Trump’s Big Win Could Be His Biggest Mistake
Public support fades fast—and the polls already look bad.
President Donald Trump is close to getting his biggest win in lawmaking: His "big, beautiful bill" — the huge tax and Medicaid cuts, along with immigration and border spending bill that passed the Senate on Tuesday — is almost ready to go through the House of Representatives.
This is a huge law that could raise the national debt by at least $3 trillion, mainly because of tax cuts, and it might leave 17 million Americans without health insurance — and people really don’t like it. Most polls taken this month show that a lot of people disapprove of the bill, with 42 percent against it in an Ipsos poll (compared to 23 percent in favor) and 64 percent opposing it in a KFF poll.
And if we look at history, it doesn’t seem like things will get any better for Trump and the Republicans from here.
In today’s American politics, not many things are more disliked by the public than big, complicated bills that get a lot of attention. This is especially true for bills that go through a Senate process called "budget reconciliation," which lets the party in power skip filibuster rules with just a simple majority vote. These bills usually have a bad impact on presidents and their parties in the months that follow as the policies are put into action and election seasons start.
Part of the reason for this is that people generally don’t like any kind of law as it gets more attention and becomes clearer. But it seems like reconciliation bills in recent times create a cycle: they push presidents to be very ambitious at first, before they lose support from the public for the law and eventually lose the congressional majorities that helped them pass it.
Big Bills Win the War, But Lose the Next Election
The budget reconciliation process started in 1974 and has slowly been used to achieve larger policy goals. It provides a way around the Senate filibuster, which needs 60 votes to overcome, making it the main method for presidents and their parties to carry out their economic and social welfare plans.
However, the public usually doesn’t reward the party in power after these bills are passed. Political writer and analyst Ron Brownstein recently noted that presidents who manage to pass a big reconciliation bill in their first year often lose control of Congress, typically the House, the next year.
For example, in 1982, Ronald Reagan lost his majority in the House after using reconciliation to implement significant spending cuts as part of his Reaganomics plan (the original "big, beautiful" bill). This trend continued with George H.W. Bush (whose reconciliation bill went against his campaign promise not to raise taxes), Bill Clinton in 1994 (deficit cuts and tax reform), Barack Obama in 2010 (after the Affordable Care Act was passed), Trump in 2018 (tax cuts), and Biden in 2022 (the American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act).
The only exception among these recent presidents is George W. Bush, who did pass tax cuts through a reconciliation bill but saw his approval rating go up after the 9/11 attacks.
The growing polarization and the general dislike for the party in power during midterm elections partly explain this overall public and electoral backlash. However, reconciliation bills themselves seem to make this effect even stronger.
The Bigger the Bill, the Bigger the Backlash
First, let’s talk about the real content of these bills, which has been expanding over time.
Since they are usually the first and often the only significant domestic legislation that can carry out a president’s plans, they are frequently very ideological and partisan projects that aim to put into action as much of a governing party’s vision as they can.
According to Matt Grossman, who is the director of Michigan State University’s Institute for Public Policy and Social Research, these highly ideological laws tend to trigger a “thermostatic” reaction from the public. This means that when people think one side is going too far to the right or left, public opinion shifts in the opposite direction of what the policymakers are doing.
As these bills have been expanding in scope, moving from simple tax code changes to huge tax-and-spend bills that create programs, they have become more ideological, and the public seems to be responding more negatively.
These large reconciliation bills also face a problem that affects all types of legislation: they have a public relations issue. Media coverage of proposed laws often highlights their partisanship, showing the ruling party as pushing its domestic agenda no matter what and emphasizing the conflicts between parties. This makes the process seem more important than the actual policy content. Political scientist Mary Layton Atkinson has discovered that just like campaign news tends to focus on the competition, coverage of legislation in Congress and policy discussions often centers on conflict and procedures, which adds to the public’s perception that Congress is extreme and dysfunctional.
Another factor in this situation is a strange aspect of public opinion regarding legislation and referenda: proposals usually become less popular and lose public support from the time they are proposed to when they are passed. This happens as the public learns more about the actual details of the initiatives and hears more about the political negotiations and struggles happening behind the scenes as these bills are finalized.
Lawmakers and important political leaders often focus more on the negative aspects during negotiations rather than the positive ones, Grossman explained to me. "This also happens when a bill is approved: The opponents are quick to point out all the bad things about it, while those in favor usually say, 'I didn’t get everything I wanted; I wish it could have been a bit different.' So, the overall message tends to be quite negative because no one is out there celebrating it as the best thing ever and exactly what they wanted.
Even with the current One Big Beautiful Bill, surveys show that people generally don’t know much about what’s included in the legislative package. However, they become even more negative about it once they learn more details about specific policies.
Big reconciliation bills face all three of these public image issues: They are usually the first big legislative challenge for a new president and Congress, they grab all the media’s focus, they make the public concentrate on one major piece of legislation, and they take a long time to finalize — which makes the bill more unpopular over time.
This growing negative perception, the public’s annoyance with how things are done, and the increasing ideological importance of these bills create a feedback loop: The governing parties realize they have limited time and only one chance to put their ideas into action before facing backlash in future elections, so they hurry to pass the biggest and boldest bill they can. This cycle keeps repeating, making public opinions worse and increasing division. For now, Trump has set a deadline of July 4 to sign this bill into law. It seems likely he will meet that target, or at least come very close. But all signs suggest that this "beautiful" bill might end up disappointing him and his party significantly.
He's not very liked, and when he tries to get both his and the public's attention on what he really wants to do, it usually doesn't turn out good.
But the Rapist Felon also now has its own brown shirts and is extending its slimy tentacles to the 2026 elections.
Thank you for this thorough and well organized description of how bills of this sort generally pan out. Like all things with DJT the base conditions and historic trend may not apply, particularly if 47 succeeds in thrwarting fair 2026 elections; thie dictator for a day caveat. The republicans in congress so far are almost unanimously allowing him to take unconstitutional power. But still, thank you for your public service with this.