Game on: Republicans, Democrats trade fire over Big Beautiful Bill in 2026 battle for Congress

President Donald Trump quickly took aim at Democrats for opposing his sweeping domestic policy bill.

“Not one Democrat voted for us, and I think we use it in the campaign that’s coming up the midterms, because we’ve got to beat them,” 

The president spoke as he headlined a July 4th-eve event at the Iowa State Fairgrounds to kickoff celebrations of next year’s 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Hours earlier, the GOP-controlled House of Representatives, in a 218-214 vote on Thursday nearly entirely along party lines, lifted the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” to final congressional passage. Earlier in the week, Vice President JD Vance broke a tie in the Senate to advance the measure 51-50.

TRUMP TOUTS ‘BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL’ IS ‘VERY POPULAR’ DESPITE POLLING

The president is scheduled to sign the massive spending and tax cut bill into law Friday at 5pm, at a White House signing ceremony.

With the legislative battle over the bill finished, and Trump and congressional Republican leaders victorious, the campaign trail war now begins over the controversial measure, which most public opinion polls suggest is not very popular with Americans.

‘BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL ON WAY TO WHITE HOUSE AFTER NARROWLY PASSING FINAL HURDLE IN CONGRESS

“Every Democrat voted to hurt working families and to protect the status quo,” argued a memo from the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) released minutes after the final House passage of the bill.

And the NRCC, which is the campaign arm of the House GOP, emphasized that “House Republicans will be relentless in making this vote the defining issue of 2026.”

House Republicans will be defending their razor-thin majority in the chamber (220-215 when the House is at full strength) when all 435 seats are up for grabs in next year’s midterm elections.

NRCC chair Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina, in an opinion piece published on Friday morning, charged that House Democrats “rejected common sense” by voting against the bill.

“And we will make sure each one of them has to answer for it,” he vowed, as he pointed to next year’s congressional elections.

The bill is stuffed full of Trump’s 2024 campaign trail promises and second-term priorities on tax cuts, immigration, defense, energy and the debt limit. 

It includes extending his signature 2017 tax cuts and eliminating taxes on tips and overtime pay. 

By making his first-termtax rates permanent – they were set to expire later this year – the bill will cut taxes by nearly $4.4 trillion over the next decade, according to analysis by the Congressional Budget Office and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. 

WHAT’S ACTUALLY IN TRUMP’S ‘BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL’

The measure also provides billions for border security and codifies the president’s controversial immigration crackdown.

And the bill also restructures Medicaid — the nearly 60-year-old federal program that provides health coverage to roughly 71 million low-income Americans. Additionally, Senate Republicans increased cuts to Medicaid over what the House initially passed in late May.

The changes to Medicaid, as well as cuts to food stamps, another one of the nation’s major safety net programs, were drafted in part as an offset to pay for extending Trump’s tax cuts. The measure includes a slew of new rules and regulations, including work requirements for many of those seeking Medicaid coverage.

And the $3.4 trillion legislative package is also projected to surge the national debt by $4 trillion over the next decade.

Democrats for a couple of months have blasted Republicans over the social safety net changes.

“BREAKING: House Republicans vote to kick 17 million people off health care,” screamed the headline in an email from the Democratic National Committee to supporters, moments after the bill passed the House on Thursday.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries charged that “extreme House Republicans just approved the largest cut to Medicaid and food assistance in American history to fund tax breaks for their billionaire donors.”

And Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) chair Rep. Suzan DelBene pledged that “the DCCC will make sure every battleground voter knows how vulnerable House Republicans abandoned them by passing the most unpopular piece of legislation in modern American history, and we’re going to take back the House majority because of it.”  

Expect to see ads from Democrats as early as this holiday weekend taking aim at Republicans over their passage of the bill. And the Democrats are expected to turn up the volume on the messaging campaign next month, during the August congressional break.

HOW MUCH THE ‘BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL’ WILL CUT YOUR TAXES

But Republicans are also going on offense, targeting Democrats for voting against tax cuts.

Republicans are shining a spotlight on a poll conducted by a GOP-aligned public policy group that indicates strong support for the bill due to the tax cut provisions.

A release earlier this week from the group, One Nation, argued that “polling shows that the public supports the Republican plan to cut taxes for families, eliminate taxes on Social Security, overtime, and tips, and reign in waste and abuse in the federal budget.”

The president, as he returned to the nation’s capital early Friday after his event in Iowa, touted his bill.

“I think it’s very popular. It does many things, but one of them is the biggest tax cuts in our country’s history. And that alone makes it very popular,” Trump said.

But Democrats spotlighted a slew of national polls conducted last month that indicate the bill’s popularity in negative territory.

By a 21-point margin, voters questioned in the most recent Fox News national poll opposed the bill (38% favored vs. 59% opposed).

HEAD HERE FOR THE LATEST FOX NEWS POLLING 

The bill was also underwater in other national surveys conducted last month by the Washington Post (minus 19 points), Pew Research (minus 20 points) and Quinnipiac University (minus 26 points).

About half of respondents questioned in the Fox News poll said the bill would hurt their family (49%), while one quarter thought it would help (23%), and another quarter didn’t think it would make a difference (26%).

Sixty percent felt they had a good understanding of what is in the measure, and while those voters were more likely to favor the legislation than those who are unfamiliar with it, more still think it will hurt rather than help their family (45% vs. 34%).

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The latest surveys all indicated a wide partisan divide over the measure.

According to the Fox News poll, which was conducted June 13-16, nearly three-quarters of Republicans (73%) favored the bill, while nearly nine in ten Democrats (89%) and nearly three-quarters of independents (73%) opposed the measure.