A new report from the Joint Economic Committee (JEC) reveals that working-class Americans will face higher costs and economic hardship under a Republican budget package that delivers sweeping tax breaks to the wealthiest individuals. The findings arrive as President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers push forward with the “One Big Beautiful Bill” and defend ongoing tariffs, policies that, according to independent and congressional analyses, will further deepen economic inequality across the United States.
“Families across the country were already struggling because of high prices, and President Trump is increasing costs even more while giving the very wealthiest more tax breaks,” said Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), the panel’s ranking member. “This new analysis shows the ways in which those who make up the backbone of our country—firefighters, teachers, truck drivers, and others—will all face higher costs because of President Trump’s plans, while the top 0.1 percent of earners get a massive windfall.”
The JEC report, released in June, outlines how the combined effects of Trump’s tariff policies and the Republican budget would impact American households by occupation and income level. A firefighter, truck driver, or grade school teacher could lose approximately $470 to $500 in 2026, while retail workers, food processing employees, and housekeepers face annual losses as high as $720. In stark contrast, the average benefit for someone in the top 0.1% of income earners—those making at least $4.24 million annually—would be $348,500 next year, even after accounting for tariffs.
Michael Linden, delivering testimony on the budget plan to Congress, called it “an unprecedented transfer of income and wealth from the bottom to the top.” He said, “Never in modern U.S. history has one single bill taken so much from working families and directly deposited it into the pockets of the wealthy.”
According to Linden, the House-passed bill cuts over $1 trillion in funding from health care, nutrition assistance, and education over the next decade and uses it to partially offset more than $4 trillion in tax cuts. The resulting $3 trillion gap will be added to the national debt. “Fundamentally, it means that millions of Americans will lose their health care coverage, pay more for their health care, lose nutrition assistance, and pay more for higher education,” he said. “Those costs will fall much more heavily on poorer Americans, while rich Americans will, by and large, not be affected at all.”
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the Penn-Wharton Budget Model, the Yale Budget Lab, and other nonpartisan sources corroborate these findings. The CBO estimates that over 16 million Americans—primarily middle- and low-income families—will lose health insurance if the budget becomes law. Meanwhile, over half of the proposed tax cut benefits will go to the richest 10 percent, with the average tax cut for someone in the top 0.1 percent exceeding $250,000.
The report from the JEC—based on data from sources including the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Yale Budget Lab, the CBO, and the Penn-Wharton Model—illustrates the regressive effects across income brackets and occupations. Assemblers and fabricators, home health aides, and social workers are expected to lose hundreds annually. Police officers, despite earning relatively higher incomes among the occupations studied, will still lose an estimated $250 per year.
In a chart accompanying the JEC’s findings, the contrast is stark: every worker class analyzed sees a net loss, while the ultra-wealthy gain exponentially. “In our lifetimes, there has never been a bill that so directly and brazenly takes from the poor to give to the rich,” Linden stated. “This is the most upside-down bill in modern U.S. history.”
The economic implications extend beyond household budgets. A recent analysis by American University’s Institute for Macroeconomics and Policy Analysis found that the bill’s regressive structure would shrink the U.S. economy by the end of the decade. “Extreme inequality is itself a barrier to and a drag on robust economic growth,” said Linden. “Growth and economic prosperity do not trickle down from the rich.”
Tariffs, which Trump has touted as part of his broader economic agenda, are another key element in the financial burden faced by working families. Because tariffs operate much like sales taxes, they consume a larger portion of lower-income families’ budgets. The Yale Budget Lab found that when tariffs are considered alongside tax cuts, 80 percent of Americans end up paying more under the GOP plan, while the richest 1 percent continue to benefit.
These tariffs are currently being challenged in court. Two educational toy companies, Learning Resources and hand2mind, have petitioned the Supreme Court to evaluate whether Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) grants him the authority to impose broad tariffs without oversight. “In light of the tariffs’ massive impact on virtually every business and consumer across the nation,” the companies argued, “challenges to the IEEPA tariffs cannot await the normal appellate process (even on an expedited timeline).”
Even as working Americans face higher costs from both legislative and executive actions, polling shows strong public support for social safety net programs that are being cut. A new survey from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that large shares of U.S. adults—including about two-thirds of Democrats and nearly that many Independents—believe the government spends “too little” on Medicaid and food assistance.
Public sentiment does not appear to align with the priorities of the Republican budget, and opposition spans party lines. Linden emphasized this point in his testimony: “Almost all Americans agree that taking money from the poor to give to the rich is morally indefensible. But it is also the case that making the rich richer at the expense of everyone else is a huge economic blunder.”
Linden also warned that future austerity measures will likely target the very people already losing under the current proposal. “Another series of expensive tax cuts that further reduces federal revenue and increases federal debt will inevitably lead to disingenuous future calls to reduce federal funding for critical services and basic necessities,” he said. “Tax cuts for the rich are not free. Someone will pay for those tax cuts, and if this bill is any indication, it won’t be rich people in the future—it will be middle- and low-income people.”
COMMENTS