How the Republican tax bill leaves poor kids behind

Megan Curran, Sophie Collyer and Jane Waldfogel research child poverty at Columbia University's School of Social Work.
H.R. 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill, manages to be the worst of both worlds. It spends an eye-watering amount our country can ill afford and directs almost all of that money to the wealthiest while cutting critical services for low- and middle-income Americans.

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CNN

23 minutes ago

• CNN

Analysis: The many ugly polls on Trump's ‘One Big Beautiful Bill'

President Donald Trump isn't asking Congress to do much these days. In fact, it often seems like he'd rather he didn't have to bother with the legislative branch at all. But despite all of his power grabs – and congressional Republicans' acquiescence to them – there are certain things he needs lawmakers to do. And perhaps the biggest one is to pass a bill extending his 2017 tax cuts. The president's asking a lot. In fact, he appears to be asking them to pass the most unpopular major legislation in decades. We've received a critical mass of polling on Trump's and the GOP's 'One Big Beautiful Bill,' which the House passed last month. Senate Republicans are still working through some very significant details – including the level of Medicaid cuts, state and local tax deductions, and spending cuts to offset the huge cost of the bill – but we've got the broad outlines. And people really do not like those broad outlines. Across four recent polls from the Washington Post, Fox News, KFF and Quinnipiac University, the legislation was an average of 24 points underwater. On average, 55% of surveyed Americans opposed it, while 31% supported it. That makes the bill more unpopular than any piece of major legislation passed since at least 1990, according to data crunched by George Washington University political science professor Chris Warshaw. The current holder for the most unpopular title? The same 2017 Trump tax cuts that Republicans are trying to extend as part of the package. That bill was called the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. It was an average of about 19 points underwater around the time it passed, slightly more popular than the 'One Big Beautiful Bill.' In fact, there is only one piece of major proposed legislation Warshaw tracked that was more unpopular than the current bill, and it was also a Trump initiative. It was his attempt to overhaul Obamacare earlier in 2017. Some polls at the time showed support for it dropping below 20%. On average, it was about 33 points underwater. The bill ultimately failed. (You might look at these data and think people just dislike everything these days. Maybe they just hate Congress and that filters down? But in fact, most of then-President Joe Biden's major pieces of legislation – including Covid relief, infrastructure and the 'Build Back Better' economic and climate package in 2021 – were pretty popular. Like double-digits popular.) Beyond those pieces of legislation, nothing really compares to the unpopularity of Trump's latest major bill. Obamacare was slightly but consistently unpopular when it passed in 2009, per Warshaw's data. The 2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) bank bailout, opposition to which gave rise to the tea party movement on the right, was slightly more unpopular than that. Then-President Bill Clinton's failed health care overhaul in the 1990s was in similar territory. But none of these efforts averaged even double-digits underwater, compared to the 24-point deficit for the current bill. And when you dig into the numbers, the political problems with the current effort look pretty stark: Republican-leaning voters who don't identify with the MAGA movement opposed the bill 66-33%, according to the KFF poll. Independents opposed the bill by around a 3-to-1 margin across all these polls. The KFF and Fox News polls – the ones with the fewest undecideds – showed 7 in 10 independents opposed it. Strong opponents of the legislation (30%) outnumbered strong supporters (9%) about 3-to-1 among registered voters, according to the Post/Ipsos poll. Americans clearly view the bill as being slanted toward the wealthy. They said 58-21% that it will hurt people with lower incomes rather than help them, but 51-8% that it will help the wealthy, according to KFF. More than 6 in 10 people who get health insurance through marketplaces or Medicaid viewed the legislation negatively, according to KFF. (The Congressional Budget Office estimates the House GOP version of the bill would leave 11 million people without insurance by 2034.) This despite those Medicaid recipients being slightly more likely to be Democratic-leaning than Republican-leaning, but people on the marketplaces leaning more Republican. Registered voters say 66-14% that it's 'unacceptable' for the bill to add nearly $3 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, as the CBO also projects it will, per the Post/Ipsos poll. Now for the caveats. It's still early in the legislative process, and as noted the actual details are being worked out. An amended Senate version, for example, would have to be sent back to the House before it gets anywhere near the president's desk. The polls suggest Americans don't know a ton about the legislation at this point, and their views could change. But the Post/Ipsos poll also shows the people who say they know more about it tend to be more opposed. Those who had heard only 'a little' or 'nothing at all' opposed it 31-19%, but those who had heard 'a great deal' or 'a good amount' opposed it 64-33%. There's also an argument to be made that the legislation could get more popular after Republicans sell it and pass it. Maybe people are just resistant to change. Gallup polling showed Trump's tax cuts, for instance, going from 27 points underwater in December 2017 to just seven points underwater (46% opposed, 39% supported) in September 2018. It was still unpopular, but not historically so. But crucially, that bill didn't involve a huge health care overhaul that could kick millions off their insurance, which is clearly the GOP's biggest political problem right now. They need something to offset the huge cost of extending the tax cuts, and that means going into entitlements. They've argued that the Medicaid cuts would be focused on undocumented people and those who refuse to work, but those claims don't really hold water. It's probably no coincidence that the only major proposal in recent decades that competes with this one is another health care overhaul. The question now for Republicans is whether they want to take a major political risk in actually passing this one.

Fox News

38 minutes ago

• Fox News

Despite two assassination attempts, NY Times blames Trump for 'angry culture' that can lead to violence

The New York Times editorial board pointed the finger at President Donald Trump on Friday following another incident of deadly political violence. In a new editorial, the board said Trump is the chief individual to blame for America sliding into an era marked by political violence. "Although Mr. Trump has been a personal victim of this violence, he also deserves particular responsibility for our angry culture," the board declared. The headline read, "The Nation Encourages Political Violence by Allowing It to Seem Normal." The Times published the piece days after the deadly shootings that claimed the lives of Minnesota state legislator Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and resulted in the wounding of state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, last weekend. The suspect, 57-year-old Vance Boelter, was arrested on Sunday following a two-day manhunt in Minnesota after he allegedly posed as a police officer and killed the Hortmans. The previous day, he carried out a related attack against Hoffman and his wife. Boelter was found with a cache of weapons, including at least three AK-47 assault rifles and a 9mm handgun, along with a manifesto that listed 70 names and addresses, some of which belonged to other public officials. The Friday editorial argued that this latest politically motivated attack represents a "surge in political violence during the Trump years" that has imperiled not only American lives but also our country's collective memory." The board recounted several high-profile instances of political violence that have occurred in America in the last decade, listing the shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., in 2017, the Jan. 6 Capitol Riot, the attack on former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's, D-Calif., husband, and the two assassination attempts on Trump, as part of the "grim catalog of political violence in recent years." It declared that "Fear has become a fact of life for politicians," elsewhere noting that "Democrats and Republicans alike have been the victims" of attacks driven by "demonizing comments" that people "on both the firth and the left engage in." The board then blamed Trump for this, justifying the point in stating, "He uses threatening language in ways that no other modern president has. He praises people who commit violence in his name, such as the Jan. 6 rioters, many of whom he has pardoned, despite their attacks on police officers and others. He sometimes seems incapable of extending basic decency to Democrats." "Instead of calling Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota to express condolences about the killings of two of his friends, Mr. Trump insulted Mr. Walz," the piece stated, adding, "It is no coincidence that hate crimes have surged, according to the F.B.I., during Mr. Trump's decade as a dominant political figure." Other Democratic Party leaders have made the same argument about Trump in the days since the Minnesota lawmaker shooting. Figures like former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., pointed to the president when asked this week what has led to more violent incidents that seem to be politically motivated. The Trump administration has rejected these statements, with White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson telling Fox News Digital earlier this week, "Democrats are wrong to exploit this tragedy and blame President Trump… President Trump – the survivor of two assassination attempts – is uniting the country through patriotism, prosperity, and success. Radical Democrats must stop with their divisive, violent rhetoric."

CNN

42 minutes ago

• CNN

Trump says America has ‘too many' national holidays and they're hurting the economy. Is he right?

President Donald Trump on Thursday called for fewer federal holidays, saying the days off cost America billions of dollars in losses. 'Too many non-working holidays in America. It is costing our Country $BILLIONS OF DOLLARS to keep all of these businesses closed,' Trump said in a Truth Social post on Juneteenth, a newly designated federal holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt acknowledged during a Thursday briefing with reporters that it was a federal holiday and thanked reporters for showing up, but declined to answer whether Trump was doing anything to mark it. 'The workers don't want it either!' Trump said of federal holidays in his post. 'Soon we'll end up having a holiday for every once working day of the year. It must change if we are going to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!' Is there any truth to his comments? Yes and no. Most research around the economic impact of federal holidays deals with how worker productivity is impacted. Worker productivity measures how much workers are able to achieve over a given period of time. A day off work, therefore, would put worker productivity at zero. But research suggests that it's not just, say, July 4 itself that causes productivity to slump. It's the days before and after, since workers tend to schedule time off around them, leaving employees who opted not to take those days off with heavier workloads, thus reducing their productivity. A 2022 study by two economists found that when a federal holiday falls on a weekend and isn't rescheduled for a weekday, the nation's total output, or gross domestic product, increases by 0.08% to 0.2% relative to when it is rescheduled. Among the sectors that can take the biggest hit from federal holidays is manufacturing, the study found. But that's just in the short term. Over the longer term, paid time off, including over federal holidays, increases worker morale and can make them more productive over time. That's because people who work more aren't necessarily more productive, since they are more likely to get burnt out. Case in point: Fresh research from Microsoft found workers are struggling to cope with a 'seemingly infinite workday,' involving an increasing load of meetings occurring outside traditional working hours. One outcome is that one-third of workers feel it has been 'impossible to keep up' with the pace of work over the past five years, according to a Microsoft-commissioned survey of 31,000 employees around the world, cited a Tuesday report. Meanwhile, an older internal survey Ernst & Young conducted found that for every 10 additional hours of vacation employees took, their performance reviews increased by 8%. Furthermore, those who took time off more frequently were less likely to leave the firm. Contrary to Trump's comments, businesses across the economy don't shut down entirely on federal holidays: Plenty of workers, including emergency responders, retail and transportation workers, continue to work on such days. On the spending front, consumers tend to make more purchases on holidays, especially as businesses schedule sales around them. Specifically, the tourism, hospitality and retail sectors tend to benefit the most. But it's not just big businesses — small businesses can benefit, too. A 2018 study found that bank holidays in the United Kingdom give small shops an average of an additional £253 (about $340) in profit. CNN's Anna Cooban contributed reporting.