WASHINGTON ― The big legislation Republicans are trying to pass this week would shrink economic resources for the poorest Americans while boosting the richest, according to a new analysis by Capitol Hill’s official budget scorekeeper.
The Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, as it’s officially known, would shrink household resources for the lowest-income households by 2% in 2027 and 4% in 2033, mainly because of cuts to health and nutrition programs.
”By contrast, resources would increase by an amount equal to 4 percent for households in the highest decile in 2027 and 2 percent in 2033, mainly because of reductions in… taxes they owe,” CBO director Phillip Swagel wrote in a letter to Democrats.
Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, requested the CBO analysis of the bill’s distributional effects for the top and bottom 10% of households by annual income.
“This is what Republicans are fighting for – lining the pockets of their billionaire donors while children go hungry and families get kicked off their health care,” Boyle said in a statement. “CBO’s nonpartisan analysis makes it crystal clear: Donald Trump and House Republicans are selling out the middle class to make the ultra-rich even richer.”
Democrats have been hammering Republicans for the bill’s not-so-populist economic impacts for weeks; the CBO analysis distills the legislation’s reverse Robin Hood dynamic in dry and authoritative terms.
The legislation uses about $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to help pay for $3.8 trillion in tax cuts that benefit all income groups, but especially wealthier Americans. The CBO has previously estimated the legislation would shrink Medicaid enrollment by more than 7 million, including through increased eligibility checks and limits on benefits for people without jobs.
A key House committee plans to vote on the bill in the early hours of Wednesday morning ahead of a possible final vote on passage later this week, but it wasn’t clear as of Tuesday afternoon if enough Republicans will support the bill for it to pass with all Democrats opposed.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has struggled to balance the demands of conservative Republicans who want steeper Medicaid cuts with blue-state moderates seeking bigger tax benefits for wealthy homeowners in their districts.
President Donald Trump visited Capitol Hill on Tuesday morning to urge House Republicans to quit squabbling and pass the bill. Trump cautioned Republicans against overly aggressive Medicaid cuts and has previously suggested he would accept a “TINY” tax hike on the rich to help pay for the bill, but Republicans rejected the idea.
In a statement on Wednesday, House Budget Committee chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) took issue with the CBO analysis, saying Democrats deliberately produced an unflattering picture of the bill and that the CBO measured government transfers to the poor while ignoring the benefits they’d get from economic growth.
“This is a smoke and mirrors tactic to try to deceive the American people into thinking that the One Big Beautiful Bill will benefit the top 10 percent at the expense of the bottom 10 percent,” Arrington said. “Democrats measure success by how many people are stuck on the welfare rolls; Republicans measure success by how many Americans are lifted off of them.”
