1. United States
2. Iowa
3. Letter

I am writing because I believe we need to take a hard look at what the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB) has actually accomplished rather than continuing to repeat the promises that were made when it passed. Republicans promised that this legislation would reduce government spending, lower taxes for working Americans, bring down inflation, strengthen the economy, protect American families, and reduce the deficit. Yet the evidence increasingly shows that many of those promises have either failed to materialize or have come with enormous costs that were shifted onto ordinary Americans. Most troubling of all, the bill does not actually solve many of the problems it claimed to address. In several cases, it makes them worse. It was supposed to reduce the deficit. Instead, it adds trillions to the debt. This is perhaps the clearest contradiction. The Congressional Budget Office now estimates that the 2025 reconciliation act increased projected deficits by $4.7 trillion over 2026–2035, when the effects of increased interest costs and economic changes are included. CBO attributes $3.7 trillion of that increase to higher primary deficits and another $0.9 trillion to increased debt-service costs. That is not fiscal responsibility. The argument that Medicaid, SNAP, and student-loan cuts "pay for" the tax reductions also misses the larger picture. Those programs save the federal government money primarily by taking resources away from people who depend on them, while the tax provisions reduce federal revenue. In other words, the bill did not eliminate the cost. It shifted the cost from the federal budget onto American families. It was supposed to help working- and middle-class Americans. The biggest gains go to the wealthy. CBO's own distributional analysis is particularly revealing. CBO estimates that households in the lowest income decile will lose an average of approximately $1,559 per year, while the second-lowest decile loses about $749 and the third loses about $312. Meanwhile, households in the highest income decile gain approximately $12,044 per year on average. Even more striking, CBO estimates that the highest-income 10 percent receives approximately 68 percent of the total increase in household resources produced by the legislation. That is not what Americans were promised when Republicans described this legislation as a tax cut for working families. It is a redistribution of resources upward. It was supposed to make health care more affordable. Instead, millions will lose coverage. The bill's Medicaid provisions are particularly concerning. CBO estimates that the law will reduce Medicaid enrollment by approximately 12.9 million people by 2034 and increase the number of Americans without health insurance by approximately 7.5 million. That is not making health care more affordable. It is making health care unavailable to millions of people who currently have it. And this isn't simply an issue for people who receive Medicaid. When hospitals and clinics lose Medicaid revenue, particularly in rural areas, they face greater financial pressure. That can mean reduced services, staff reductions, or even hospital closures. For states such as Iowa, where rural hospitals are already under significant financial pressure, this should be an enormous concern. It was supposed to strengthen families. Instead, it cuts food assistance. The OBBB also cuts SNAP spending by approximately $211 billion through 2035, according to CBO. The reductions come from provisions that lower participation, reduce average benefits, and shift more of the cost onto states. That is particularly troubling at a time when Americans are already dealing with high grocery prices. It is difficult to understand how taking food assistance away from struggling families can reasonably be described as helping those families. The law also requires states to assume a greater share of SNAP costs. That does not make the cost disappear. It means states will have to find the money somewhere else—through higher taxes, reduced services, or cuts to other programs. It was supposed to reduce costs, but Republican tariff policies are making goods more expensive. This is another area where the rhetoric and reality don't match. Tariffs are not taxes paid by foreign countries. They are collected from importers, and those costs can then be passed along to American businesses and consumers. CBO has explicitly concluded that the higher tariffs imposed in 2025 raise the cost of imported goods, temporarily increase inflation, reduce household purchasing power, and slow real investment. CBO estimated that the tariff increases implemented between January and May 2025 would increase inflation by an average of 0.4 percentage points in 2025 and 2026, while also reducing real economic output. So while Republicans repeatedly promised to lower the cost of living, their trade policies have acted in the opposite direction. Americans don't care whether a price increase is technically called inflation, a tariff, a supply-chain cost, or something else. They care about what it costs when they go to the grocery store, buy a vehicle, replace an appliance, purchase building materials, or pay their bills. It was supposed to help farmers and American businesses. Farmers were told that tariffs would protect American industry and agriculture. Instead, tariffs have created additional costs for farmers who rely on imported equipment, fertilizer, machinery, parts, and other inputs, while retaliatory tariffs can make it harder to sell American agricultural products overseas. The federal government has subsequently had to provide billions of dollars in assistance to farmers, including $12 billion in bridge payments announced in December 2025, according to CBO. If a policy forces the government to compensate the people harmed by that policy, perhaps the policy itself needs to be reconsidered. It was supposed to reduce government spending. Yet the bill simultaneously reduced spending on health care and food assistance while increasing spending in other areas, including defense, homeland security, and immigration-related programs. CBO's analysis shows that the tax provisions and increased spending are major contributors to the increase in projected deficits. This is an important distinction. Cutting Medicaid for a poor family is not evidence of fiscal responsibility if the savings are then used to finance tax reductions and other spending that increase the national debt. Fiscal responsibility means making difficult choices across the entire budget—not balancing tax cuts for wealthy Americans on the backs of people who need health care and food assistance. It was supposed to make college more affordable. The same problem exists with student loans. The OBBB reduces federal spending on student loans, but that doesn't mean it reduces the cost of college. Much of the "savings" comes from changing repayment rules and shifting more costs onto borrowers. That is an accounting victory for the federal government, not an affordability victory for students. If Congress wants to solve the student-loan crisis, it needs to address why tuition has become so expensive in the first place. Making students pay more for an already unaffordable education does not solve the underlying problem. The "no tax on tips" and "no tax on overtime" provisions aren't the miracle they were advertised to be. These provisions sound excellent in a campaign speech, but they are deductions with eligibility requirements and limitations—not a blanket elimination of taxation on every dollar of tips or overtime. They also do nothing for people who don't work in tipped occupations or don't work overtime. And even when someone receives a tax benefit, that benefit can be overwhelmed by higher prices for food, housing, health care, transportation, and other necessities. A tax cut means very little if the government simultaneously makes the thi