Mainstream media outlets have repeatedly fearmongered that the Big Beautiful Bill (BBB) will harm middle-class Americans, but those who remember when President Donald Trump passed his first major tax bill, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), are experiencing déjà-vu. When that tax reform legislation passed in 2017, Democrats also warned of an incoming doom that never materialized.
In 2017, an NBC opinion piece read, “The Republican tax bill is an insidious way to fail working Americans.” Following the TCJA’s passing, The New York Times published a collection of letters to the editor attacking the bill. The same message was pushed on television in a repeated effort to scare listeners into believing the TCJA was Trump’s attempt to hurt the average American and help the rich. Former RNC Chair Michael Steele said of the TCJA that “the American people have already sized this thing up to realize that they’re not going to be the direct beneficiaries of any tax reform, but rather, very large, special, corporate interests are” on NBC News.
But this is simply not an accurate reflection of what the 2017 bill accomplished. The TCJA came close to doubling the standard tax deduction, reduced individual tax rates across almost every income bracket, and removed the Affordable Care Act’s tax penalties, according to a report by the Tax Policy Center. In The Hill, Justin Haskins wrote that “most middle-income and working-class earners enjoyed a tax cut that was at least double the size of tax cuts received by households earning $1 million or more,” referencing IRS tax data evaluating changes from 2017 to 2018. IRS data also shows that while the top 1 percent paid about the same in taxes after the TCJA, the other 99 percent saw their tax burden drop by $65 billion compared to the previous year, as The Federalist reported in 2021.
When referring to the Big Beautiful Bill, however, the mainstream media is reusing the exact same rhetoric they used to attack the TCJA in 2017. CNN published a video featuring excerpts of comedian Jon Stewart’s scathingly sarcastic routine on the BBB, saying, “So even though some of our nation’s most vulnerable are taking a pay cut, fear not! Other people are getting a raise!” NBC pushed a similar narrative, touting a Yale report that supposedly found that the “‘Big beautiful bill’ mostly benefits the rich, while low earners would suffer from Medicaid and SNAP cuts.”
But the facts show otherwise. As previously mentioned, the Big Beautiful Bill retains the tax reforms of 2017, while extending the child tax credits, making tips untaxed, and giving small businesses stock advantages. According to the White House, the BBB gives lower-income workers the “largest percentage reduction” when cuts are applied across tax brackets.
Moreover, polling shows that most Americans support keeping Trump’s tax cuts. An April Public Opinion Strategies survey reported by the New York Post indicated that 84 percent of Americans want to keep the current tax rates as of this year, including 74 percent of Democrats. According to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, this is exactly what the Big Beautiful Bill does; it makes the 2017 cuts permanent.
But immediately following the passing of the BBB, Lawrence Summers, former director of the National Economic Council under former President Barack Obama, joined in the media’s demonization of the bill, invoking a national tragedy on ABC News to fearmonger about the legislation. Citing the same report from the Yale Budget Lab, he claimed the bill will “kill, over 10 years, 100,000 people. That is 2,000 days of death like we’ve seen in Texas this weekend.”
Summers peddled the same hysteria in 2017, writing in the Financial Times that “thousands would die” due to the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.” In both his 2017 and 2025 omens, Summers referred primarily to a purported reduction in government-funded health care coverage.
But the TCJA’s primary influence on health care was the removal of the individual mandate tax penalties created under the Affordable Care Act for those who did not have health insurance, discontinuing a manipulative government measure. As for the BBB, Senator Ted Budd explained days before it passed that it would not cut Medicaid for those it was “originally intended for.” He wrote, “Senate Republicans are trying to slow the rate of exponential cost increases for a program we all agree must survive for future generations.”
The way Medicare currently stands, its subsidies are projected to cost $5.4 trillion in the next decade, according to Budd. The BBB reforms will cut illegal immigrants and require able-bodied adults to volunteer or work to remain on the program. According to a statement the White House made, the changes will not influence traditional recipients, like single mothers, children, or the disabled, except in strengthening their support.
So, when Senator Chris Murray on CNN says that Republicans are “cutting Medicaid … in order to fund a tax cut for the super wealthy and for corporations,” it is nothing new. Democrats said the same things in 2017 when Trump passed tax cuts that helped the middle class and were extremely popular with Americans.
Ariel McDowell is a correspondent for The Federalist. She is studying Rhetoric and Media at Hillsdale College and is Assistant News Director at Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM.
