The next time Congressional Republicans don’t give President Donald Trump something he wants will be the first time. So, it’s a good bet that the "One Big Beautiful Bill" -- the centerpiece of Trump’s domestic agenda of cutting taxes and government programs that benefit the poor -- will soon pass Congress, despite current GOP squabbling over it. And when the bill passes, it will be a policy harvest from seeds Republicans planted decades ago.
Suggested Reading
The One Big Beautiful Bill, which Black community advocates say will deliver a big left hook to poor Black Americans, will cut Medicaid -- the program that provides health care to the country’s poorest residents -- by $793 billion over the next decade, according to an analysis from the Congressional Budget Office.
The bill will cut an estimated $295 billion over the next decade from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides food assistance to the country’s poorest residents.
Republicans didn’t simply wake up on Trump’s Inauguration Day in January and decide they wanted to take a meat axe to those programs. As folks from around the way might say: They been wanting to chop up those programs. Let's Break it all down:
The program now known as SNAP was established in 1964 with the passage of the Food Stamp Act. In the U.S. House of Representatives, where the bill originated, Democrats provided 216 of the 229 votes in favor of passage. Republicans provided 163 of the 189 no votes.
Medicaid was established in 1965 with the passage of amendments to the Social Security Act of 1935. When it passed the House, Democrats provided 248 of the 313 yes votes. Republicans provided 73 of the 115 no votes.
Now, as then, the primary beneficiaries of those programs are poor white Americans. Poor Black Americans are overrepresented among SNAP and Medicaid recipients, but, numerically, the biggest chunk of assistance offered through those programs goes to poor white Americans.
That’s why it’s something of a political magic act that Republicans have been able to get poor white voters to back GOP candidates who oppose those programs. The secret has been in getting poor white Americans to believe those other people -- Black people, “illegals” -- are sitting back and collecting a check while they, “the real Americans,” are hard at work.
Ronald Reagan never said the “welfare queen” he often derided in campaign speeches as a fraudulent freeloader was Black. But after a Black woman in Chicago had been busted in a high-profile welfare fraud case in 1974, the term became political code for poor Black woman.
Reagan won the presidency in 1980 and was able to push through some cuts to food stamps and Medicaid while backing huge tax cuts that disproportionately benefited the wealthy. Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush, also signed into law tax cuts that disproportionately benefited the wealthy.
Cutting taxes has been the overarching goal of every Republican president since Reagan, and cutting assistance programs in furtherance of that goal has been their shared plan. Trump’s messaging on “illegals” mirrors, in many ways, Reagan’s messaging on welfare queens.
Democrats have derided the One Big Beautiful Bill as cruel, regressive and a sop to the wealthy. One thing the bill can’t be called is original.
Straight From 
Sign up for our free daily newsletter.