The battle over the 'big, beautiful bill' moves from Capitol Hill to the campaign trail
The move comes three days after President Donald Trump signed into law what he and Republicans call the "big, beautiful bill."
The ads, backed by a modest buy, will target 35 Republican-controlled House districts that Democrats are trying to flip in next year's midterm elections, when the GOP will be defending their razor-thin majority in the chamber.
Don't be surprised if the ads by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), which calls the GOP's massive measure "the Big, Ugly Bill," are quickly followed by ads from Republicans taking aim at Democrats.
With the legislative battle over the "big, beautiful bill" finished, and Trump and congressional Republican leaders victorious, the campaign trail war is now underway over the controversial measure, which many of the most recent public opinion polls suggest is not very popular with Americans.
"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 last Thursday.
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."
The new law 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-term tax 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.
The measure also provides billions for border security and codifies the president's controversial immigration crackdown.
Republicans are pointing to what they say is strong support for the measure due to the tax cuts.
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.
But the bill also restructures Medicaid – the nearly 60-year-old federal program that provides health coverage to roughly 71 million low-income Americans.
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.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., 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 DCCC chair Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., 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."
The battle over the bill is also playing out in Senate races.
"I'm deeply concerned about this bill and what this will do. We're going to be talking a lot about it," Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas of New Hampshire told Fox News Digital on Friday.
Pappas, who's running in the crucial 2026 race to succeed retiring longtime Sen. Jeanne Shaheen for a Democratic-held seat Republicans would love to flip, took aim at the bill.
"This was a one-party effort and, unfortunately, it arrived at a conclusion that I think is not good for our state and for our country."
"We're going to be talking about this bill because the results are that 46,000 people in New Hampshire will lose their health insurance. We'll have people that will go hungry, that won't be able to access assistance," Pappas warned. "And we know that insurance premiums for all Granite Staters could go up as a result of uncompensated care costs and the burden that this places on our hospitals."
But former Sen. Scott Brown, who last month launched a Republican campaign for the Senate in New Hampshire, sees things differently.
Asked about criticism from Democrats on the Medicaid cuts, Brown said, "My mom was on welfare. Those are very important programs and I've said already that the people that actually need them the most, the ones who are disabled, the ones who can't get out and work, they should have them."
"It's meant for lower- and middle-income people and I support them getting those benefits. But I don't support those who are here illegally getting them," Brown said.
And he added that he doesn't support giving the benefits to "people who are able-bodied and can absolutely go out and do some volunteerism, go out and work."
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