President Donald Trump’s signature piece of legislation is not only unpopular, but it also seems likely to hurt his already low approval ratings and take Republicans down with him.
A recent Washington Post poll showed a plurality of Americans oppose the version of the Republican megabill that narrowly passed the House of Representatives in May, and that’s at a time when two-thirds said that they have heard little or nothing about the legislation.
It’s only downhill from here. When given details about the “Big Beautiful Bill,” voters said they dislike most of the major provisions, such as cutting taxes for corporations and the wealthy, and spending billions to build new migrant detention centers. The few things they like, such as tax breaks for parents and on tipped income, are so paltry they aren’t likely to give Trump or the GOP much of a boost.
And that’s before the bill has even been signed into law.
Recent history suggests it’s not going to get any better. While most Americans viewed the Affordable Care Act favorably when then-President Barack Obama signed it in 2010, the majority viewed it unfavorably within a few months, leading House Democrats in the next midterms to the biggest losses in six decades. Public opinion on the law didn’t recover until 2017, as Republicans attempted to repeal it.
That was for a law that helped 40 million Americans get health insurance. Trump’s bill, by contrast, will make Americans worse off, according to analyses of the House version:
• It would cause 16 million Americans to lose health insurance, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
• It would lead to 4 million fewer Americans getting food stamps, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
• It would increase the deficit by $2.4 trillion over the next decade, according to the CBO.
The populist parts of the bill get more support, but their benefits pale in comparison.
The populist parts of the bill get more support in polls, but their benefits pale in comparison to those costs.
Repealing the tax on tips would mostly help the 10% of wait staff who make more than $60,000 a year, according to the Tax Policy Center. The Trump Accounts for newborns would come with a one-time $1,000 payment, the child tax credit would get a $500 boost and one estimate of the average savings from ending the tax on overtime is $330 per year. All of those benefits expire in 2029, just as Trump leaves office.
The bill would also supercharge Trump’s immigration push in ways that may backfire. Overall, it would raise spending on immigration and border enforcement from $33.9 billion to roughly $200 billion, according to an analysis of the House version of the bill by the libertarian Cato Institute. If passed, that would mean the federal government would be spending 17 times as much money on immigration enforcement as the combined budgets of the FBI, Secret Service, Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF.
Under the current level of spending, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have led crackdowns at Home Depot stores in Los Angeles that sparked protests, arrests at courthouses that have disrupted the legal system and raids on Texas farms that deterred even legal workers from coming to work. Now, imagine a fivefold increase in all of that. Trump’s advisers see immigration as a good issue for him, and it’s true that Americans broadly favor deporting people who are here illegally. But they tend to have more nuanced opinions when you drill into the details, with majorities opposing deporting those who have a job, have no criminal record, came to the U.S. as children or have U.S. citizens as parents or spouses. Majorities also oppose increasing workplace raids and building more migrant detention centers, which the bill would fund. The warning signs are already flashing that Trump’s indiscriminate enforcement of immigration laws is hurting him when it’s front and center, as my colleague Hayes Brown has noted. A Reuters/Ipsos poll taken amid the Los Angeles protests showed 49% of Americans disapproved of his handling of immigration, while only 44% approved. The Republican megabill is unpopular now. Imagine how much more unpopular it will be if millions more Americans can’t see a doctor or feed their children and fruit is rotting in the fields while immigration officers swarm farms, factories, churches, schools and courthouses around the country to deport hard-working immigrants without criminal records. If the bill passes in its current form, that will be Trump’s legacy. And it will be the legacy of every Republican who votes for it. Subscribe to the Project 47 newsletter to receive weekly updates on and expert insight into the key issues and figures defining Trump’s second term.
Ryan Teague Beckwith is a newsletter editor for MS NOW. He has previously worked for such outlets as Time magazine and Bloomberg News. He teaches journalism at Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies and is the creator of Your First Byline. 
