One Big Beautiful Bill

Is it all we ever wanted, or just politics as usual?

A few weeks ago, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 1, the so-called "One Big Beautiful Bill." Designed to implement much of Donald Trump’s second-term agenda, H.R. 1 uses the reconciliation process to bypass the possibility of a Democratic filibuster in the Senate.

The bill has divided conservatives, as illustrated by the Twitter feud that broke out yesterday between President Trump and Elon Musk. Libertarian-leaning conservatives like Sen. Rand Paul have also come out against the bill, calling it a pork-barrel project that increases spending. Many others have expressed frustration, saying the bill is a rejection of everything the DOGE team worked for.

Trump advisor Stephen Miller has emerged as the bill’s most vocal proponent, posting numerous tweets over the past week, including this one:

I’ve seen a few claims making the rounds on the Big Beautiful Bill that require correction.

The first is that it doesn’t “codify the DOGE cuts.” A reconciliation bill, which is a budget bill that passes with 50 votes, is limited by senate rules to “mandatory” spending only — eg Medicaid and Food Stamps. The senate rules prevent it from cutting “discretionary” spending — eg the Department of Education or federal grants. The DOGE cuts are overwhelmingly discretionary, not mandatory. The bill saves more than 1.6 TRILLION in mandatory spending, including the largest-ever welfare reform. A remarkable achievement.

I’ve also seen claims the bill increases the deficit. This lie is based on a CBO accounting gimmick. Income tax rates from the 2017 tax cut are set to expire in September. They were always planned to be permanent. CBO says maintaining *current* rates adds to the deficit, but by definition leaving these income tax rates unchanged cannot add one penny to the deficit. The bill’s spending cuts REDUCE the deficit against the current law baseline, which is the only correct baseline to use.

Another fantastically false claim is that the bill spends trillions of dollars. This is just completely invented out of whole cloth. This is not a ten year budget bill—it doesn’t “fund” almost any operations of government, which are funded in the annual budget bills (which this is not). In other words, if this bill passed, but the annual budget bill did not, there would be no government funding. Under the math that critics are using, if we passed a one paragraph reconciliation bill that cut simply 50 billion in food stamp spending, they would say the bill “added” trillions in spending and debt because they are counting ALL the projected federal spending that exists entirely outside the scope of this legislation, which is of course preposterous. The only funding in the bill is for the President’s border and defense priorities, while enacting a net spending cut of over 1.6 TRILLION dollars.

The bill has two fiscal components: a massive tax cut and a massive spending cut.

After absorbing the back-and-forth debate, I’ve concluded that critics of the bill are missing the forest for the trees.

The biggest and most obvious problem with H.R. 1 is its size. I’ve long railed against multi-thousand-page omnibus bills. They’re always too large for any single congressman or senator to read through, and they’re packed with so many items that no matter what you do, you’ll be crucified. Vote for it? You’re a spend-happy hypocrite! Vote against it? You’re fighting Trump’s agenda!

It makes me all the more grateful for our single-subject rule in Idaho, which the Legislature usually respects.

That said, we have to fight on the battlefield before us, not the one we wish we had. With slim majorities in the House and Senate, getting this done through reconciliation is the only plausible path toward codifying the platform on which President Trump ran. As much as libertarian-leaning conservatives wish the president’s mandate was to reduce entitlement spending, that wasn’t it.

Here is the national GOP Platform that carried Trump to victory last year:

1. SEAL THE BORDER, AND STOP THE MIGRANT INVASION

2. CARRY OUT THE LARGEST DEPORTATION OPERATION IN AMERICAN HISTORY

3. END INFLATION, AND MAKE AMERICA AFFORDABLE AGAIN

4. MAKE AMERICA THE DOMINANT ENERGY PRODUCER IN THE WORLD, BY FAR!

5. STOP OUTSOURCING, AND TURN THE UNITED STATES INTO A MANUFACTURING SUPERPOWER

6. LARGE TAX CUTS FOR WORKERS, AND NO TAX ON TIPS!

7. DEFEND OUR CONSTITUTION, OUR BILL OF RIGHTS, AND OUR FUNDAMENTAL FREEDOMS, INCLUDING FREEDOM OF SPEECH, FREEDOM OF RELIGION, AND THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS

8. PREVENT WORLD WAR THREE, RESTORE PEACE IN EUROPE AND IN THE MIDDLE EAST, AND BUILD A GREAT IRON DOME MISSILE DEFENSE SHIELD OVER OUR ENTIRE COUNTRY -- ALL MADE IN AMERICA

9. END THE WEAPONIZATION OF GOVERNMENT AGAINST THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

10. STOP THE MIGRANT CRIME EPIDEMIC, DEMOLISH THE FOREIGN DRUG CARTELS, CRUSH GANG VIOLENCE, AND LOCK UP VIOLENT OFFENDERS

11. REBUILD OUR CITIES, INCLUDING WASHINGTON DC, MAKING THEM SAFE, CLEAN, AND BEAUTIFUL AGAIN.

12. STRENGTHEN AND MODERNIZE OUR MILITARY, MAKING IT, WITHOUT QUESTION, THE STRONGEST AND MOST POWERFUL IN THE WORLD

13. KEEP THE U.S. DOLLAR AS THE WORLD'S RESERVE CURRENCY

14. FIGHT FOR AND PROTECT SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE WITH NO CUTS, INCLUDING NO CHANGES TO THE RETIREMENT AGE

15. CANCEL THE ELECTRIC VEHICLE MANDATE AND CUT COSTLY AND BURDENSOME REGULATIONS

16. CUT FEDERAL FUNDING FOR ANY SCHOOL PUSHING CRITICAL RACE THEORY, RADICAL GENDER IDEOLOGY, AND OTHER INAPPROPRIATE RACIAL, SEXUAL, OR POLITICAL CONTENT ON OUR CHILDREN

17. KEEP MEN OUT OF WOMEN'S SPORTS

18. DEPORT PRO-HAMAS RADICALS AND MAKE OUR COLLEGE CAMPUSES SAFE AND PATRIOTIC AGAIN

19. SECURE OUR ELECTIONS, INCLUDING SAME DAY VOTING, VOTER IDENTIFICATION, PAPER BALLOTS, AND PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP

20. UNITE OUR COUNTRY BY BRINGING IT TO NEW AND RECORD LEVELS OF SUCCESS

There are numerous references to controlling the border, protecting traditional values, and eliminating government regulations, but the only mention of entitlements is a promise not to cut Social Security or Medicare.

Many conservatives talk about “the platform” as if it were a tablet handed directly to Abraham Lincoln by Almighty God. Well, this is the platform adopted by the Republican National Committee in 2024. You might not personally like it, but these are the issues on which Trump ran and won—and these are the issues he is prioritizing with the limited time he has left.

As Will Chamberlain pointed out on Twitter earlier this week, President Trump won the 2016 Republican primary on a similar platform, while Sen. Rand Paul, a libertarian fiscal hawk, won just a single delegate. Does that mean the debt doesn’t matter? Of course not. But the art of politics means learning how to prioritize what you want to accomplish. Right now, the American people are onboard with mass deportations, reducing government regulations, and making America great again. Any proposal to cut entitlements right now would be a non-starter.

Click here to read the bill for yourself. It’s long, but you can paste the text into Grok or ChatGPT for assistance. Are there things in this bill I personally dislike? Of course. Are there far more things I believe are imperative to saving our country? Absolutely:

• President Trump has had to fight tooth and nail to allocate funding to build a wall on the southern border since his first election in 2016. H.R. 1 fully funds the wall.

• Some Trump voters have been frustrated by what they see as too slow a pace of deportations. H.R. 1 increases funding for ICE and makes it possible to deport a million illegal aliens per year.

• H.R. 1 makes the tax cuts from Trump’s first term permanent. This is why Democrats are accusing the bill of raising the deficit—they consider tax cuts to be government spending.

• No more Green New Deal, no 87,000 new IRS agents to audit your Venmo transactions, no more DEI mandates.

• H.R. 1 would revive the Keystone XL oil pipeline, helping us achieve energy independence.

• The bill bans federal funding of gender transition for minors as well as prohibits drag shows for children on federal property such as military bases. (Apparently that has been a thing!)

• H.R. 1 also implements several great policies that Idaho has already adopted, such as:

  • No Medicaid for illegal aliens

  • Work requirements for able-bodied adults on Medicaid

  • School choice

  • A ban on China buying U.S. farmland

The libertarian instinct to oppose the bill because it lacks discretionary spending cuts is misguided. First, this bill fulfills President Trump’s campaign promises and the national GOP platform. Second, cuts to discretionary spending will come later via rescission bills—Rep. Russ Fulcher is already working on this legislation.

It also reflects a misunderstanding of the art of the possible. The choice is not between H.R. 1 and a perfect bill that eliminates the deficit and rolls government back to pre-New Deal levels. I would happily support such a bill, but it would still need 60 votes in the Senate to overcome the inevitable Democratic filibuster, assuming it could even pass the House. (Spoiler: it wouldn’t.) No, the choice is between H.R. 1, which codifies most of President Trump’s agenda, or continued gridlock.

If Trump fails to codify his agenda through Congress, a future Democratic president could undo everything he’s accomplished before sundown on Inauguration Day. It won’t matter how much we complain about the debt if a future Democratic Congress goes hog wild, and you know it will. As I’ve been preaching for several years now, the Trump agenda gives us time to save our country, while the old Republican way of doing things just ensures its destruction. Do you want to cut entitlements? We have to save the country first.

At a higher level, as much as I respect libertarian lawmakers like Sen. Rand Paul and Rep. Thomas Massie, I don’t believe they fully appreciate the existential threat that mass migration poses to this country. They are hyper-focused on the debt—and don’t get me wrong, it’s a problem—but those numbers won’t matter if we lose the country first. Mass migration has always had the power to permanently alter a nation:

• The Anglo-Saxon migrations in the 5th century transformed Celtic Britain into England.

• Bantu migrations into South Africa displaced the Boers, who now face persecution as minorities in the land their ancestors built.

• Even the colonization of North America changed the continent forever—just ask the Iroquois, the Sioux, or the Navajo.

This is something Donald Trump deeply understands. It’s why immigration has been the centerpiece of his agenda for ten years. It’s why Stephen Miller has so strongly championed H.R. 1—it gives the administration the tools it needs to do what’s necessary to save the Republic. Former Trump advisor and Idaho Solicitor General Theo Wold is on the same page:

Reverse Biden’s illegal alien invasion and you can balance the budget, cut inflation, and save the Republic.

If the illegal alien invasion remains inside the nation then the Republic is over.

Or, as Jack Posobiec put it:

Imagine thinking deporting people isn't related to our federal debt and entitlement crisis

Reduce the demand side of the equation, reduce the overall expenditures

Imagine not understanding this

I believe the libertarian myopia on this issue stems from the assumption that there’s nothing unique or special about the American people, and that the country would keep functioning if its people were completely replaced. But people are not interchangeable economic units. Culture matters. An America where the majority comes from a fundamentally different culture will be a different country. This is not a value judgment about any particular culture, just reality.

At The Blaze, deputy editor Katarina Pfister explained that her initial instinct was to oppose the bill, but after taking the time to listen to Stephen Miller explain what it does and why it is structured the way it is, she changed her mind:

Border security — check. Welfare reform — check. Pro-growth tax cuts — check. So why cram it all into one bill? Why not pass each measure individually, on its own merits?

Miller addressed that too. In a perfect world, each item would pass as a clean bill. But in the real world, every one of these provisions would require 60 votes in the Senate — including Chuck Schumer’s. That’s not happening.

The reconciliation process, however, only requires a simple majority. It’s the only legislative path available. For once, Republicans are using the rules the way Democrats do: to win.

I didn’t like it at first. It felt like a compromise. But now I see it as the only way to do what we’ve been saying we want to do for years.

Idaho GOP chairwoman Dorothy Moon also came away in support after meeting with White House officials in Florida:

In the end, the Big Beautiful Bill delivers what we’ve been fighting for: smaller government, lower taxes, reduced welfare dependency, secure borders, and more freedom. It’s not perfect—and let me tell you, I never saw a perfect bill during my time in the Idaho Legislature—but it’s a game-changer in our efforts to truly Make America Great Again. We’re not going to undo the damage the left has done to our country overnight, but this is a great start.

I stand with Donald Trump, Theo Wold, Stephen Miller, Russ Fulcher, Will Chamberlain, Jack Posobiec, Katarina Pfister, Dorothy Moon, and everyone else who recognizes the pivotal moment we face in the battle to save our country and make America great again. H.R. 1 isn’t perfect, but it’s the best chance we have to move toward our goal. I urge Congress to do what is necessary to get it to done.