Who wins, who loses if Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill passes?
On Saturday, the Senate voted 51-49 to open debate on the latest 940-page version of the bill despite two Republican senators joining the Democrats to oppose the motion. Trump's Republicans hold 53 seats and Democrats hold 47 in the Senate.
What's next if the Senate passes the bill?
On May 22, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed an earlier version of the bill in a 215-214 vote.
That bill has been revised by the Senate, and both chambers of Congress must pass the same legislation for it to become law. If the Senate passes its version, then members from both chambers would work to draft compromise legislation that the House and Senate would have to vote on again. Republicans hold 220 seats and Democrats hold 212 in the House.
If the compromise bill is passed, it would advance to Trump, who is expected to sign it into law.
So who would be some of the winners and losers if the bill – opposed both by Democrats and by some conservatives – becomes law?
Who would benefit from the bill?
The groups who would benefit include:
The bill would extend tax cuts that Trump introduced during his first term. While Trump has pitched this as a gain for the American people, some will benefit more than others.
More than a third of the total cuts would go to households with an annual income of $460,000 or more. About 57 percent of the tax cuts would go to those households with a yearly income of $217,000 or more.
According to an analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, the Senate bill would slash taxes on average by about $2,600 per household in 2026. 'High-income households would receive much more generous tax benefits,' its analysis said.
If the bill does not pass, the child tax credit, currently at $2,000 per child per year, would drop to $1,000 in 2026.
However, according to the current version of the Senate bill, the child tax credit would permanently increase to $2,200. This is a smaller increase than the $2,500 in the version of the bill that the House approved.
Makers of traditional petrol-driven cars could benefit from the bill because the Senate version seeks to end the tax credit for purchases of electric vehicles (EVs), worth up to $7,500, starting on September 30.
This could decrease consumer demand for EVs, levelling the playing field for cars that run on petrol or diesel.
Tips will not be taxed if the bill passes.
Currently, workers – whether waiters or other service providers – are required to report all tips in excess of $20 a month to their employers, and those additional earnings are taxed.
This bill would end that.
Who would lose out because of the bill?
Some of the groups who would not benefit include:
The Senate version of the bill proposes slashing the food stamps programme, called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), by $68.6bn over a decade, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
Food stamps help low-income families buy food. In the 2023 fiscal year, 42.1 million people per month benefitted from the programme, according to the US Department of Agriculture.
The Senate version of the bill proposes federal funding cuts by $930bn to Medicaid, the largest US programme providing healthcare to low-income people. These are cuts to budget outlays by 2034.
The bill says that, starting 2026, able-bodied adults under the age of 65 will be required to work 80 hours a month to continue to receive Medicaid, with the exception of those who have dependent children.
More than 71 million low-income Americans were enrolled in Medicaid for health insurance as of March.
The EV tax credit would end on September 30 if the Senate version of the bill passes. The House version aims to phase out the tax credit by the end of 2025.
Billionaire Elon Musk who owns the EV manufacturer Tesla has voiced his opposition to the bill online. 'I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination,' Musk wrote on X on June 3.
He doubled down on his criticism before the Senate deliberations on the bill on Saturday.
'The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country,' Musk wrote on X, a platform he owns.
The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country!
Utterly insane and destructive. It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future. https://t.co/TZ9w1g7zHF
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 28, 2025
Some conservatives have criticised the bill, saying it would inflate the country's enormous debt.
The CBO estimated that the Senate version would raise the national debt by $3.3 trillion from 2025 to 2034. Under the House version, the CBO estimated a $2.4 trillion increase in the debt over a decade.
The current US national debt stands above $36 trillion and represents 122 percent of the country's gross domestic product.
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Al Jazeera
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US Senate passes Trump's ‘One Big Beautiful Bill', sending it to the House
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They argue that the bill takes support away from low-income families to finance tax cuts that will primarily help the wealthy. Trump, however, has pressed for the bill to be passed by July 4, the country's Independence Day. The legislation — informally known as the One Big Beautiful Bill — now heads back to the House of Representatives for a Wednesday vote on the updated version. The president found out about the Senate's passage in the midst of a news conference in south Florida, where he was touting his crackdown on immigration. Despite tight odds in the House of Representatives, Trump struck an optimistic tone about the upcoming vote. ' I think it's going to go very nicely in the House,' Trump said. 'Actually, I think it will be easier in the House than it was in the Senate.' The president also downplayed one of the most controversial provisions in the bill: cuts to Medicaid, a government health insurance programme for low-income families. About 11.8 million people are anticipated to lose their health coverage in the coming years if the bill becomes law. 'I'm saying it's going to be a very much smaller number than that, and that number will be all waste, fraud and abuse,' Trump said. Criticisms in the Senate Trump was not the only Republican to be celebrating the passage of the omnibus bill. In the Senate, leading Republican John Thune touted the bill as a victory for American workers. 'It's been a long road to get to today,' Thune said from the Senate floor. 'Now we're here, permanently extending tax relief for hard-working Americans.' But not all Republicans were as enthused about the bill. Three party members — Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Susan Collins of Maine — all voted against its passage. And even a critical vote in favour, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, appeared to express regret in the aftermath. 'Do I like this bill? No,' she told a reporter for NBC News. 'I know, that in many parts of the country, there are Americans who are not going to be advantaged by this bill. I don't like that.' She later took to social media to criticise the haste of its passage. 'Let's not kid ourselves. This has been an awful process – a frantic rush to meet an artificial deadline that has tested every limit of this institution.' Meanwhile, the top Democrat in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, said that Republicans had 'betrayed the American people and covered the Senate in utter shame'. 'In one fell swoop, Republicans passed the biggest tax break for billionaires ever seen, paid for by ripping away healthcare from millions of people,' said Schumer. Still, Schumer announced one symbolic victory on Tuesday, writing on the social media platform X that Trump's name for the legislation — 'One Big Beautiful Bill' — had been struck from its official title. 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'That's not fiscal responsibility. It's not what we agreed to.' Billionaire Elon Musk, whose endorsement and funding helped propel Trump to victory in the 2024 presidential election, has also been a vocal opponent of the bill. 'What's the point of a debt ceiling if we keep raising it?' Musk asked on social media on Tuesday. 'All I'm asking is that we don't bankrupt America.' Musk has threatened to fund primary challenges against Republicans who support the bill and even floated on Monday launching a new political party in the US. Trump, however, has brushed aside Musk's criticism as a reaction to the elimination of tax credits for electric vehicles: The billionaire owns one of the most prominent manufacturers, Tesla. The president also threatened to use the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — which Musk helped to found — to strip the billionaire's companies of their subsidies. 'DOGE is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon,' Trump said as he travelled to Florida. Reporting from Washington, DC, Al Jazeera correspondent Alan Fisher said that public support has been slipping as a clearer picture of the bill has emerged. 'The longer this has been talked about and the more details that become public, the fewer Americans support him,' Fisher said. Several recent polls have shown a majority of Americans oppose the bill. A survey last week from Quinnipiac University, for example, found just 29 percent of respondents were in favour of the legislation, while 55 percent were against it. Increase to national debt All told, the legislation in its current form would make permanent Trump's 2017 cuts to business and personal income taxes, which are set to expire by the end of the year. It would also give new tax breaks for income earned through tips and overtime, a policy promise Trump made during his 2024 campaign. At the same time, the bill would provide tens of billions of dollars for Trump's immigration crackdown, including funding to extend barriers and increase technology along the southern border. The bill would also pay for more immigration agents and build the government's capacity to quickly detain and deport people. Beyond cuts to electric vehicle tax breaks, the bill also guts several of former President Joe Biden's incentives for wind and solar energy. Faced with criticism about the knock-on effects for low-income families, Republicans have countered that the new restrictions to Medicaid and SNAP — formerly known as food stamps — would help put the programmes on a more sustainable path. Many Republicans have also rejected the Congressional Budget Office's assessment that the legislation would add $3.3 trillion to the country's already $36.2 trillion debt. 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Qatar Tribune
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Senate passes Donald Trump's big tax and spending cuts bill as Vance breaks a 50-50 tie
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The droning roll calls in the chamber belied the frenzied action to steady the bill. Grim-faced scenes played out on and off the Senate floor, amid exhaustion. Thune worked around the clock desperately reaching for last-minute agreements between those in his party worried the bill's reductions to Medicaid will leave millions more people without care and his most conservative flank, which wanted even steeper cuts to hold down deficits ballooning with the tax cuts. The GOP leaders had no room to spare. Thune could lose no more than three Republican senators, and two — Tillis, who warned that millions of people will lose access to Medicaid health care, and Paul, who opposes raising the debt limit by $5 trillion — had already indicated opposition. Attention quickly turned to two other key senators, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Collins, who also raised concerns about health care cuts, as well as a loose coalition of four conservative GOP senators pushing for even steeper reductions. 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Patty Murray of Washington, the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, raised particular concern about the accounting method being used by the Republicans, which says the tax breaks from Trump's first term are now 'current policy' and the cost of extending them should not be counted toward deficits. She said that kind of 'magic math' won't fly with Americans trying to balance their own household books.
Al Jazeera
7 hours ago
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What Israel's attack on Iran means for the future of war
In the predawn darkness of June 13, Israel launched a 'preemptive' attack on Iran. Explosions rocked various parts of the country. Among the targets were nuclear sites at Natanz and Fordo, military bases, research labs, and senior military residences. By the end of the operation, Israel had killed at least 974 people while Iranian missile strikes in retaliation had killed 28 people in Israel. Israel described its actions as anticipatory self-defence, claiming Iran was mere weeks away from producing a functional nuclear weapon. Yet intelligence assessment, including by Israeli ally, the United States, and reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) showed no evidence of Tehran pursuing a nuclear weapon. At the same time, Iranian diplomats were in talks with US counterparts for a possible new nuclear deal. But beyond the military and geopolitical analysis, a serious ethical question looms: is it morally justifiable to launch such a devastating strike based not on what a state has done, but on what it might do in the future? What precedent does this set for the rest of the world? And who gets to decide when fear is enough to justify war? A dangerous moral gamble Ethicists and international lawyers draw a critical line between preemptive and preventive war. Pre-emption responds to an imminent threat – an immediate assault. Preventive war strikes against a possible future threat. Only the former meets moral criteria rooted in the philosophical works of thinkers like Augustine and Aquinas, and reaffirmed by modern theorists like Michael Walzer — echoing the so-called Caroline formula, which permits preemptive force only when a threat is 'instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation'. Israel's raid, however, fails this test. Iran's nuclear capability was not weeks from completion. Diplomacy had not been exhausted. And the devastation risked — including radioactive fallout from centrifuge halls — far exceeded military necessity. The law mirrors moral constraints. The UN Charter Article 2(4) bans the use of force, with the sole exception in Article 51, which permits self-defence after an armed attack. Israel's invocation of anticipatory self-defence relies on contested legal custom, not accepted treaty law. UN experts have called Israel's strike 'a blatant act of aggression' violating jus cogens norms. Such costly exceptions risk fracturing the international legal order. If one state can credibly claim pre-emption, others will too — from China reacting to patrols near Taiwan, to Pakistan reacting to perceived Indian posturing — undermining global stability. Israel's defenders respond that existential threats justify drastic action. Iran's leaders have a history of hostile rhetoric towards Israel and have consistently backed armed groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently argued that when a state's existence is under threat, international law struggles to provide clear, actionable answers. The historical scars are real. But philosophers warn that words, however hateful, do not equate to act. Rhetoric stands apart from action. If speech alone justified war, any nation could wage preemptive war based on hateful rhetoric. We risk entering a global 'state of nature', where every tense moment becomes cause for war. Technology rewrites the rules Technology tightens the squeeze on moral caution. The drones and F‑35s used in Rising Lion combined to paralyse Iran's defences within minutes. Nations once could rely on time to debate, persuade, and document. Hypersonic missiles and AI-powered drones have eroded that window — delivering a stark choice: act fast or lose your chance. These systems don't just shorten decision time — they dissolve the traditional boundary between wartime and peacetime. As drone surveillance and autonomous systems become embedded in everyday geopolitics, war risks becoming the default condition, and peace the exception. We begin to live not in a world of temporary crisis, but in what philosopher Giorgio Agamben calls a permanent state of exception — a condition where emergency justifies the suspension of norms, not occasionally but perpetually. In such a world, the very idea that states must publicly justify acts of violence begins to erode. Tactical advantage, coined as 'relative superiority', leverages this compressed timeframe — but gains ground at a cost. In an era where classified intelligence triggers near-instant reaction, ethical scrutiny retreats. Future first-move doctrines will reward speed over law, and surprise over proportion. If we lose the distinction between peace and war, we risk losing the principle that violence must always be justified — not assumed. The path back to restraint Without immediate course correction, the world risks a new norm: war before reason, fear before fact. The UN Charter depends on mutual trust that force remains exceptional. Every televised strike chips away at that trust, leading to arms races and reflexive attacks. To prevent this cascade of fear-driven conflict, several steps are essential. There has to be transparent verification: Claims of 'imminent threat' must be assessed by impartial entities — IAEA monitors, independent inquiry commissions — not buried inside secret dossiers. Diplomacy must take precedence: Talks, backchannels, sabotage, sanctions — all must be demonstrably exhausted pre-strike. Not optionally, not retroactively. There must be public assessment of civilian risk: Environmental and health experts must weigh in before military planners pull the trigger. The media, academia, and public must insist that these thresholds are met — and keep governments accountable. Preemptive war may, in rare cases, be morally justified — for instance, missiles poised on launchpads, fleets crossing redlines. But that bar is high by design. Israel's strike on Iran wasn't preventive, it was launched not against an unfolding attack but against a feared possibility. Institutionalising that fear as grounds for war is an invitation to perpetual conflict. If we abandon caution in the name of fear, we abandon the shared moral and legal boundaries that hold humanity together. Just war tradition demands we never view those who may harm us as mere threats — but rather as human beings, each worthy of careful consideration. The Iran–Israel war is more than military drama. It is a test: will the world still hold the line between justified self-defence and unbridled aggression? If the answer is no, then fear will not just kill soldiers. It will kill the fragile hope that restraint can keep us alive. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.
