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one big beautiful bill act
Trumping ™ the Presidency: Buying Elections, Selling Merch
The president is trying to cancel the midterm elections like he cancels culture at museums, at the same time trying to buy the results.
Nov 03, 2026
Someday soon, it will be possible to call for an orange skin cosmetology appointment with your not-made-in-America Trump phone, which has been on back order for 18 months; schedule the appointment with your Trump watch; and pay for it—and a new US passport with a likeness of President Donald Trump—with Trump bitcoins, while staying at a Trump hotel near a Trump golf course. You can already take a cross country trip to visit national parks with your Trump digital pass embossed with a picture of George Washington and a convicted felon. Travel will be safer in a surplus Trump Catering truck® like that Trump used to flee Turkey fearfully from imagined Iranian attacks. Will the Trump Catering truck® be assembled from the bodies of unsaleable Tesla Cybertrucks?
There are limits to Trump merch. When you get cancer you will not be treated in Trump Hospital because there is none and your medical insurance has been eliminated. Nor will you receive support from the Trump Foundation because it was closed for fraud. But citizens will have their Trump-embossed Bible at hand (only $59!!) to use prayer to appeal denied claims with insurers. Recovery will be difficult in any event in the face of patient malnutrition: TrumpSNAP© benefits have been cut by the Big Beautiful Bill™. But patriotic American children, should they outlive their parents, will be able to draw on their Trump Savings Accounts©, with $1,000 never coming from the US government as golden seed money.
Fortunately, when they retire in 70 or 80 years, these citizens will take their huge nest eggs to book a room at the Trump Gaza resort. Here they will be served by TrumpGastarbiter©—undocumented workers who have been vetted by Jared Kushner. Palestinian chefs will be unavailable since they will have been forcefully deported—to Venezuela or Greenland. No one will be able to afford meals at Trump Resorts in any event, as Trump himself proudly noted, suggesting that the $5,000 price of a hamburger and dessert is beyond the means of American spongers. That’s TrumpAffordability©! At least clothing will be inexpensive. We hear that Trump “Nice As*” T-shirts are being produced now. They can be bought in bulk at the “Trump Post-midterm Black Tuesday™” Fire Sale at your local Trump Merchandise Stores or online. They look good when worn with Trump Never Surrender gold sneakers.
This is all chump change to the grafter-in-chief. The president is trying to cancel the midterm elections like he cancels culture at museums, at the same time trying to buy the results. The election fraud has already begun through the Trump Vote Buy2025™ program that consists of a variety of ploys. While Trump and his family have added as much as the $10 billion in digital wealth to their pockets in the past two years, Trump promises $4.5 billion to fund wealth accounts for 10 million children—roughly $450 for each child. A parent can secure the funds through the gold-plated Trump Accounts App. Trump repeatedly promises Trump Tariff© rebates at $2,000, Trump Doge™ savings of $2 trillion, and Trump $5,000 Vote Only Republican© checks (roughly $1.2 trillion). He cynically gifted $500 each to 1 million people for their Affordable Care Act premiums that he previously cut to ensure their indebtedness. He started a $30,000 hotline per tip up to $25 million for Government Fraud Whistleblower Program, a one-time $90 payment for some Medicare B enrollees, and $8 billion farmer aid to cover the $2.4 billion it has cost farmers to date to buy diesel and $33 billion because of tariffs.
As the elections approach, the president will give himself some major award, perhaps the Presidential Medal of Freedom? Since he will never win the Nobel Peace Prize, only the FIFA Peace Prize, the MAGA contingent has already proposed the Bolsonaro Brazil Election Tantrum Prize and the Trump “Sexual Misconduct” Prize (28 accusations counting). It is said that Reporters Without Borders contemplated the creation of the Trump Orange Journalism award.
Finally, we await rumored sale of a signed, limited edition wall-size reproduction of Trump’s loving 50th birthday greeting to Jeffery Epstein, that will go for $1,000. Soon, he’ll take his satchels of money on board his Qatari747 “Air Fraud One” for off into the sunset to Mar-o-Lago, with its $5,000 burgers and gold bathroom fixtures replete with classified documents.
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Fools Gold: The Mirage of the Public Option
The public option is a fantasy solution for real healthcare problems that only single payer can solve.
Nov 02, 2026
Americans are discouraged about the state of healthcare in the United States. The “Public Option” has again emerged as a possible solution to our healthcare woes.
What Is the “Public Option”?
There are several different proposals labelled as being “the public option” but, at its core, the public option is a health insurance plan that would be placed side-by-side and would also compete with commercial health insurance offerings, for example on the Obamacare exchanges. While the “public” in public option suggests a Medicare-type administration structure, the public option in some formulations would actually be administered by private insurers.
The public option stands in stark contrast to single-payer plans which cover everyone and eliminate private insurance plans entirely. Single-payer plans are often termed Medicare-for-All and, critically, are based on Medicare rather than on Medicare Advantage plans which tend to be run by private insurers.
Healthcare 2026
Americans had already been dissatisfied with the affordability of health insurance and healthcare in recent years, but the passage of H.R. 1, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” has brought additional pain to Americans. This is due, in part, to the failure of H.R. 1 to extend healthcare subsidies that had previously been in place for individuals and families in the Exchanges. The full toll of H.R. 1 is not yet visible, but marketplace enrollment has dropped in 41 states. For example, North Carolina and Ohio saw declines of 22% and 20%, respectively.
Who Is Exploring or Promoting the Public Option?
Washington state and Colorado have both created public option experiments, and these experiments have not been very successful in lowering premiums or enrolling significant numbers of people.
Democratic politicians (including Washington Sen. Patty Murray) have touted the public option. Presidential candidate Joe Biden, an opponent of single payer, floated the public option. There is a center created at Georgetown University in 2022 with the explicit option of assisting policy makers in exploring the public option. A number of conservative groups have urged Republican legislators to support the creation of the public option.
How Can We Judge Plans for Healthcare Reform?
Reforms aimed at reversing the healthcare in the US can be judged by examining the extent to which plans fulfill the following criteria: Does the proposed solution
- Cover everyone;
- Lower costs;
- Reduce healthcare disparities; and
- Enable negotiations for healthcare necessities, such as pharmaceuticals?
Would the public option work?
Based on the four criteria outlined above, the public option fails to provide meaningful reform.
- Covering Everyone: The public option would not automatically cover people who are presently uninsured. More people could be covered if and only if the system would be economically sustainable. There is a real risk that private insurers could divert high-cost patients to the public option thus increasing, over time, the challenge of funding the public option. The vulnerability of the public option to adverse selection could cause the public option to enter a financial death spiral.
- Lowering Costs: The public option leaves the current commercial health insurance system in place, and thus a key driver of costs in our current system would remain completely unaddressed. Health insurance plans have much higher administrative overhead (12-18%) than classic Medicare (2%).
- Reducing Healthcare Disparities: Because the public option would merely add another insurance plan to an already complicated medical landscape and because the public option won’t cover everyone, it is unlikely that access and disparities would be effectively addressed.
- Enabling Negotiations: Pharmaceuticals are presently key drivers of healthcare costs. This is, in part, because prices for drugs are controlled by for-profit companies, beholden to shareholders, who have free rein to set prices. In order to have the necessary leverage to force pharmaceutical companies to negotiate, a plan would have to cover all or most US residents. Polls show that Americans would be enthusiastic about this aspect of single-payer plans, even if it would eliminate most private insurance and raise taxes.
Health insurance companies provide NO actual healthcare services on their own. The widely accepted theory is that these companies control healthcare costs by means of gatekeeping, but these companies actually add to healthcare costs by creating an expensive insurance workforce that Americans pay for with premiums. Private insurance also installs a costly workforce in hospitals and doctors’ offices that is dedicated to dealing with and defending against the challenges created by the health insurance companies. These costs are ultimately borne by patients.
Insurance companies are savvy and constantly alter their coverage rules and processes with an eye to maximizing their bottom lines. These companies also try to attract patients who won’t cost them too much and shed those who are expensive. This latter tendency can be expected to persist under a public option system and could doom the entire project (see above).
Because the public option would graft another insurance plan on to an already complicated and expensive coverage system, the public option will not heal and can worsen our healthcare landscape by delaying definitive solutions and by damping enthusiasm for genuine effective reform.
Is There a Plan That Has the Potential to Satisfy the Four Criteria?
The obvious solution is to remove the health insurance companies from the mix and join the rest of the industrialized Western world in enacting a single-payer system. Returning to the criteria used (above) to measure the public option, a single-payer system would
- Cover everyone;
- Lower costs;
- Reduce healthcare disparities, and
- Foster negotiations for healthcare necessities, such as pharmaceuticals.
In a nutshell, this is because a single-payer system refers to a common coverage system that covers everyone equally and whose administration is modelled on classic Medicare. This universal coverage would allow for real negotiating power.
If the Public Option Isn’t an Effective Reform, Why Do Politicians Promote This Plan?
The public option bobs to the surface again and again as a possible solution and a putative viable alternative to a single-payer program as it allows politicians to express concerns about healthcare in a way that does not threaten campaign contributions from insurance companies and Big Pharma.
In so doing, these various advocates have often portrayed single payer as “too radical” or “too impractical” to merit serious consideration
I can credibly be accused of being favorably disposed to single payer. The Mercatus Institute cannot. When this libertarian, Koch-funded, free-market-oriented organization set out to study the cost of a single-payer health system, their data did not discredit the economics of single payer but instead provided evidence that single-payer policies would lower healthcare costs.
In contrast to the views of politicians, ordinary Americans in increasing numbers are reporting that they are in favor of single-payer plans and are dissatisfied both with the cost of coverage and the barriers to care embodied in current health insurance coverage. Tellingly, when even Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark (an organization staffed by former Republicans) gives single payer consideration and predicts movement in the direction of single payer, one can argue that the current healthcare crisis may be creating an increased appetite for meaningful change.
Fool’s Gold
The public option cannot fix our healthcare woes. Moreover, adopting this “solution” has the potential to cause further damage to our healthcare mess. A public option is highly likely to prove fiscally unworkable. The failure of this shiny object to address the very real pain Americans are experiencing will delay consideration of solutions that can work. And, critically, a failure of the public option has the potential to extinguish a collective will to do the hard work of creating a healthcare system that works for all of us.
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This November, Vote Like Your Well-Being Depends on It
We are all hurting, but together we can start to fix this. Voting lets us hold elected officials to account—and choose representatives who will fight for our housing, healthcare, and food assistance.
Oct 29, 2026
It’s really cold living in a home with no heat or running water in December. That was a hard lesson I had to learn as a kid when my family was struggling.
Now, as a healthcare case manager, I’ve seen firsthand even more unnecessary human suffering caused by bad policy choices. We need change, and voting is part of how we make it.
I grew up in a large family. My dad was a convoy driver during the Iraq War and was gone from us for nearly a decade. During that time, we struggled to afford the medication to manage my sister’s Type 1 diabetes. My mother stayed home so often to care for her that she lost her job.
Even as prices rise, they’ve also chosen to take help away from those who need it the most—and give it to those who need it least.
My family filed for bankruptcy, hoping for a clean slate. Instead, with no credit, we couldn’t find a stable place to live. We lost our home and spent time bouncing around trying to find housing.
Those hard years inspired me to serve people struggling in circumstances like ours, which are all too common. And as prices rise and safety net programs get cut, they’re becoming more common every day.
When my family experienced homelessness in the early 2000s, the Urban Institute estimated that between 500,000 and 600,000 Americans experienced homelessness on any given night. Now the Department of Housing and Urban Development reports that number is over 745,000.
Today, between 50-60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck or report being financially strained. This has worsened in recent years as pandemic-era financial help has expired.
Part of the pain comes from the Trump administration’s sweeping tariffs and war of choice in Iran, which have increased inflation and spiked the cost of gas and groceries. But even as prices rise, they’ve also chosen to take help away from those who need it the most—and give it to those who need it least.
The so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which this Congress passed last year, slashed Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and shifted those investments to tax cuts for the ultra rich. So far, over 5 million people nationwide have lost SNAP, and at least 10 million people nationwide are expected to lose Medicaid coverage by 2034.
These changes will affect you even if you aren’t on Medicaid. Rural hospitals rely heavily on Medicaid patients. As these patients lose coverage, rural hospitals are at risk of closing, which could deprive entire communities of access to care. Nationwide, estimates suggest 400 to 700 rural hospitals are now vulnerable to closure, with nearly 300 at immediate risk.
These Medicaid cuts have also significantly compromised care coordination in rural areas. Care coordination lets case managers like me help families find wraparound care for intersecting hardships, from housing to food to healthcare. Since the Medicaid cuts, several providers have withdrawn services that help my clients with daily needs, like laundry or transportation.
My wife and I experienced firsthand how critical care coordination can be when our beautiful baby boy was born with terminal brain damage. Our care coordinator was invaluable in helping us determine his care and its costs. She was compassionate with our anguish.
Even though I’m a case manager and my wife works in human services, we struggled to navigate the system while grieving. How can a family less familiar with the system possibly cope?
Meanwhile, vulnerable people are losing help left and right. I’ve had clients like a woman with a sight disability get denied Medicaid renewal because she could “still walk and talk.” I’ve had clients with missing limbs denied disability benefits outright and then have to go through a lengthy appeals process.
We are all hurting, but together we can start to fix this. Voting lets us hold elected officials to account—and choose representatives who will fight for our housing, healthcare, and food assistance. Our lives depend on it.
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'Hunger Disaster Unrolling Before Our Eyes': Alarm Grows Over Trump Food Aid Evisceration
“SNAP participation is falling because the Trump administration has intentionally kicked people off of the program—leaving Americans hungry and still struggling to afford food,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Oct 23, 2026
An analysis published Thursday showed that millions of Americans have lost critical food assistance since President Donald Trump signed last year's massive Republican tax giveaway for the superrich, with soaring grocery prices and cuts to school meals exacerbating the crisis.
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), approximately 5.5 million people, including roughly 2 million children, have lost Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) assistance since Trump signed the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) in July 2025.
The legislation approved the deepest cuts to SNAP—also known as food stamps—and Medicaid in those programs' histories while slashing billions of dollars from other essential social programs to fund massive tax breaks for billionaires and corporations.
This, at a time when more than 47 million Americans—including 1 in 5 US children—are living in food-insecure households.
The 5.5 million people who have lost SNAP represent 13% of the program's recipients, according to CBPP. The decline is far below projections made by the Congressional Budget Office.
"The declines are especially pronounced in some states," the report noted. "SNAP participation fell in Arizona by nearly 51%... The caseload declines are 20% or more in Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Nebraska, Nevada, and Oklahoma, and—using more recent state data—in Indiana, Kansas, and Texas."
In absolute numbers, Texas saw the biggest loss of SNAP recipients, with 709,435 fewer enrollees. Florida lost 665,935 SNAP enrollees, while Arizona had 408,204 fewer and California lost 333,062.
The CBPP report follows an analysis released Tuesday by Unrig Our Economy and Americans for Tax Fairness that showed how Latino SNAP recipients have been disproportionately affected by food stamp cuts. The groups estimated that 1.5 million Latinos have been kicked off SNAP since Trump signed the OBBBA, with Texas (396,164) and Arizona (200,124) hardest-hit.
More cuts are highly likely, as "starting in October 2027, most states will have to pay between 5-15% of SNAP benefit costs, totaling hundreds of millions of dollars a year in many states," according to CBPP.
"The magnitude of the cost shift and the urgency surrounding error rates incentivized states to take drastic measures to reduce their payment error rates quickly and cut program costs, even if it meant delaying or improperly denying benefits to eligible people," the analysis warns.
The OBBBA's SNAP cuts, combined with stricter eligibility requirements, have forced schools across the country to scale back universal free meal programs amid declining federal reimbursements.
The Washington Post reported Thursday that school districts are experiencing ballooning unpaid lunch bills and struggling to ensure children are fed. In rural Indiana, one district’s share of students qualifying for free or reduced-price meals plunged from 66% to 44% in a year, while its lunch debt has already reached $10,000. In San Antonio, Texas, the number of schools offering free meals to every student under a federal program fell from 48 to 16. Nationwide, the average number of children receiving free school lunches dropped by 600,000 between fiscal years 2025 and 2026.
Making matters worse, many eligible immigrants are not applying for SNAP benefits out of fear it could affect their citizenship prospects.
Food banks and other charities are having to meet needs the government once addressed.
“It’s been getting out of control since last year,” Paco Vélez, president and chief executive of the Feeding South Florida food bank, told the Post. “It’s all created a situation where families are needing more and more assistance.”
The CBPP and Post reports came on the same day as a "Food Misery Index," published by the office of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), offered a detailed view of how the combined impact of SNAP cuts and skyrocketing grocery prices—exacerbated by Trump policies including tariffs, the deadly immigration crackdown, and the illegal war of choice on Iran—"has stripped more than $22 billion from American families since July 2025."
“SNAP participation is falling because the Trump administration has intentionally kicked people off of the program—leaving Americans hungry and still struggling to afford food,” Warren wrote Wednesday in a letter to US Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins.
“Instead of reaching for tools to mitigate these threats to families and working to bring down costs, the administration continues to sit idly by, peddling false narratives about the drop in SNAP participation, while delivering a one-two punch to American families who are struggling to put food on their tables," the senator continued.
"With grocery prices and food insecurity on the rise," Warren added, "I urge the administration to work with Congress to immediately reverse its harmful cuts to SNAP."
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Largest US Corporations Paid Lowest-Ever Tax Rate in 2025 Thanks to Trump and GOP: Study
"At a time when lawmakers claim the country cannot afford investments in families and communities, some of the most profitable corporations in American history are paying little or nothing in federal income taxes."
Oct 22, 2026
Some of the biggest US corporations paid an effective federal income tax rate of just 10.4% last year as Republican legislation passed by President Donald Trump disproportionately benefited businesses and the superrich while eviscerating key social programs, a study published Thursday revealed.
The 706 corporations examined by the Washington, DC-based Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) reported a combined $1.88 trillion in US profits in 2025, yet paid less than half the statutory federal corporate income tax rate of 21%. Of those companies, the study found that 114 paid no federal income taxes at all.
Those 706 companies collectively paid current federal corporate income taxes equal to just 10.4% of that $1.88 trillion, "the lowest effective rate that ITEP has uncovered in over 40 years of analyzing corporate income taxes," according to the analysis.
The study attributes this to two major tax laws enacted under Trump: The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act—derided at the time as the "GOP Tax Scam"—slashed the statutory corporate income tax rate from 35% to 21%, while the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed by the Republican-controlled Congress and signed by the president last year expanded and made permanent the 2017 cuts.
NEW: U.S. corporations are paying the lowest tax rate seen in decades.706 major corporations collectively paid a federal income tax rate of just 10.4%, less than half the statutory rate.114 corporations paid zero.itep.org/corporate-ta...
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— ITEP (@itep.org) October 22, 2026 at 8:30 AM
"These findings show just how dramatically the corporate tax system has been tilted in favor of the nation’s wealthiest and most powerful companies,” ITEP senior fellow Matt Gardner, who co-authored the report, said in a statement.
“At a time when lawmakers claim the country cannot afford investments in families and communities, some of the most profitable corporations in American history are paying little or nothing in federal income taxes," he added. "This is not an accident. It is the predictable outcome of deliberate policy choices that have steadily eroded the corporate tax base."
Among the report's key findings:
- The 114 companies that paid no current federal income tax last year include Tesla, Walt Disney, CVS, Citigroup, United Airlines, and DoorDash;
- 258 corporations paid effective tax rates below 7%, or less than one-third of the statutory rate;
- Those 258 companies reported $683 billion in US profits but paid an effective federal income tax rate of just 1.7%;
- The 706 corporations studied received $198 billion in federal tax subsidies by paying less than the statutory 21% rate;
- They also benefited from an additional $263 billion in tax savings attributable to the 2017 reduction of the statutory rate from 35% to 21%; and
- Just 25 corporations accounted for more than half of the 2025 tax subsidies, with Alphabet ($18.9 billion), Microsoft ($18.7 billion), Amazon ($17.4 billion), and Meta ($13.9 billion) among the largest beneficiaries.
While proponents of subsidies claim they are necessary to encourage investment, the new study raises questions about why some of the nation's most profitable corporations should receive billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies while vital social programs upon which tens of millions of Americans rely, like Medicaid and food stamps, suffer historic cuts under Republican legislation.
“Congress has repeatedly chosen to expand tax breaks for corporations that are already extraordinarily profitable,” said Steve Wamhoff, ITEP's federal policy director and co-author of the report. “Rather than continuing to subsidize corporate investments and reward aggressive tax avoidance, lawmakers should close these loopholes and ensure that large corporations pay a meaningful share of their profits in taxes.”
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1.5 Million Latinos Lost Food Aid Since Trump Passed Tax Giveaway for the Rich: Analysis
“As is so often the case, working families and communities of color bear the brunt of Trump’s economic policies."
Oct 20, 2026
An analysis published Tuesday estimates that 1.5 million US Latinos have lost access to federal food assistance since the passage of President Donald Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the latest of numerous indicators of how the law's evisceration of the social safety net is hitting working-class families while delivering enormous benefits to the wealthy.
The analysis by Unrig Our Economy and Americans for Tax Fairness estimates that in seven states alone—Texas, Arizona, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Nebraska, and Iowa—771,687 Latinos have lost Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits since July 2025, when Trump signed the sweeping budget reconciliation package into law. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) contains the biggest cuts to SNAP and Medicaid in those programs' histories.
According to the analysis, Texas alone accounts for more than half of those losses, with an estimated 396,164 Latino residents losing food assistance, while Arizona has lost another 200,124 and New York has lost 92,816.
“The Republican tax law took food assistance away from more than 1.5 million Latinos to pay for tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations,” Leor Tal, campaign director for Unrig Our Economy, said in a statement. “Families are already struggling with the high cost of groceries and gas thanks to the war in Iran and tariffs. SNAP cuts make it even harder for Latino families—who are disproportionately impacted—to put food on the table.”
More broadly, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated earlier this year that SNAP enrollment fell by more than 5 million people between July 2025 and June 2026, while more than 1.5 million children lost assistance.
The OBBBA contains new SNAP qualification requirements for people experiencing homelessness, veterans, former foster youth, and older adults. The Trump administration says the new rules are meant to ensure that only the truly needy receive benefits. However, the more stringent requirements are harming some of the most vulnerable people, as compliance procedures have proved to be an exclusionary barrier to qualified aid applicants.
The SNAP cuts have fueled what the New York Federal Reserve Bank in May called a “remarkable increase in food insecurity, particularly among lower-educated and lower-income households and households with young children.”
“The results are in: Trump and his GOP allies in Congress cut critical nutrition assistance that helps millions of Latinos and working people across the country meet their basic needs—all to deliver historic tax giveaways to billionaires and business elites,” said Jodie Rubenstein, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness.
“As is so often the case, working families and communities of color bear the brunt of Trump’s economic policies," Rubenstein added. "We cannot allow billionaire wealth to grow unchecked while communities go hungry.”
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The 'No Tax on Social Security' Monster That Will Not Die
The Trump administration continues to mislead on the “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
Oct 20, 2026
We have all seen the horror movie where the villain or monster seems to be dead but somehow manages to come back to life and terrorizes its potential victims. Well, this is how we felt when we saw the signs “No Tax on Social Security” at President Donald Trump’s campaign rallies in Arizona and Georgia, proudly carried by supporters. This myth has long been discredited.
Back in May, for this publication, we pointed out that contrary to the claims of the Trump administration, the “One Big Beautiful Bill” did not end taxes on Social Security. Instead, what it did was establish a temporary tax break for some senior citizens that expires in 2028.
The Brookings and Urban Institute pointed out back in July 2025 that:
President Trump proposed eliminating taxes on Social Security benefits as part of his 2024 campaign. And one provision of the budget bill does reduce income taxes for older adults on all their income, including their Social Security benefits. But the measure includes no direct tax cut on Social Security. The budget measure includes a temporary $6,000 deduction for taxpayers over age 65, starting this year. But that tax reduction would benefit fewer than half of older adults, the Tax Policy Center estimates.
On October 1 of this year, the PBS News Hour fact-checked the “no tax on Social Security” claim and concluded:
The bill falls short of a full repeal of Social Security taxation. The bill gives an additional $6,000 tax deduction to people ages 65 and older. This does not mean all Social Security beneficiaries receive a tax cut (because some of them are under 65). Some people get the tax break without receiving Social Security (if they are over 65 and not collecting benefits yet). These deductions come on top of existing tax deductions for Americans over 65 years old—$2,000 if married or $1,600 if unmarried and not a surviving spouse.
This is not one of the many times when fact-checking political ads reveals misleading context or exaggeration. The “no tax on Social Security” claim is just factually incorrect or, in plain language, a lie. There is no way around this statement.
In addition to misleading on the Social Security provisions of the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” the Trump administration is hiding the fact that it hurt the solvency of the Social Security Trust fund. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget pointed out in June of 2025:
The Social Security and Medicare Trustees estimated in their 2025 annual reports on the programs that the retirement and hospital trust funds will become insolvent in 2033—only eight years from today. We estimate the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) would accelerate Social Security and Medicare insolvency by a year, to 2032. That’s when today’s 60-year-olds reach the full retirement age and when today’s youngest retirees turn 69.
So, how do we kill the myth that the “One Big Beautiful Bill” ended taxes on Social Security? We are not characters in a horror movie, but we have a sure way of getting rid of the no tax on Social Security monster. On Election Day, vote for candidates who will stand up for the truth about Social Security.
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'They Are Hiding Stuff': Trump Administration Delays Data on Impact of GOP Tax Cuts
One advocate suggested the administration is suppressing the data because it "doesn't line up" with Trump officials' narrative about the Republican budget law.
Oct 14, 2026
With the midterm elections less than three weeks away, US President Donald Trump's administration has delayed the release of Internal Revenue Service data showing how the Republican budget legislation that he signed into law last year has impacted families up and down the income distribution.
Politico reported Wednesday that the IRS "typically releases the data in the wake of each filing season, but this year's rollout is more anticipated because it's expected to provide the first detailed look at how taxpayers are taking advantage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, including its new deductions for overtime wages and tipped income." The outlet added that the IRS, whose workforce has been gutted by the Trump administration, is "awaiting approval from the Treasury Department to publish the figures," which were scheduled to be released in July.
The New York Times reported last month that the Trump administration is also withholding IRS estimates of unpaid taxes.
Nina Olson, executive director of the Center for Taxpayer Rights and the former US taxpayer advocate, told Politico that she believes the administration is suppressing information that runs counter to its narrative about the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), which extended provisions of the 2017 Trump-GOP tax cuts that disproportionately benefited the richest Americans and large corporations.
"I think they are hiding stuff that doesn't line up with all the crowing the CEO has been doing," Olson said, referring to IRS chief executive Frank Bisignano, who has celebrated the OBBBA as "historic tax relief for working families."
But an analysis released last week by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy showed that the OBBBA "overwhelmingly benefits the rich and corporations."
"While proponents of OBBBA often describe certain portions of the law that they argue benefit the middle class (such as tax breaks for tips and overtime) these provisions are a very small portion of the overall legislation which overwhelmingly benefits high-income people and corporations," the group observed. "Since the 2025 law was enacted, enormous profitable corporations like Meta, Amazon, Google, Tesla, and many others have paid extremely low effective tax rates (from 0 percent to 8 percent) in large part due to OBBBA."
The analysis found that, overall, Trump's major economic policies have hiked taxes and consumer costs for low- and middle-income families while cutting them for the top 1%.
“The tax cuts Americans were promised—which were tilted heavily to the top to start—are being overwhelmed by higher prices and higher healthcare costs for most families,” said Steve Wamhoff, ITEP's federal policy director. “When you look at the full picture rather than tax cuts in isolation, the result is striking: The typical American in every income group is paying more, except that the richest 1% is the one group that comes out ahead.”
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Up to 12 Million Americans Have Lost Health Coverage During Trump’s Second Term: Analysis
Republicans' cuts to Medicaid and their refusal to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies are key factors in the coverage drop.
Oct 09, 2026
Independent healthcare analyst Charles Gaba on Thursday published an updated analysis estimating that up to 12 million Americans have lost their insurance coverage since the start of President Donald Trump's second term.
Gaba based his new estimate on updated data he compiled from recent reports for Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), as well as some state enrollment data for Affordable Care Act (ACA) insurance exchanges.
In total, Gaba found that enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP has dropped by 6.2 million people since the start of Trump's second term, while enrollment in ACA exchanges is down by anywhere from 4.6 million to 6.1 million people, and enrollment in Basic Health Plans (BHP) is down by nearly 275,000 people over the same period.
While there are around 1.8 million more people enrolled in Medicare now than there were at the start of Trump's term, Gaba noted that this isn't nearly enough to make up for the loss of enrollment in other programs.
Adding everything up, Gaba estimated that "between 10.88 million and 12.40 million fewer Americans enrolled in a public healthcare coverage program as of June 2026 than in were as of January 2025."
As in prior analyses, Gaba examined the possibility that some of the people who lost coverage through these programs transitioned to employer-sponsored insurance, but deemed it "extremely unlikely... since unemployment is higher than it was in January 2025."
Over the last two years, Trump and congressional Republicans have taken a number of actions that have made healthcare less affordable and pushed people off coverage.
First, they cut spending on Medicaid by an estimated $900 billion over a 10-year period when they enacted the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in 2025. The Congressional Budget Office projects these cuts will leave more than 10 million fewer people enrolled in the program by 2034.
GOP lawmakers last year also refused to extend enhanced subsidies for insurance plans purchased through the ACA, even as insurers raised premiums on those plans by an average of 26% this year, according to an analysis published by KFF.
In a Thursday article published by Time, scholars Neale Mahoney and Abigail Sanchez of the Stanford Institute for Economic Research warned that the costs of private health insurance are set to spike even further in 2027.
"Employer health plan costs are projected to rise 8 to 10% next year," Mahoney and Sanchez explained, "the largest increase in more than 20 years and double the average increase of the 2010s."
The two researchers said there are three major reasons for the surge in insurance costs: The expiration of the enhanced ACA subsidies, an increase in premiums and out-of-pocket costs for employer-based insurance plans, and the upcoming Medicaid work requirements projected to push millions of people off the program.
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US Food Banks Under Strain as Trump Policies Drive Up Costs
"It’s really hard for people in the United States to understand the scale of hunger."
Sep 28, 2026
Two of President Donald Trump's signature policies—the illegal war with Iran and cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program—are putting pressure on food banks throughout the country in the form of higher demand from clients and increased shipping costs.
In a Sunday report from Meidas News, reporter Scott MacFarlane published interviews with several food bank officials who said the increased cost of energy caused by Trump's Iran War has strained their ability to serve their communities.
From a demand side, more families have been relying on food banks because the increased cost of gasoline has left them with less money to spend at the grocery store.
And from a supply perspective, record-high diesel prices have hurt food banks' budgets by increasing transportation costs for staple items.
Craig Rice, chief executive officer at the Manna Food Center in Maryland, told MacFarlane that his organization is "seeing so many people come to us, who’ve never come to [the food bank] before."
"It used to be people who were working hourly-wage jobs," Rice added. "Now we see people who are salary employees. They may have been stable at one price, but suddenly they’re impacted by gas prices."
Amy Beros, president of the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina, similarly told MacFarlane that organizations in her region have seen demand for food services increase by between "20% to 60%" over the last year.
"It’s really hard for people in the United States to understand the scale of hunger," Beros said, "because it doesn’t look like it looks on TV."
The strain on food banks isn't just limited to one state or region.
Greta Faworski, associate director of Kalamazoo Loaves and Fishes, said in an interview published Monday with Michigan advance that she's seen a 56% increase in people who are reaching out to her organization for help.
Faworski said the recent surge in demand was akin to what she saw last year during a nationwide delay in SNAP benefits in the wake of a federal government shutdown.
"On an average day, we serve about 800 people a day," explained Faworski. "When there was notification because of the government shutdown that November SNAP benefits would not be released on time, in one week, we saw an increase to where we were serving 1,200 people a day."
The problem is expected to grow more acute because state governments starting next month will have to pay for a largest share of SNAP administrative costs due to provisions in the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
A report published last week by Spectrum News 13 put a spotlight on how surging diesel costs are squeezing food banks in central Florida.
Greg Higgerson, chief development officer for Second Harvest Food Bank, told Spectrum News 13 that his organization's fuel bill is "somwhere around $15,00 per month," which he said was "up significantly from this time last year."
And like food banks elsewhere in the US, Higgerson said, the Second Harvest Food Bank is being forced to pay higher costs as demand for its services is going up.
“It’s going to be harder to make ends meet in the next few months,” Higgerson said. “There’s going to be more people. We know that, we see it already, and it’s going to cost more to help those folks.”
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