Repeal the whole Big Beautiful Bill

One year after its passage, President Donald Trump's Big Ugly Bill (aka the “One Big Beautiful Bill”) is decimating state budgets and our social safety net: $900 billion in cuts to our healthcare system; $300 billion in cuts to student loans and other education programs; $200 billion in cuts to food assistance. These cuts will make Americans sicker, hungrier and dumber. Moreover, they will make our states poorer, since they depend on those programs to offset state Medicaid and education program expenses.

This has led many to call for a restoration of those programs in the next Congress.

But there’s a problem.

The U.S. national debt is now $37 trillion. It’s accelerating under Trump and increased by $1.8 trillion in 2025. Restoring the $2.5 trillion of total benefits cuts imposed by the BUB may be fiscally impossible.

So here’s how we do it: Repeal the Whole Damn Thing.

Put it on a yard sign. Carry it down the street. Post it in front of every elected official’s office. Repeal the Whole Thing.

Because the BUB didn’t just include $2.5 trillion in benefits cuts. It also included $5.9 trillion in tax cuts for our nation’s wealthiest, and forced us to bear $700 billion of additional interest costs to service that debt. The math here is simple: restore $5.9 trillion in tax revenue, avoid $700 billion in interest costs, and restore $2.5 trillion in benefits programs, and you end up with $5.9+0.7-2.5 = $4.1 trillion back in your pocket. Along with your food, healthcare, and education.

But we only get that if we Repeal the Whole Thing.

It’s simple. It’s easy to remember. But it’s also really important.

In Trump’s first term, with the help of Republican majorities in the House and Senate, he passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (aka, the medium-sized ugly bill). That bill “only” added $1.9 trillion to the deficit and led to immediate calls to restore the state and local tax (“SALT”) deduction, which took almost $700 billion out of the pockets of the American people.

Congress was never able to restore that benefit, in spite of ample public support, because we never found a way to offset the resulting deficit increase. Everyone lobbied for benefits restoration, no one lobbied for tax restoration, and so we did nothing. The rich got richer, and deficits got bigger.

What Trump and the GOP are counting on is that those same politics will hold this time. That we’ll continue to abuse the least among us in order to subsidize America’s billionaires. I’d like to believe we’re better than that. But we have to prove it. How, you ask?

Sing it with me now: Repeal the Whole Thing.

Now, my Republican colleagues will undoubtedly counter with all the working-class people who the BUB helped by eliminating tax on tips and overtime. To which the only appropriate answer is “stop lying.”

First, because the BUB didn’t eliminate taxes on tips. It only eliminated taxes on the first $25,000 of tipped income for people earning $150,000 per year or less and only eliminated those taxes for a few years. After 2028, your taxes go back to where they were before.

Second, because the BUB didn’t eliminate taxes on overtime pay. It only eliminates taxes on the first $12,500 of overtime pay, and only on that portion of your income that was earned at a higher hourly overtime rate, and only if you earned less than $150,000 per year. And like the tax on tips change, it expires in 2028.

By contrast, the tax cuts to billionaires are permanent. So like I said, stop lying. This was a bill to steal from the poor and give to the wealthiest.

And so, we can safely Repeal the Whole Thing in 2028, confident that it will have no effect on your tipped or overtime income taxation.

Republicans will also likely claim that if we Repeal the Whole Thing, it will undo the SALT changes in the BUB. If they say that, that would also be a lie.

The BUB did increase the SALT cap from $10,000 to $40,000, but like the tips and overtime provisions, it has caps based on total income and expires in 2030. However, there’s a bigger, more nuanced reason, too. The TCJA (Medium Ugly Bill) SALT changes were set to expire at the end of 2025. The Big Ugly Bill extended a slightly less bad version of the TCJA changes. But if you just Repeal the Whole Thing, we revert to the pre-TCJA situation where all SALT expenses are deductible.

So if you want a fiscally responsible U.S. government. If you want to maintain a functioning healthcare system, competitive U.S. education, and food for the hungry, you know what we have to do.

Repeal. The. Whole. Thing.

• U.S. Rep. Sean Casten is a Democrat from Downers Grove.