Trump’s Big Ugly Bill: The Most Reactionary Legislation Since The Gilded Age— Trickling Up Misery

MAGA Isn’t Reviving the Past— It’s Worsening It… Are You Ready To Vote?

Forever douche bags

We’ve posted countless articles about how Trump is the most corrupt president and the worst president— all true— but is he also the most reactionary president? The U.S. has had some real reactionaries in the White House— virulent racist Andrew Johnson, John Tyler, Franklin Pierce, Ronald Reagan, James Buchanan, William Taft, Herbert Hoover— but as reactionary as the current resident?

Trump doesn’t just echo the worst reactionary instincts of his most odious predecessors, he amplifies them through the modern machinery of grievance, authoritarianism and plutocratic nihilism. Johnson vetoed civil rights legislation; Trump tried to overturn an election to restore white grievance rule. Reagan courted the Moral Majority; Trump handed the Christian right the courts. Hoover let the country sink in despair; Trump actively fans the flames of division and distrust. No previous president has wrapped old-school reaction in such a toxic cocktail of conspiracy, cultism and celebrity.

On Friday, a trio of NY Times reporters wrote that Señor TACO’s big ugly bill is the most reactionary legislation in contemporary memory. There were some others— and we’re just talking about economics here— that were hideously reactionary as well. Although it took 3 more years before dragging the U.S. into the Great Depression, Calvin Coolidge’s Revenue Act of 1926 rolled back progressive taxation, concentrating wealth among the elite. It prioritized tax cuts for the wealthy over public investment, contributing to the economic inequality that led to the Great Depression. Like Trump’s big ugly bill, it focused on tax cuts for high earners and corporations while exacerbating inequality. However, it lacked the social program cuts of Trump’s bill, and its scope was narrower, focusing primarily on tax reductions without the broad spending and immigration policy changes. Its reactionary nature was significant for its time, but it didn’t surpass Trump’s bill in scale or breadth of regressive impact, given the latter’s combination of tax cuts, welfare reductions and environmental rollbacks.

Just a few years later, Hoover’s Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was a definition of reactionary, raising tariff’s on 20,000 imported products with average rates increasing almost 60%, a return to protectionist, isolationist policies, rejecting progressive calls for international cooperation and free trade. It deepened the Depression by stifling global commerce, disproportionately harming workers and consumers while protecting select industries. It is the model for the MAGA tariff agenda, though its economic impact was narrower, focusing on trade rather than tax or social program reforms. While it had severe consequences— worsening the Depression— it lacked the multifaceted regressive elements of Trump’s bill, such as cuts to Medicaid and SNAP or environmental deregulation. Its reactionary scope is significant but less comprehensive.

And then there was another one Trump models his bill on, Reagan’s catastrophic Tax Reform Act of 1986, part of an aggressive, broad conservative push to reduce government size and promote Austerity and supply-side economics, reacting against post-New Deal welfare state expansion. Reagan rolled back progressive taxation principles, prioritizing tax relief for the wealthy and corporations under the trickle-down theory, increasing income inequality and reducing revenue for social programs, aligning with Reagan’s broader deregulation and welfare cuts— reductions in housing and education funding. However, it was “bipartisan” and included some progressive elements, like closing loopholes. It shares plenty of similarities with Trump’s bill in its focus on tax cuts for the ultra rich and corporations, but it was less aggressive in cutting social programs directly within the legislation. Trump’s bill goes further by combining tax cuts with explicit Medicaid and SNAP reforms and environmental deregulation, making it far more reactionary in its direct assault on progressive policies across multiple domains.

And let’s not leave out Clinton’s Welfare Reform Act (1996), an ugly, conservative retreat from Great Society social safety net programs, emphasizing “personal responsibility” over systemic support. It punished low-income families, particularly single mothers and increased poverty for some. Its focus on cutting safety nets is very much like the Trump bill and was highly reactionary in its direct attack on welfare programs, similar to Trump’s bill’s social program cuts even if narrower in scope.

The only bill that might be as reactionary as the big ugly bill was Reagan’s 1981 Economic Recovery Tax Act, the cornerstone of Reagan’s reactionary agenda, reversing decades of progressive taxation and expanding wealth inequality, prioritizing the wealthy, with the top 1% receiving disproportionate benefits, while social programs faced cuts in sister legislation. Its trickle-down/Austterity philosophy blatantly favored capital over labor. Its tax cuts were more dramatic than Trump— top rate from 70% to 50% vs. Trump’s extension of already-low rates, and it set the stage for long-term wealth concentration. However, Trump’s bill combines tax cuts with direct welfare reductions and environmental deregulation within a single package, making its reactionary scope broader. 

"Big Beautiful Golden Deal" by Nancy Ohanian

In their report, Emily Badger, Alicia Parlapiano and Margot Singer-Katz wrote that the combination of the tax cuts and the social safety net shredding is what makes the big ugly bill worse than any of the others. It would raise after-tax incomes for the highest-earning 10% of American households on average by 2.3% a year, while lowering incomes for the poorest tenth by 3.9%. Along with Trump’s harebrained tariff schemes and his personal corruption, this defines MAGA’s economic agenda. “The shape of that distribution is rare: Tax cut packages have seldom left the poor significantly worse off. And bills that cut the safety net usually haven’t also included benefits for the rich. By inverting those precedents, congressional Republicans have created a bill unlike anything Washington has produced since deficit fears began to loom large in the 1990s.”

How’s the for some classic trickle down philosophy from Stephen Miran, chair of the Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers? “The best way to help workers across the income distribution, including all the folks in the bottom, is to create an environment in which firms want to hire them.”

Obviously, Trump couldn’t have done this alone. Every step of this grotesque regression has been rubber-stamped, cheered and engineered by congressional Republicans (enabled by Chuck Schumer in the Senate). We all know, they’re not innocent bystanders to the mad king’s whims; these are the architects and enablers of the most aggressive upward redistribution of wealth since at least the Gilded Age. The GOP a party that has now abandoned even the pretense of “fiscal conservatism” or “compassionate conservatism.” Today’s Republican Party has weaponized austerity as a political bludgeon, not as the economic tool people like Jack Kemp, Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney once persuaded themselves it was— punishing the poor, the sick and the vulnerable while groveling before billionaires, oil barons, private equity moguls and crypto-criminals.

How many times have we said that the cruelty isn’t a bug but the whole the point? Now it’s codified in the fine print— buried in budget scorecards, work requirements and regulatory guttings passed in the dead of night by House Republicans like Derrick Van Orden, Mike Lawler, Nick LaLota, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, David Valadao and Bryan Steil, who know full well the consequences of what they’re doing. They saw the same CBO reports. They read the same projections. They understand exactly who this bill hurts and who it rewards— and they passed it anyway, with no shame, no dissent and no moral qualms. They’re all accomplices to an economic war against the majority of Americans.

Randy Bryce is the progressive Democrat running for Congress in a swing southeast Wisconsin district.  “The guy I’ll be replacing,” he told us this morning, “used to drive Paul Ryan around. Now he’s a millionaire corporate lawyer turned into a bought and paid for Trump loyalist. Not only has he lied to WI-01 about voting to gut Social Security but he’s afraid to look voters in the eye and explain why he did it. He claims the huge ugly bill doesn’t mention the words “social security.” That’s like planning a bank robbery without using the word “money.” Tick tock Bryan…