One Big Beautiful Disaster? Trump’s Bill Puts GOP Majority at Risk

The 2026 midterm elections are still a long way off, but Republicans are betting heavily and riskily on their ability to withstand the coming attacks on President Donald Trump’s spending and tax cut proposals, as well as the potential impact of his erratic tariff policies. History is not on their side.

The spending and tax cut bill, dubbed the “big beautiful bill,” still faces significant hurdles. The House of Representatives passed it by a single vote Thursday morning, after pressure from the president and late amendments aimed at satisfying both deficit hardliners and moderate Democrats. Republican senators are promising to rewrite it before sending it back to the House, in what could be another episode of “Pollin Peril” before it reaches Trump’s desk.

For Trump, the bill is a complete package, filled with small and large elements. Republicans know that this bill could represent his entire legislative agenda for this year and next. The president prefers executive action to legislative complexity. Some things, such as setting tax rates or Medicaid eligibility criteria, for example, depend on congressional action.

The bill would extend the personal and business tax cuts passed during Trump’s first term, reinforce campaign promises to eliminate tip and overtime taxes, increase the cap on state and local taxes (SALT), and make various other changes, such as adding about $150 billion for border security. It will also reduce projected Medicaid spending by about $700 billion over the next decade, largely due to new work and reporting requirements for beneficiaries. About $280 billion will be cut from the food stamp program, and new work requirements will be added.

The Congressional Budget Office reports that the bottom 10% will see their resources decrease, while the wealthiest 10% will see their resources increase.

Several estimates indicate that this measure will add about $3 trillion to the deficit over the next decade, which is a bitter pill for Republicans who are aware of the budget deficit. Bond markets reacted weakly.

Trump claimed on his social media site, Truth Social, that this measure is “arguably the most important piece of legislation ever enacted in the history of our country.” But its historical significance lacks historical significance.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) said that failure to pass the bill was not an option. Republicans, who have reservations about the final outcome, are likely to ignore their objections and vote yes to its final passage this summer.

The battle will intensify at this point, but the first blows were struck last week, and two veteran political campaigners quickly joined the fray: Republican Karl Rove, who helped George W. Bush win two presidential victories, and Democrat Rahm Emanuel, whose resume includes service in the House of Representatives, White House chief of staff, mayor of Chicago, and U.S. ambassador to Japan.

Emanuel said Republicans have given Democrats a political gift, if they can harness it. Rove wrote that the pending legislation “should be understood by the public in a single sentence: tax cuts for the wealthy, health care cuts for the many.” The simplicity of this duality is its advantage.

He argued that the Trump presidency and Republicans in Congress “represent beacons of corruption, chaos, and cruelty,” adding that the new bill “is the best opportunity we’ll have to clear the fog that could define 2026.” The fog, in this case, is the president’s ongoing series of actions, so numerous and repetitive that the public can barely comprehend them.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Rove warned Republicans against avoiding a debate on Medicaid. He said they needed to intervene. “Republican silence will only reinforce the inevitable Democratic attack,” he wrote. He added that Republicans should promote the new work requirements, which he said are popular with most Americans, and strongly attack Democrats for their failure to root out fraud in the program.

Many Republican strategists share Rove’s view of the attack. “The Republican Party needs to take a unified offensive approach now, not wait until 2026,” Republican strategist Kristin Davison wrote in an email. She added, “This sweeping and beautiful bill has some positive aspects, things Americans voted for, as well as some positive aspects regarding tariffs. Democrats still can’t hold it together; it’s a gift to the Republican Party.” »

In response, Republican pollster Whit Ayers appears concerned about the current situation. “Let’s see,” he wrote in a letter. “Prices are rising because of tariffs, and millions of Trump voters are losing their Medicaid-funded health care. I think maybe Democrats could do something about that.”

The 2017 tax cuts played, at best, a minor role in the 2018 election. That may be the case with the current legislation. Republican pollster Brent Buchanan said he believes the tariff and tax bill will be forgotten by the midterm elections. If he’s right, “Republicans can run on the strength of delivering on their 2024 campaign promises,” he said in a letter.

Corey Bliss, another Republican strategist, said Republicans have a better chance of convincing voters that their agenda is working than President Joe Biden’s because they keep their legislative promises and because Trump is a more effective communicator.

House Republicans know that political history is not on their side when they look ahead to 2026, if for one reason: the party in power typically loses House seats in the midterm elections that follow the presidential election.

Furthermore, voters are anxious and always eager to punish those in power. Since 2006, with the exception of 2012, every election has seen a shift in the balance of power in the House of Representatives, the Senate, or the White House. Democrats won the House of Representatives in 2006, lost it in 2010, then won it back in 2018 and lost it again in 2022. As for the Senate, it flipped from Republicans to Democrats in 2006, then back to Republicans in 2014, then from Republicans to Democrats in 2020, then back to the Republican Party last year. Since 2012, the White House has flipped from Barack Obama to Trump, then from Biden to Trump.

As we approach 2026, Senate Republicans appear more stable than their counterparts in the House of Representatives. The Republican Party has a three-seat margin in the Senate, and voting patterns in all 50 states give the Republican Party an advantage in Senate elections, simply because there are more Republican states than Democratic ones, and because senators’ votes are closely aligned with those of the president. Moreover, the map for the 2026 Senate elections, in which a third of the seats will be up for grabs, makes the Democrats’ chances even more difficult.

House Democrats need to flip only three seats to regain the majority, and the average turnover of House seats in midterm elections is much higher than this figure. But it’s also true that only three Republicans sit in districts won by former Vice President Kamala Harris last year. The total number of competitive seats is also down from what it was a decade or two ago. This shows the role that trench warfare, and not just the mood of the country, will play in the battle for control of the House of Representatives.

House Republicans don’t have much room for error, but they don’t lack reasons for hope. Given history and the GOP’s slim majority, it would be disappointing for Democrats if the minority party failed to regain the House majority next year. But the Democrats are a party in disarray, giving Republican leaders and strategists a glimmer of optimism that 2026 may not be the end of their era.

Trump has delivered on many of his campaign promises, but the breadth of his agenda has exceeded many voters’ expectations, as has the disruption it has caused. Consumer confidence has declined, independent voters have a negative view of Trump’s job performance, and his vindictive agenda rivals the GOP’s economic agenda. If the 2026 midterms are a referendum on the president, the “big, beautiful bill” will be just one data point on which voters decide the outcome—and it’s not clear that it will strengthen Republicans.