# ANALYSIS: Big Beautiful Bill — one year later, America counts the damage from Trump's law

> On June 28, 2025, the US Senate adopted through budget reconciliation, by 51 votes to 49, the text that Donald Trump had named the One Big Beautiful Bill. A marketing name, an overreaching ambition, an impact we are only beginning to measure one year later. Republican senators Thom Tillis and Rand Paul had voted against — Tillis for fiscal reasons, Paul for libertarian ones — b

- Author: Maxime Marquette
- Publisher: MadMax (https://mad-max.co)
- Section: Analysis
- Published: 2026-06-27
- Canonical URL: https://mad-max.co/en/article/analyse-big-beautiful-bill-un-an-apres-l-amerique-compte-les-degats-de-la-loi-tr

## Introduction: The law that changed America, one year on

### The vote that started everything

On **June 28, 2025**, the US Senate adopted through budget reconciliation, by **51 votes to 49**, the text that **Donald Trump** had named the **One Big Beautiful Bill**. A marketing name, an overreaching ambition, an impact we are only beginning to measure one year later. Republican senators **Thom Tillis** and **Rand Paul** had voted against — Tillis for fiscal reasons, Paul for libertarian ones — but their resistance was not enough. The text passed, and with it, the largest transformation of American tax policy and social programs since the **Reagan years**.

On **July 4, 2025** — a date carefully chosen for its patriotic symbolism — **Trump** signed the law in a grand ceremony at the **White House**. Since then, debates over its real impact have only intensified. One year later, in **June 2026**, the first economic, social, and political data allow for a reckoning — and that reckoning is far from uniform.

### A law with many dimensions

The **Big Beautiful Bill** is not a simple law. It is an omnibus text that simultaneously touches corporate and individual taxation, food assistance programs (**SNAP**), healthcare for the poor (**Medicaid**), tax credits for clean energy, immigration, defense, and the national debt. That scope is precisely what makes it so difficult to analyze: there is no single truth about this text, but as many truths as there are affected population groups.

For **corporations** and **wealthy households**: a historic fiscal victory. For the **11.8 million Americans** who will lose their **Medicaid** coverage over ten years according to the **Congressional Budget Office**, it is a silent catastrophe. For the **federal budget**: a time bomb of **$3.4 trillion** added to the debt over ten years. Those are the three simultaneous realities of the **Big Beautiful Bill**, one year after its passage.

*They call it a "beautiful" bill. I wonder whether the 11.8 million Americans who will lose their Medicaid find it beautiful. Political language has this perverse ability to dress social catastrophes as national celebrations. The Big Beautiful Bill may be the finest example of that rhetorical swindle in our era.*

## Taxation: permanent cuts and who benefits

### The 2017 reductions made permanent

The fiscal heart of the **Big Beautiful Bill** is the permanentization of the tax reductions adopted in **2017** under the **Tax Cuts and Jobs Act**. Those cuts, which were set to expire in **2025**, primarily benefited **corporations** (tax rate reduced from **35%** to **21%**) and **high-income households** (upper-bracket reductions). By making them permanent, the **2025** law guarantees a structural tax advantage for the most powerful economic actors for decades to come.

Added to that are two new populist measures: the elimination of **taxes on tips** and **taxes on overtime**. These measures, presented as gifts to frontline workers — servers, delivery drivers, caregivers — are real in their immediate effects. But economists broadly note that they also create distortions in the labor market and tax avoidance opportunities for jobs that can be reclassified into tip-based structures.

### Who really wins?

According to analyses by the **Tax Policy Center** and the **Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget**, the wealthiest **20%** of households capture roughly **65%** of the tax benefits from the law. The bottom **40%** see marginal or zero gains. This distribution is not accidental: it reflects the structure of the **2017** cuts, whose primary beneficiaries were capital holders and large corporations.

One year on, the first tax data for fiscal year **2025** confirm this trend. Federal tax revenues as a share of **GDP** have declined, tax refunds to wealthy households have grown, and wealth inequality — already at a record before the law — has continued to widen. The American dream, in its **2026** edition, is increasingly denominated in dollars and financial assets, not wages.

*Making a tax advantage permanent for those who already have everything, at the very moment you are cutting health insurance for those who have little — that is a political choice, not an economic necessity. And it is a choice that tells us something very deep about what Trump's America considers a national priority.*

## Medicaid: 11.8 million people without a safety net

### The most brutal cuts since the program's creation

The most dramatic cut in the **Big Beautiful Bill** is the one inflicted on **Medicaid**, which covers the poorest Americans, people with disabilities, and a large share of elderly residents in nursing care. Over ten years, the law reduces **Medicaid** spending by approximately **$990 billion**. Consequently, the **CBO** estimates that **11.8 million Americans** will lose coverage over that decade.

The mechanisms of this cut are multiple: introduction of **work requirements** for working-age beneficiaries, reduction of **federal transfers** to states, blocking certain coverage expansions foreseen under **Obamacare**. Each mechanism is defended by supporters as an efficiency measure or a means of personal responsibility. Each of them, in practice, translates into lost coverage, unreimbursed medications, hospitalizations avoided until it is too late.

### One year on: first measurable impacts

In **June 2026**, the first **Medicaid** enrollment data are beginning to show a decline in states that most rapidly implemented the new rules. States such as **Texas**, **Florida**, and **Alabama** — which already had strict eligibility criteria — are recording coverage losses exceeding the **CBO**'s initial projections. Medical associations report an increase in emergency room visits for conditions that could have been treated in primary care.

This is the classic tragedy of health coverage cuts: people who lose insurance do not disappear — they continue to need care, but seek it in the worst place at the worst time, worsening their condition and exploding systemic costs. The federal government's short-term savings translate into deferred — and often amplified — costs for states, hospitals, and families.

*11.8 million people without Medicaid: that is not an abstract number. It is a diabetic mother in Ohio who can no longer afford her insulin. A veteran in Louisiana delaying psychiatric follow-up for lack of coverage. A child in Alabama who will not see a dentist until the pain becomes unbearable. Those stories do not make headlines, but they make the reality of America in 2026.*

## SNAP and food security: states under pressure

### Shifting the burden to the states

The American food assistance program — **SNAP** (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), formerly food stamps — is not eliminated by the **Big Beautiful Bill**, but it is significantly transformed. The law forces states to assume a larger share of the program's co-financing, which, in the poorest states, inevitably translates into coverage reductions or stricter eligibility criteria.

Before the law, **SNAP** was funded **100%** by the federal government for food benefits. States must now contribute between **5%** and **25%** of costs, depending on their poverty rate. For a state like **Mississippi** — the poorest in the US, where **20%** of the population faces food insecurity — this new burden is crushing.

### Food security in retreat

American food assistance organizations — **Feeding America**, **Second Harvest**, and dozens of local food banks — report a significant increase in demand since the new rules began taking effect in **2026**. In some regions of the South and Midwest, food bank queues have grown by **15 to 30%** according to local estimates, partially absorbing the **SNAP** coverage reductions.

This reality stands in contrast to the arguments of the law's supporters, who claimed that work requirements and state accountability would "empower" beneficiaries and reduce dependence on assistance. In practice, in an economy where low-skill jobs are often precarious, seasonal, and without benefits, the work obligation eliminates vulnerable beneficiaries without moving them toward a better economic situation.

*Forcing states already short on resources to fund part of SNAP is a clever way to cut food assistance without taking direct responsibility for it. That is creative accounting in service of social cruelty. And it's called a reform.*

## The debt: $3.4 trillion and no one wants to talk about it

### The CBO and the inconvenient truth

The **Congressional Budget Office** — the independent bipartisan body charged with evaluating the budgetary impact of American laws — had estimated, in its analysis of the final text in **June 2025**, that the **Big Beautiful Bill** would add more than **$3.9 trillion** to federal debt over ten years, including interest costs. The **Bipartisan Policy Center** refined that estimate to **$3.4 trillion** in direct costs, excluding interest. In either case, the result is the same: the US national debt, which already exceeded **$35 trillion** before the law, will continue growing at a dizzying pace.

The law's defenders had offered several counter-arguments: economic growth generated by the tax cuts would partially offset the revenue losses (supply-side economics), and cuts to social programs would generate substantial savings. One year on, the available data suggest that American economic growth has not accelerated enough to validate those optimistic projections. The federal deficit for fiscal year **2025-2026** remains on a trajectory of **$2 trillion** annually.

### Elon Musk and the unexpected opposition

One of the political surprises in the debate over the **Big Beautiful Bill** was the declared opposition of **Elon Musk**, Trump's informal advisor and the public face of the DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) movement. **Musk** publicly criticized the text for its failure to meaningfully reduce the deficit, arguing that cuts to social programs were insufficient to offset the tax revenue losses and that the law was a "fake" fiscal reform. That stance created a visible crack in the Trump coalition, revealing tensions between fiscal libertarians and social populists within the **MAGA** movement.

One year later, those tensions have not disappeared. Republicans like **Rand Paul** continue to push for a more austere version of fiscal reform. Discussions have emerged around a "**Reconciliation 3.0**" — a more targeted text that would attack discretionary spending without touching the tax cuts. But the political consensus for such a law does not yet exist, and with the **2026** midterms on the horizon, no one wanted to open a new fiscal front.

*$3.4 trillion more in debt. Elon Musk saying it's not drastic enough. Republicans wanting to cut even more. Meanwhile, millions of Americans are losing their Medicaid. If that's what government efficiency looks like in 2025-2026, I'll take the inefficiency.*

## Green credits sacrificed on the ideological altar

### The end of the Inflation Reduction Act era

Among the collateral victims of the **Big Beautiful Bill**, the clean energy tax credits from the **Inflation Reduction Act** (IRA) of **2022** were partially — but significantly — reduced. The final version of the text provided for an **accelerated elimination** of certain credits for solar, wind, and electric vehicle energy, with a transition period shorter than what the affected industries had requested.

The argument from supporters of the cut: the **IRA** was a disguised subsidy for technologies that should be able to finance themselves. The argument from opponents: those credits had triggered hundreds of billions in private investment in American factories, creating jobs in Republican-leaning states like **Georgia**, **South Carolina**, and **Ohio**. Cutting those credits meant cutting jobs in the very districts of the legislators voting for the law.

### The American clean industry in retreat

One year later, the impact on the renewable energy industry is tangible. Solar and wind projects have been paused or cancelled in several states. Electric vehicle manufacturers have reduced their US investments. **China**, which had no such policy reversal, continued investing heavily in its production capacity for solar panels, batteries, and electric vehicles — reinforcing its technological lead in sectors that will define the global economy for decades to come.

This decision perfectly illustrates the fundamental contradiction of the **Big Beautiful Bill**: presented as a text to strengthen America, it has, in several sectors, weakened its competitiveness against **China**, the greatest long-term strategic threat to the United States. The paradox is striking: in the name of fighting technological dependence on **Beijing**, investments that would have built an independent American industrial supply chain were cut.

*Abandoning green credits to satisfy the anti-environment ideological wing of the Republican Party, while China builds solar panel factories at industrial scale — that is what shooting yourself in the foot looks like. And the next time America wants to talk about competing with Beijing, it will need to explain why it dismantled its own clean industry.*

## Immigration and defense: the Trumpist gains

### The billions for the wall and deportations

The **Big Beautiful Bill** is not only about social cuts and tax reductions. It also contains massive investments in two of **Trump**'s most emblematic priorities: restrictive immigration and national defense. On immigration, the law unlocked tens of billions of dollars for the expansion of the **border wall** with **Mexico**, funding large-scale deportation operations, and strengthening detention capacity.

One year later, these measures have had a visible impact on illegal border crossing numbers, which have effectively declined according to **Customs and Border Protection** data. Supporters of the law point to that as a victory. Critics note that this decline is also linked to factors independent of the law — such as economic conditions in **Venezuela** and **Central America** — and that the human costs of mass deportations, including separated mixed-status families, are not counted in official indicators.

### Defense: the budget boost

On defense, the **Big Beautiful Bill** substantially increased the **Pentagon** budget, with targeted investments in deterrence capabilities against **China** — hypersonic missiles, combat drones, naval presence in the **Pacific** — and in strengthening **NATO** commitments. These investments respond to a coherent strategic logic against identified threats: **China**, **Russia**, **Iran**, **North Korea**.

This is where the law is most legible. Strengthening American defense against **Beijing** in the **Indo-Pacific** is a strategic necessity shared across both parties. The questions are about financing those efforts: can one simultaneously cut taxes for the wealthy, reduce social programs, explode the debt, and maintain American military power? A growing number of national security experts are answering that no — that fiscal solvency is itself a component of national power.

*The effectiveness of the border wall can be debated indefinitely. What is beyond dispute is that we chose to fund that wall partly by removing healthcare from millions of poor Americans. That choice says something about a nation's values. Not values I recognize as American in their best sense.*

## Democratic opposition and the narrative battle

### Resistance without an effective political vehicle

Democratic opposition to the **Big Beautiful Bill** was fierce in rhetoric but limited in practical effect. Without a majority in the **Senate** or the **House** at the time of the vote, Democrats could only warn, document, and try to mobilize public opinion against the **Medicaid** and **SNAP** cuts. Their strategy relied on highlighting the law's "losers": elderly residents in nursing homes whose **Medicaid** covers their care, children in low-income families, seasonal workers with no other safety net.

That narrative strategy partially worked with the broader public: according to several polls published in **June 2026**, a majority of Americans — including a share of Republican voters — say they oppose **Medicaid** cuts, even while supporting the tax reductions. That is the classic paradox of American politics: a law can be unpopular in its details and overall without that unpopularity translating into an electoral defeat for its authors.

### The 2026 midterms and the law as electoral stakes

The **November 2026** midterm elections loom in this context. Democrats are betting that the concrete impact of **Medicaid** cuts — the first most visible coverage losses are expected for the fall **2026** back-to-school period in some states — will galvanize a voter base that the last elections had left apathetic. Republicans are betting on fiscal defense and immigration policy to mobilize their own base.

The stakes go beyond domestic American politics. If the midterms give Democrats a **House** majority, they could block or revise certain aspects of the law. If Republicans consolidate their grip, an even more austere **Reconciliation 3.0** cannot be ruled out. For **Ukraine**, for **NATO**, for all allies who depend on American political stability, these midterms carry weight far beyond US borders.

*The 2026 midterms are not just an American election — they are a global referendum on Trump's political project. And America's allies have every reason to watch those results with an entomologist's attention, because what gets voted in Ohio and Pennsylvania will determine what happens in Ukraine, Taiwan, and the Strait of Hormuz.*

## Rand Paul, Tillis, and Republican fractures

### The libertarian wing against fiscal populism

The **51-49** Senate vote on **June 28, 2025** revealed deep fractures within the **Republican Party** on the fiscal question. **Rand Paul** — the libertarian senator from Kentucky — voted against because the text did not go far enough in reducing spending. He advocates far more drastic austerity, rejecting any compromise that adds to the debt. **Thom Tillis** voted against for political calculation: in his North Carolina, Medicaid cuts hit hundreds of thousands of his own voters.

These two dissenting votes illustrate two incompatible logics coexisting within the same party. Libertarians want to cut everywhere, including the defense spending **Trump** prizes. Populists want tax gifts for their base while maintaining certain social programs that electorally secure rural districts. This internal tension was not resolved by the law's passage — it was simply momentarily papered over by the political victory.

### One year on: the same fractures, still open

In **June 2026**, the fiscal fractures within the **GOP** remain wide open. **Rand Paul** continues to demand a credible debt reduction plan. **Sun Belt** senators worry about **Medicaid** impacts in their states. **Rust Belt** representatives regret the cuts to green credits that had attracted factories to their districts. The Republican coalition is a fragile construction, held together by **Trump**'s personality and fear of its electoral consequences — not by ideological consensus.

The question now is what the long-term legacy will be. In ten years, when the **$3.4 trillion** of additional debt weighs on public finances, when the **11.8 million Medicaid-less** are an incontestable statistical reality, who will bear responsibility for that record? The political answer is always the same: no one. The historical answer will be crueler.

*Rand Paul votes against because it's not austere enough. Tillis votes against because his voters will suffer. And between the two, a law passes that does both: it slashes public services AND explodes the debt. That is the miracle of contemporary American politics: managing to disappoint everyone except those who are already rich.*

## The international impact: a signal to allies and adversaries

### What the Big Beautiful Bill says to the world

The **Big Beautiful Bill** is not just an American budget law. It is a political signal sent to every actor on the international stage. For **NATO** allies: the defense budget increase is reassuring, but America's long-term fiscal fragility much less so. For **China**: the partial retreat from clean energy and the priority given to short-term domestic consumption sends a mixed signal about America's ability to sustain long-term technological competition.

For **Russia**: the political polarization reinforced by this fiscal debate — with furious Democrats and fractured Republicans — is a windfall. **Moscow** thrives on Western institutional chaos. Every dollar devoted to tax cuts for America's ultra-wealthy is potentially a dollar less for military aid to **Ukraine** in future budget negotiations. That calculation, even indirect, has real geopolitical consequences.

### American debt and dollar credibility

Over the longer term, adding **$3.4 trillion** to the federal debt raises a fundamental question about the sustainability of the American economic model. The **dollar** is the world's reserve currency, and **US debt** is considered the global economy's benchmark risk-free asset. If institutional investors — pension funds, foreign central banks, sovereign wealth funds — begin to doubt the American fiscal trajectory, the consequences for global interest rates could be severe.

This is not an immediate scenario. But it is a real risk that accumulates law by law, deficit by deficit. And in a world where **China** is actively working to erode dollar primacy, every trillion added to US debt is an invitation to reconfirm the relevance of that Chinese strategy.

*China doesn't need to attack America militarily to weaken it. It just has to wait while America shoots itself with accumulated deficits, social fractures, and political polarization. The Big Beautiful Bill, in that sense, may be the most valuable gift Trump has ever given to Xi Jinping.*

## The social balance sheet: an America split in two

### Inequality accelerating

One year after the **Big Beautiful Bill**'s passage, the most worrying indicator may not be the debt figure or the number of people losing **Medicaid**. It is the acceleration of **economic inequality** in a country already among the most unequal in the developed world. The American **Gini coefficient**, which measures income inequality, has continued its progression toward levels unseen since the **1920s**.

This reality is not incidental. Economists — from the most liberal to the most conservative — agree that extreme inequality weakens social cohesion, reduces economic mobility, and ultimately compromises democracy itself. A society where the wealthiest **1%** capture a growing share of income and assets is not one where democracy functions as it should: the wealthy buy their political influence, the poor lose faith in institutions, and the gap widens.

### America in 2026: rich and fractured

**America** in **June 2026** is a wealthy and deeply fractured nation. Stock markets are hitting records. Unemployment remains low. But precarity, the debt burden on modest households, and food and health insecurity are rising. This paradox — an economy that performs in aggregate while leaving millions behind — is the very definition of unevenly shared growth. And that is the kind of growth the **Big Beautiful Bill** has institutionalized for a generation.

Measuring the real impact of a law of this scale takes decades. One year's early data are indicators, not final verdicts. But the available indicators do not tell the story of an America made stronger, fairer, or more competitive. They tell the story of a nation that chose to protect accumulated wealth at the expense of future social mobility. That is a choice. And like all major political choices, it will have consequences no one can fully anticipate.

*I am not an economist, and I would be dishonest to pretend I can predict everything about this law's impact over ten years. But some things are simple: when a law gives a lot to those who already have everything and takes away the little that remained from those who have almost nothing, you do not need a PhD in economics to know who will suffer. And that is not beautiful.*

## Political memory: how the Big Beautiful Bill will be judged

### The history of major American tax laws

How will history judge the **Big Beautiful Bill**? To find points of comparison, one must go back to pivotal moments in American fiscal policy. The **Reagan cuts** of the **1980s** were presented as a liberating economic revolution; they did stimulate short-term growth but also triggered a spectacular rise in the national debt. The **Bush cuts** of **2001** and **2003** helped transform the budget surplus inherited from **Clinton** into a structural deficit. The **Trump 2017 cuts** enriched corporations and shareholders without triggering the promised productive investment.

The **Big Beautiful Bill** fits into that historical trajectory. Its singularity: it is both the most ambitious of these texts in budgetary scope and the most explicitly unapologetic in its distributive choices. Previous tax cuts were defended with complex economic arguments about the trickle-down of wealth. The **Big Beautiful Bill** was defended more simply: "this is the promise we made."

### The narrative to build for opponents

For opponents of the **Big Beautiful Bill**, the challenge of the coming years is to build a convincing alternative narrative. Not merely cataloguing injustices — that is not enough politically — but proposing a positive vision of a tax policy that funds public services, invests in the future, and shares growth more equitably. That narrative exists in progressive party platforms worldwide. Its translation into viable American policy remains an open challenge.

One year after **July 4, 2025**, the **Big Beautiful Bill** is the foundational law of Trump's America. It has redrawn the American social contract in a lasting way — at least until the next political reversal. Its impact will continue to unfold for years. And the most vulnerable Americans will be the first to pay the price, as is too often the case when the powerful decree what is "beautiful."

*The Big Beautiful Bill will be judged by history on the basis of its consequences for the most vulnerable — and that story will not be beautiful. But in politics, what matters in the short term is who votes and why. And Trump has understood for a long time that moral outrage does not replace electoral organization.*

## Reconciliation 3.0: toward a second wave

### What is forming on the fiscal horizon

In **June 2026**, discussions emerged within the **Republican Congress** around a potential **Reconciliation 3.0** — a more targeted budget text that would attack discretionary spending items not yet touched by the **Big Beautiful Bill**. These discussions remain preliminary and are hampered by the same internal **GOP** divisions that nearly derailed the first text. The libertarian wing wants to go much further; the populist wing refuses to touch programs that serve its electoral base.

The electoral timing also complicates the equation. With the midterms in November, no Republican senator in a difficult campaign wanted to vote for new cuts to social programs. The political window for another major budget reconciliation before **2027** is narrow. But pressure from fiscal libertarians like **Rand Paul** and members of the Freedom Caucus in the **House** keeps that option alive in the debate.

### America and its civilization choices

At its core, the debate around the **Big Beautiful Bill** and its potential follow-ups is a debate about what **America** wants to be. A society where individual achievement takes precedence over collective solidarity? A minimal state that lets the market decide who lives well and who suffers? Or a democracy that recognizes certain social protections as the condition for national cohesion and democratic vitality?

These questions are not uniquely American. They run through all Western democracies, with varying answers depending on histories and political cultures. France made different choices. Canada too. Those choices have their own flaws and limits. But the American experience now unfolding — cutting social protections to finance tax advantages at the very moment when inequality is breaking records — is a warning the rest of the world would do well not to ignore.

*America in 2026 has chosen. It chose money over solidarity, the short term over the future, accumulated wealth over equal opportunity. That is not my choice. And I sincerely believe it is not the choice of most Americans, if you asked them outside the electoral circus. But in democracy, what counts is who votes, not who thinks.*

## The invisible human cost: what the numbers don't say

### Behind the billions, human faces

Debates about the **Big Beautiful Bill** happen primarily in terms of billions of dollars — **$3.4 trillion** of debt, **$990 billion** in **Medicaid** cuts, an estimated **$25 billion** in **SNAP** savings. Those figures are real and important. But they tend to mask what economists call "human externalities": the mother in **Mississippi** who can no longer afford her asthmatic child's medication. The veteran in **Ohio** delaying a medical follow-up for lack of coverage. The seasonal agricultural worker in **California** falling into a gap between two revised eligibility criteria.

These stories are not anecdotal — they are the human face of the statistics. In a country where the healthcare system is structurally fragmented, where public safety nets compensate for gaps that other developed nations filled decades ago, the cuts to **Medicaid** and **SNAP** do not land in a vacuum. They land on people with no other recourse, in states that cannot compensate for federal cuts, and in communities losing already-insufficient medical services.

### Mental health and invisible coverage

One of the least covered angles of the **Medicaid** cuts involves mental healthcare. Since the expansion of **Medicaid** under **Obamacare**, millions of Americans suffering from mental illness gained access to therapies, medications, and support services that were not previously available. The **Big Beautiful Bill** reduces that coverage, precisely when indicators of psychological distress in the **United States** — depression, anxiety, opioid addiction, suicidal ideation — are reaching record levels among young adults and veterans.

These effects are difficult to quantify immediately but they are real. **Psychiatric emergency rooms** in states implementing the new eligibility rules most rapidly are beginning to record increases in visits. Addiction treatment centers report growing pressure. Advocacy groups for families of people with mental illness report mounting difficulties maintaining their loved ones' treatments. This silent human reckoning is the dark side of the **Big Beautiful Bill** that Republican press conferences never show.

*The human cost of the cuts appears in no financial statement. We do not count the untreated panic attacks, the suicides linked to denied care, the children growing up in families where health precarity is the norm. Those stories do not make headlines. But they make the real America — the one that suffers while Washington debates billions.*

## Conclusion: The law of all paradoxes

### A mixed record, lasting consequences

One year after its passage, the **Big Beautiful Bill** is a law that defies simple judgment. It kept its promises to the wealthy: the tax cuts are real, permanent, and massive. It kept its promises to immigration restrictionists: the border is tighter, deportations more numerous. It kept its promises to defense hawks: the military budget is up. And it failed to keep its implicit promise — that of a stronger, more competitive, and more united America — because it weakened its social base, exploded its debt, and reinforced the fractures tearing it apart.

This paradox is not new in political history. Major reforms that benefit a few at the expense of many rarely create the cohesion they promise. They create resentment, accumulated injustices, and ultimately the conditions for a political reversal. American history has demonstrated this several times over. The question is whether that reversal will come fast enough to correct course — or whether the damage will already be irreversible.

### What it reveals about our era

The **Big Beautiful Bill** reveals something deeper than American politics alone. It reveals that in contemporary democracies, it is possible to pass policies that are profoundly against the interests of the majority of the population, provided they are wrapped in a powerful identity discourse, provided credible scapegoats can be found, and provided the media narrative is sufficiently controlled. That is not a specifically American lesson. It is a warning for all democracies that need to learn to distinguish between beautiful speeches and beautiful realities.

On **July 4, 2025**, on a **White House** lawn, President **Trump** signed the **One Big Beautiful Bill** with the displayed conviction that it was a historic moment. He was right: it is a historic moment. But history does not tell itself only on signing day. It tells itself in the years that follow, as consequences accumulate, as numbers tell their own truth, as the most vulnerable people live in their bodies what elected officials decided behind their desks. That history is being written. And it will not be as beautiful as its name.

*One year after July 4, 2025, the America of the Big Beautiful Bill is richer at the top and more fragile at the bottom. The billions promised to the Pentagon and the cuts imposed on the poorest coexist in the same text, with the same signature, the same presidential seal. History will judge. But Americans without Medicaid do not have the luxury of waiting for history's verdict.*

**By Maxime Marquette, columnist**

## Columnist's transparency note

### Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a **columnist and analyst**. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. **I claim analytical clarity**, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

### Method and sources

This text keeps the basic distinction between **verified facts and interpretive analysis**. The rule never changes: a factual claim is published only when a verifiable source supports it, and the sources this article actually used are listed under **Sources**, never here.

**Primary source families** used by the publication, when the story has them: official statements from governments and international institutions, public statements by political leaders, reports from intergovernmental organisations, dispatches from recognised international news agencies.

**Secondary source families**: specialised publications, internationally recognised news media, analyses from established research institutions, reports from industry organisations.

When an article cites statistical, economic or geopolitical data, it comes from the institutions that produce it (intergovernmental organisations, central banks, national statistics offices), and the exact institution is named under **Sources**.

### Nature of the analysis

The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a **critical, contextual synthesis** based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted.

My role is to interpret these facts, to set them in the context of today's geopolitical and economic dynamics, and to give them a coherent meaning within the larger story of the changes shaping our time. These analyses reflect expertise built through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors.

This article describes a documented state of affairs on its publication date, not a prediction: later developments may shift its outlook. No update is promised in advance; when an article is corrected or completed, the change is dated in the text.

## Sources

### Primary sources

- [Ground News — GOP leader sets Saturday vote despite internal resistance — June 25, 2026](https://ground.news/article/gop-leader-sets-saturday-vote-on-trump-big-beautiful-bill-despite-republican-pushback_3c2aa4)

- [Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget — CBO score shows the Senate OBBBA adds over $3.9 trillion to debt — June 28, 2025](https://www.crfb.org/blogs/cbo-score-shows-senate-obbba-adds-over-39-trillion-debt)

- [Bipartisan Policy Center — What does the One Big Beautiful Bill cost? — 2025](https://bipartisanpolicy.org/explainer/what-does-the-one-big-beautiful-bill-cost/)

- [CBS News — Senate votes on Trump's Big Beautiful Bill — June 28, 2025](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/senate-vote-today-trump-big-beautiful-bill/)

### Secondary sources

- [Euromaidan Press — Geopolitical context of American political polarization — June 22, 2026](https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/06/22/russia-demands-donbas-at-table-deepstate-says-taking-it-would-cost-two-years-of-fighting-and-colossal-losses/)

- [Kyiv Independent — Impact of American budget choices on Ukraine aid — June 23, 2026](https://kyivindependent.com/analysis-russia-breaks-into-kostiantynivka-opening-battle-for-donbas-fortress-belt/)

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Source: Maxime Marquette, MadMax. When citing, name the author and link https://mad-max.co/en/article/analyse-big-beautiful-bill-un-an-apres-l-amerique-compte-les-degats-de-la-loi-tr