by Wayne Besen • July 5, 2025 • Opinion, Politics, Weekly Column • Comments (0) • 435

Cowardly GOP Sells Out America’s Future

Trump’s Bloated, Hideous Bill is Welfare for the Wealthy, While Americans Suffer

President Donald Trump is many things, but a mystery is not one of them. He has no core beliefs or policy preferences. He’s fueled by flattery, while energized by envy. It always comes down to showy displays of dominance, public humiliation, breaking the rules–because he can—and raw sadism. Watching people suffer is the point and forcing loyalists to slavishly grovel is his not-so-guilty pleasure.

We vividly saw all these elements play out as Trump used blunt political force to ram through his repulsive Big Beautiful Bill (BBB). The name of the bill was deliberate. It was the equivalent of putting Frankenstein on the cover of Vogue, just for the sheer amusement of bullying Republicans into pretending the hideous monster is a fashion model.

Republican members of Congress were obliged to genuflect, abandoning virtually every principle they once claimed to hold dear. In merely six months, Trump has transformed the Oval Office into a Republican dignity shredder and a graveyard for self-respect. They knew the beastly bill was a deformed turkey, yet passed it anyway, setting the stage for economic ruin.

Trump celebrated the ostensible victory with military planes flying overhead. Had the B2 bomber, zipping over the White House, dropped 30-thousand-pound bombs on the people below, it would have done far less damage than the heinous bill Republicans were applauding.

MAGA bootlickers may have been unctuously clapping, like North Korean news anchors. But conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat wrote what GOP leaders were truly thinking: “Aside from hype artists and White House spokespeople, it’s hard to find true enthusiasm for the sweeping new policy law, even among Republicans who voted for its passage.”

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), lionizing the president, said, “It would have never happened without Donald Trump.” This foolhardy admission of ownership will surely become Democratic fodder for political ads in the 2026 midterms. That’s assuming Trump and his MAGA goons don’t find a pretext to derail the election in their endless pursuit of ending democracy.

Sadly, the BBB will likely cause mass hardship and needless suffering. Republicans picked up their gruesome chainsaw, already bloodied from the murderous cuts to USAID, to lop off more than $1 trillion from Medicaid. The law also eliminates $186 billion from anti-poverty food assistance, and an estimated 17 million people are expected to lose their health insurance over the next decade.

The unnecessary, completely avoidable misery for millions of people is in the sociopathic service of paying for trillions in tax breaks, including more than $564 billion in corporate tax cuts. Countless lives will fall apart and families will unravel so the top 1 percent of households can receive approximately a few tens of thousands of dollars each year that they don’t need. This collapse of virtue and abandonment of values is grotesque. The “pro-life” party decided thousands of Americans can drop dead so Congress could deliver welfare for the wealthy and let the greedy harm the needy.

The aftershocks from this earthquake of idiocy will hurt far more from those directly impacted by losing Medicaid. It will lead to the closure of rural hospitals that survive on Medicaid payments—ironically creating medical deserts for MAGA voters. Trump’s immigration crackdown will also dissuade young foreign doctors, who are more likely to take a job in the countryside, so they can break into the medical profession.

It appears that the BBB’s first casualty is Community Hospital in McCook, Nebraska. Yes, you’ll need Google Maps to find it because it’s in the middle of nowhere. Without federal assistance, rural hospitals will become endangered species—meaning red state MAGA voters may soon have to travel hours while suffering strokes, heart attacks or women giving car births enroute to far-flung hospitals.

“Unfortunately, the current financial environment, driven by anticipated federal budget cuts to Medicaid, has made it impossible for us to continue operating all of our services, many of which have faced significant financial challenges for years,” Troy Bruntz, President and CEO of Community Hospital, said in a news release.

Jeremy Nordquist, president of the Nebraska Hospital Association, added, “Nebraska hospitals have been clear throughout this debate. This package will undermine health care in our state, hurt patients, and drive-up insurance premiums.”

It’s worth noting that McCook is in Red Willow County, where 84% of voters chose Trump over Kamala Harris. Although they will certainly try, MAGA can’t rationally blame Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton for this abomination. The GOP members of Congress who voted for this bill, might as well have BBB tattooed on their foreheads.

Perhaps, the biggest loser in this historic debacle is Vice President JD Vance. With the Senate knotted, he swooped down like a superhero to cast the tie-breaking vote. If the outrageous new law plummets America into chaos, misery, instability and death, JD Vance will be a Super Zero. The BBB will be his political albatross, in the same way the nation will wear the $3.3 trillion in new debt like a millstone around its neck.

Aside from ruining the lives of Americans today, it will destroy America’s competitiveness tomorrow. The law heavily favors the old industries of gas and oil, while gutting subsidies for green energy. Not only will this expedite climate change, but Trump basically handed China the keys to the future. It’s difficult to comprehend how this insane job-destroying capitulation to China has made America great again.

The U.S., under Trump’s irrational, schizophrenic leadership, was already faltering. We are rapidly becoming an unstable, international laughingstock, while our mercurial president flirts with authoritarianism and corruptly uses his incoherent tariff policy to toy with Wall Street, as if it were a yoyo. Given our precarious state, the GOP’s passing of the BBB is the equivalent of giving a cancer patient a carton of high-tar cigarettes. At this point, our condition may be terminal.

Increasingly I fear America is a lost cause. Between the lack of civics education, the rise in violent political extremism, Trump’s maniacal drive towards Putin-style autocracy and the inability of millions of citizens to engage in basic critical thinking, the country may be lying on its death bed by July 4, 2026—America’s 250^th birthday.

Surely, there will be exciting events, with huge fireworks displays, and mesmerizing military hardware to commemorate our nation, even as Trump strangles the life out of our democracy in broad daylight.

Sadly, a funeral procession may be a more appropriate way to “celebrate”. Our 250-years of democracy was a good run—but our country is quickly deteriorating and turning into a corrupt banana republic. The BBB’s economic suicide, moral malpractice and abdication of sanity is one more gigantic nail in the coffin of our nation’s future.