Republicans Deliver on Promises to Borrow Trillions So They Can Punish Poor People, Expand the Police State, and Transfer Trillions of $$$$$ from the Working Class to the Rich.

The House GOP just passed their culture-war-driven reconciliation bill 218-214. They caved to Trump's bullying using every legislative trick in the book, showing once again why elections matter.

The Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives just voted 218-214 (July 3, 2025) to pass President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). The vote ends the months-long GOP legislative push to borrow trillions of dollars from taxpayers to further enrich billionaires, multimillionaires, and wealthy corporations. House Republicans decided to rubber-stamp the nearly $5 trillion in tax cuts and almost $2 trillion in spending cuts passed earlier this week by Senate Republicans.

As expected, Freedom Caucus conservatives made a little noise before ultimately bending the knee to Trump and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA, 4th). Same with the group of supposedly moderate GOP blue state Representatives “concerned” about Medicaid and clean energy destruction in the reconciliation bill. Only 2 Republicans joined all Democrats in voting against the package.

Trump will sign the bill soon. He is headed to Iowa for what is likely to be a good old-fashioned (very boring, fact-ignoring) Fourth of July eve victory lap. The Republican leaders will no doubt wrap themselves in the flag while celebrating their generosity toward the very elite they pretend to hate: Wall Street, Big Ag, Silicon Valley, Big Energy, Amazon-dot-com, Big Insurance, Big Mining, and Big Pharma among others.

If millions of poor and working class people weren’t facing the loss of their health care and food assistance to pay for groceries, it would be tempting to admire Republican gall to stop at nothing to deliver the only thing they truly care about: cutting taxes for the rich and slashing regulations that protect people and the planet.

If hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funds that support rural economies weren’t going away, Democrats might give Republicans a pat on the back for their ability to maintain internal party discipline, stick with the talking points, and deliver for their constituents.

If the Republican playbook of solving every problem by cutting taxes for the rich and ending “burdensome government regulations” wasn’t so damaging, Democrats might take some time away from their navel-gazing “messaging” obsession to re-think their campaign strategies. Spending billions of dollars on bland paid ads and supposedly “moderate” consultants has failed repeatedly. Democrats are even less popular right now than the very unpopular Republicans.

There is no doubt that Trump and Congressional Republican leaders have a political advantage. They can easily get away with governance through bad data, flawed information, nonsensical accounting, corporate-sponsored “research” and “experts,” legislative tricks, and the conservative media echo chamber. In this ugly political reality, Democratic party dependence on science, math, and legislative literacy don’t seem to make a difference.

The Republicans got what they wanted this week, consequences be damned. It’s yet another reminder that, like it or not, elections matter.

Trump’s legislative agenda is the law of the land, his mission accomplished moment coming in the first six months of his second term. Now we can expect the White House to spend more time deploying their legally questionable executive powers to destroy more public sector jobs, withhold Congressionally approved spending, and create even more chaos as they move on to the next budget package this fall.

It’s hard to tell in this moment if voters will punish or reward Republicans for their “performance” in the looming 2026 midterm elections. Will the chaos, cruelty, and corruption on display by MAGA dominance resonate? Will voters see through the GOP smokescreen of fiscal malpractice, willful scientific ignorance, fearmongering, and a refusal to acknowledge the class war that most of us fight every day? Will the Republican opposition in all of its forms finally invest real money in organizing and organizers in communities and counties all across the country that are hard at work fighting against billionaires and corporate power every day?

We’ll see.

Adam Parkhomenko and Sam Youngman hit the nail on the head @TheAltMedia while summarizing the Republican-launched budget reconciliation bomb:

“By now you know what this piece of shit will do — 17 million will lose healthcare, millions will go without much-needed food assistance, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is now better funded than the Marines and many new concentration camps will be built. In short, this is an act of evil that will have profound and deadly consequences for years to come. If you hate your country right now, we get it. If you’re ready to take it back from a bunch of psycho ass-kissing freaks, we get that too.”

That is a version of patriotism and hope many Americans are clinging to, The Cocklebur included, on the eve of Independence Day.

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The Cocklebur covers rural policy and politics from a progressive point-of-view. Our work focuses on a tangled rural political reality of dishonest debate, economic and racial disparities, corporate power over our democracy, and disinformation peddled by conservative media outlets. We aim to use facts, data, and science to inform our point-of-view. We wear our complicated love/WTF relationship with rural America on our sleeve.