New reporting from the Washington Post reveals Republicans privately admitting they are struggling to sell their Big, Ugly Bill as poll after poll after poll shows the American people widely oppose the GOP Tax Scam.
This week, the DCCC released a memo making clear the Big, Ugly Bill would be the defining vote of the 2026 election cycle and the reason Republicans lose the House majority next year.
DCCC Spokesperson Viet Shelton:
“With this vote, Republicans are sealing their loss next November.”
Democrats are planning to make President Donald Trump’s massive tax and spending package central to their efforts to retake the House in next year’s midterm elections, arguing that its deep cuts to Medicaid and food assistance put them at a distinct advantage over Republicans trying to sell the bill’s tax and immigration provisions to voters.
Many Republicans — who hold a razor-thin majority in the House — acknowledge that they face an uphill battle in selling the bill to a wary public, particularly because of party infighting as lawmakers have raced to pass the bill by Trump’s self-imposed Fourth of July deadline.
The legislation would cut about $1 trillion from Medicaid, the government health insurance program for the poor, along with additional cuts to Medicare and the Affordable Care Act. Taken together, Republican changes to Medicaid, the ACA and other programs would result in at least 17 million people losing health insurance, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The bill also would make drastic cuts to SNAP, the anti-hunger Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps.
Democrats, who uniformly oppose the legislation, said their message is simple: Republicans are offering tax breaks to billionaires on the backs of working-class Americans.
“Children will be hurt. Families will be hurt. Women will be hurt. Seniors will be hurt. Everyday Americans with disabilities will be hurt,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) said Tuesday. “Hospitals will close, nursing homes will shut down, and community-based health clinics will be unable to provide services.”
A group of House moderates — all of whom voted in support of the House version that passed in May — also wrote a letter to GOP leaders last week warning that they could not support a final bill that “threatens access to coverage or jeopardizes the stability of our hospitals and providers.” The Senate version of the bill ended up including even deeper cuts to Medicaid and a limit on what is known as the provider tax for hospitals, which rural providers have warned would threaten their ability to stay open or offer critical services to vulnerable residents. The House moderates urged leaders not to adopt the steeper cuts in the Senate bill.
Democrats said many of Republicans’ own statements will feature prominently in their ads and on the campaign trail as they seek to define the bill to voters.
On Tuesday, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee released a memo attacking “so-called moderates” in the House who supported the legislation.
“Republicans will lose the majority in 2026 and the Big, Ugly Bill will be the reason why,” the memo stated. “From now until November 2026, the DCCC will continue to communicate the harm this bill will cause, uplift the stories of the everyday Americans negatively impacted, and mobilize voters … to hold vulnerable Republicans accountable for abandoning their central promise to voters.”
