Carl P. Leubsdorf
Over the past three elections, President Donald Trump has redefined the United States politically, strengthening Republican support among blue collar workers and reducing traditional Democratic majorities among racial minorities.
Now, with the enactment of his misleadingly entitled “One Big Beautiful Bill,” Trump has — for better or worse — redefined the shape of the federal government. The measure will reverse nearly a century of efforts to help the poor, the elderly and minorities by cutting key aspects of the social safety net to deprive millions of their health insurance.
At the same time, Trump’s decision to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites may have launched the most extensive effort in more than four decades to achieve a broader Middle East settlement. If achieved, it could further enhance his historical legacy.
It’s an extraordinary set of achievements for the often dismissed New York City real estate mogul, increasing the likelihood that his presidency will be seen as one of the most significant of the past century, along with those of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson and Ronald Reagan.
“This had to be the best two weeks,” Trump said at a July 3 Des Moines, Iowa, victory rally celebrating enactment of his signal tax and spending legislation. He predicted the measure “will deliver the strongest border on Earth, the strongest economy on Earth, the strongest military on Earth.”
But critics contend the ultimate damage from reduced governmental services, a shattered safety net, trillions in added deficits and his extra-legal efforts to expand presidential powers will darken historical assessments of his significance and rank him among the worst U.S. presidents.
That negative assessment seems likely to contrast sharply with history’s more positive ones of other significant presidents. Roosevelt engineered the economy’s rescue from the Great Depression, created the safety net with ground-breaking measures like Social Security and successfully managed the defeat of German and Japanese aggressors in World War II.
Johnson expanded FDR’s safety net by taking advantage of huge Democratic majorities to pass Medicare, Medicaid, federal aid to education and array of significant civil rights laws, though those domestic successes were offset to some extent by his disastrous mismanagement of the Vietnam war.
Reagan restored the country’s faith after the national traumas of the Vietnam era and won passage of a significant tax reform bill and a major immigration measure, though his efforts to tame mounting federal deficits proved largely unsuccessful.
All three won landslide elections, but all ultimately encountered political resistance, losing significant support – and in some cases, their majorities – in mid-term congressional elections, FDR in 1938, LBJ in 1966 and Reagan in 1986.
Trump’s electoral margins were smaller, but his strong leadership enabled the small but cohesive congressional majorities he helped to elect to muscle through his massive bill by a single vote in the Senate and two in the House.
But even as the president celebrated his biggest legislative triumph, some Republicans expressed fears that provisions likely to cost millions their health care benefits along with other government aid like food stamps will cause a political backlash next year that could cost the GOP its congressional majorities.
Even before Congress acted, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri warned that building a bill “around slashing health insurance for the working poor” – which it ultimately did — was “both morally wrong and politically suicidal.”
“If Congress cuts funding for Medicaid benefits, Missouri workers and their children will lose their health care. And hospitals will close. It’s that simple. And that pattern will be replicated in states across the country,” he predicted in a New York Times op-ed.
Similarly, 16 House Republicans wrote GOP leaders, declaring, “we cannot support a final bill that threatens access to (Medicaid) coverage or jeopardizes the stability of our hospitals and providers.”
But the bill did exactly that, requiring states to implement an array of work requirements and other administrative restrictions that independent analysts said would cost millions their benefits and prompt the closure of rural hospitals that Medicaid funds have sustained.
Nevertheless, Hawley and the 16 lawmakers all voted for it, listing sections that helped their states and ignoring damaging ones. When Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska cited provisions helping Alaskans as her reason for voting “yea,” she also acknowledged, “It is not good enough for the rest of our nation—and we all know it.”
One of the five congressional Republicans who resisted Trump’s pressure, North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, noted, “It would result in tens of billions of dollars in lost funding for North Carolina, including our hospitals and rural communities.”
“We can and must do better than this,” he said. But after his statement provoked Trump to vow a primary fight against him next year, Tillis announced he won’t seek re-election, the latest GOP Trump critic to quit rather than fight.
Meanwhile, House Democrats vowed to use GOP justifications in their fight to overturn the GOP’s current five-seat majority.
After former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell reportedly said of the bill’s critics that “they’ll get over it,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries threw those words back at the Kentucky Republican.
“No, Mitch, the people won’t get over it,” the New York lawmaker declared in his 8-hour 44-minute speech detailing Democratic objections to the measure. “But they will get even next November.”
Unfortunately, it will take more than a 2026 Democratic resurgence to undo the damage that the historically bad Trump presidency is causing.
Carl P. Leubsdorf is the former Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News. Readers may write to him via email at [email protected].
