Try Calling It Trumpcare
People need to know exactly who to blame and what the consequences will be.
Last week, when Senate Republicans were on a glide path to passing Donald Trump’s miserable tax and spending bill, Chuck Schumer had an idea that ended up getting him a lot of guff.
“I just forced Republicans to delete their ridiculous bill name,” he announced. “It’s no longer named the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill.’”
To be clear, this was not the extent of Schumer’s opposition to the Trump budget, nor his only success altering it. But that’s sort of how it goes when you’re leader—if you do a good job, people will applaud you for things you didn’t do; if you lose their confidence, they will blame you for things that weren’t your fault. And so Schumer’s technical gotcha, somewhat unfairly, became a stand in on the left-of-center internet for the assumption that Democrats threw the fight against the bill.
A fairer critique might be that Schumer’s too literal-minded. The fact that the Trump budget is now called, “‘An Act to provide for reconciliation pursuant to title II of H. Con. Res. 14” won’t stop Donald Trump and Republicans from calling it the One Big Beautiful Bill, or lying about what it does. Upon enactment, the Trump-loyal political leadership of the Social Security administration emailed the entire beneficiary communication list to cheer the “One Big Beautiful Bill” act, and mislead people about it. When Trump passed temporary tax cuts in his first term, he teamed up with greedy corporate leaders to create propaganda, so that some sliver of Americans would reward him for their Christmas bonuses.
Perception is malleable. Trump’s gambits didn’t make the 2018 tax cuts popular in survey data, but the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act wasn’t up for re-election—Donald Trump was. And he spent his entire first term above water on all questions of economic stewardship. Even as the economy collapsed on his watch.
Democrats aren’t as shameless as Republicans, but two can still play at this game. Their goal should be to pre-empt the inevitable blitzkrieg of lies about Trump’s only major legislative achievement, so that as many voters as possible will know who’s responsible when bad things begin to happen. And ironically, for all the dunking, Schumer’s peevishness over the name of the bill might actually light the way.
“One Big Beautiful Bill” is meant to deceive; “One Big Beautiful Betrayal” could be the title of an anthology of cringe-inducing Democrat disses. “An Act to provide for reconciliation pursuant to title II of H. Con. Res. 14” means nothing to nobody.
Try calling it Trumpcare.
THREAT, THE DETAILS
The idea is to make Trump and Republicans own every bad piece of health care news in America from now until future Democrats set things right. Emphasis on “make”—it won’t happen on its own.
Some of these things won’t actually be Trump’s fault, but as Schumer can attest, life sucks when you become a meme.