminated over 10 years, primarily through so-called “work requirements” and punitive hurdles designed to strip otherwise eligible people of coverage. According to the Congressional Budget Office, these measures would result in 8.6 million people losing access to healthcare.
Between $300 and $350 billion in cuts to SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) over the same period. As with Medicaid, the cuts rely on onerous reporting requirements and expanded work mandates, raising the age range for mandatory work from 18–54 to 18–64. It further shifts financial responsibility onto the states, forcing them to implement their own cuts.
In line with the bipartisan assault on immigrants, the bill includes provisions targeting immigrant recipients of Medicaid and SNAP. States that do not provide documentation verifying that beneficiaries are legal US citizens risk losing federal matching funds, incentivizing states to deny access to these essential programs altogether.
The billions slashed from food and healthcare programs for millions of children and elderly Americans will be funneled into massive military spending and the dramatic expansion of the border Gestapo.
The bill includes an additional $150 billion in spending above the standard military budget, over four years. Speaking from the White House on Tuesday, Trump confirmed that $25 billion would go toward the “Golden Dome” missile defense system, which combines ground- and space-based components. This is, Trump said, only a “deposit,” with the full cost of the program estimated at $175 billion.
Additional major military expenditures contained in the bill include:
$4.5 billion for the “acceleration of the B-21 long-range bomber aircraft.” The B-21 Raider is a nuclear-capable, long-range stealth bomber designed to replace the B-2 and B-1 fleets in preparation for war with China.
$4.6 billion for a “second Virginia-class submarine in fiscal year 2027.” These nuclear-powered attack submarines are equipped for counter-intelligence operations, cruise missile deployment and anti-submarine warfare.
$5.4 billion for “two additional Guided Missile Destroyer ships.”
The budget also includes what appears to be the largest single funding increase for police and immigration enforcement in US history, allocating roughly $70 billion to a sweeping expansion of repressive state agencies. This includes $46.5 billion for the expansion of the US–Mexico border wall, equipped with cameras, lights, sensors, roads and “invasive species” removal, alongside $4.1 billion to hire 3,000 new Border Patrol agents, 5,000 customs officers, and 10,000 additional Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
This vast militarization is aimed at implementing mass deportations and laying the groundwork for domestic repression on a scale without precedent in modern US history, as Trump erects a presidential dictatorship.
Overall, the “Big Beautiful Bill” appears crafted to confirm Friedrich Engels’ definition of the state as “nothing more than a machine for the oppression of one class by another,” as the American ruling class builds up its “special body of armed men” in preparation to suppress growing resistance from the working class.
While Republicans are spearheading the current legislation, the Democratic Party is doing nothing to stop it. Speaking on the budget proposal Monday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (Democrat–New York) left it up to so-called “moderate Republicans” to “push back” against the bill. Last week, New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez urged her followers to “hit the phones” and call Republicans to “save Medicaid.”
In fact, the Democratic Party fully agrees with this assault. Their opposition to Trump is not based on these issues, but on matters of foreign policy—particularly the conduct of the war against Russia. On the domestic front, both parties are united in gutting essential programs like Medicaid and SNAP to finance tax cuts for the billionaires and an ever-expanding military-police state.
Indeed, the attacks contained in the bill, including work requirements, are not a new invention but a continuation of decades of bipartisan policy centered on slashing social programs and shifting the burden of the crisis onto the working class to fund the wealth and wars of the ruling elite.
It has been nearly 28 years since President Bill Clinton signed the “Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act,” declaring, “Today, we are ending welfare as we know it.” The bill ended the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, replacing it with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and imposed work requirements as a condition for receiving limited benefits.
Trump is now overseeing what the World Socialist Web Site has characterized as the violent realignment of the state to correspond to the oligarchic character of American society.
The American ruling class is confronting the reality of its protracted economic decline and escalating fiscal crisis, expressed in the recent downgrading of US debt. Over the past three decades, US debt levels have exploded through a combination of massive military spending and endless bailouts of the financial oligarchy.
This accelerated enormously following the financial collapse in 2008–09 and then the stock market crash in March 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, overwhelming majorities in both capitalist parties voted for trillion-dollar bailouts for major banks and hedge funds, while workers, small businesses and their families were left homeless and destitute.
Now, with US debt approaching $37 trillion, the response of the capitalist financial oligarchy is to offload as much of the crisis as possible onto the backs of the working class. Everything is targeted—including not only Medicaid but also Medicare, Social Security, public education, corporate regulations and anything else that detracts from the profits and wealth of the ruling class.
The working class cannot and will not passively endure this historic assault on its social and economic position. Just over 100 days into Trump’s second administration, there have already been nationwide protests and near-daily strike authorization votes from workers across the country. It is this powerful social force—the international working class—that must be mobilized to stop the pillaging of society’s resources for the enrichment of a criminal financial oligarchy.
The “Big Beautiful Bill” will generate enormous shocks, including among those sections of workers who voted for Trump but who did not vote for their own immiseration. The billionaires and corporations, however, will not relinquish their wealth without a fight. The working class, armed with the lessons of history and led by a revolutionary socialist leadership, must expropriate the oligarchs and place the vast wealth of society under the democratic control of the working class itself.
There is no way to defend basic social and democratic rights without an uncompromising struggle against the capitalist system. All those determined to fight against austerity, war and dictatorship must join the Socialist Equality Party and help build the revolutionary leadership required for the coming battles.