“Morning Joe” economic analyst Steve Rattner warns that Donald Trump’s “unprecedented” spending package will take the United States in the “wrong direction.” On Monday morning, the former Obama-era Treasury official pulled out a set of new charts to break down the president’s “big, beautiful” bill and the devastating effects he said it will have on everyday Americans.
Initially, according to Rattner, people might not feel the true cost of Trump’s legislation: “All the good stuff takes effect now. People are going to get these increases in their standard deduction and their Child Tax Credit. The Social Security Administration has already sent out a letter to Social Security recipients saying, ‘you’re going to get a big tax windfall from this bill.’ So they’re already out there marketing this.”
“The bad stuff doesn’t take effect, for the most part, until after the ’26 midterm elections,” Rattner continued. “[Republicans] staggered this stuff in a way that could work to their political advantage, or at least less political harm.”
Part of the “bad stuff” packed into the megabill, according to the analyst, is how Republicans’ drastic Medicaid cuts could kick 11 million people off their insurance over the coming decade. “This is unprecedented in our history. We’ve always moved forward, not backwards,” Rattner said.
Rattner then moved on to what he said was the most important chart of his presentation, which showed how Trump’s bill would deliver tax cuts to the rich at the expense of low-income Americans. “If you’re in the top 20% of the country, you’re going to get an average $6,000 benefit,” Rattner explained, as he pointed at a large green arrow. “If you go down here to the bottom 20%, what do you see? These people are actually going to be worse off.”
OBBBA delivers tax cuts to the rich at the expense of the poorest Americans. “They get a very small tax cut, but it is completely, wildly offset by what they lose from Medicaid cuts, from food stamp cuts, from other cuts, and so they end up actually $560 worse off,” he explained. Rattner said the projections are unlike anything he had seen before. “In 50 years of watching economic policy, I have never seen a package that was so regressive, that did so much to take money from the poor, give it to the rich. This is unprecedented in our history. It is the most amazing piece of social legislation — in the wrong direction — that we have ever seen.” You can watch Rattner’s full analysis in the clip at the top.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW.
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