The Big Beautiful Bill — What It Costs Your Family

They called it the One Big Beautiful Bill.

It was signed on July 4th, 2025, wrapped in the language of patriotism and prosperity. The administration said it would grow the economy, lower costs, and put American families first. Those are the words they used. What the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found when it scored the bill is a different story, and it is one that every family here at home deserves to hear plainly.

The Big Beautiful Bill adds $3.4 trillion to the national deficit over the next ten years. When interest costs are included, that number reaches $4.1 trillion. The people who will spend their working lives paying that debt are the same people the bill was announced to help. The math does not lie even when the marketing does.

Here is what the bill actually does, family by family. First, one thing you need to understand about how it is written. The benefits for working families are almost entirely temporary. The no-tax on overtime, no-tax on tips, the car loan interest deduction, the extra $6,000 senior deduction, all of it expires after 2028. Three years. Then it is gone. The tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans are permanent. The estate tax exemption raised to $15 million per person is permanent. The capital gains tax breaks for wealthy investors are permanent. That is not an accident. That is the architecture of the bill. Temporary relief for working families. Permanent rewards for the top.

If your family relies on Medicaid, the bill cuts $1 trillion from the program over ten years, the largest single cut to Medicaid in American history. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that 11.8 million people will directly lose their Medicaid coverage as a result. In this district, Medicaid covers low-income seniors in nursing facilities, children in working families who do not qualify for employer insurance, and people with disabilities who have no other option. These are not people who chose to need the government. They are people the government made a promise to. That promise has been broken.

If your family uses SNAP, what most people call food stamps, the bill cuts $186 billion from the program over ten years. The CBO projects that 4.7 million SNAP participants will lose benefits over the decade. Millions more will see their monthly amounts reduced. In a district where grocery costs have risen more than 30 percent since 2019, cutting the one program designed to ensure families can eat is not fiscal responsibility. It is cruelty with a budget line.

If you or someone in your family is approaching retirement and counting on Social Security, the bill accelerates the program toward insolvency. The trust fund was already projected to run short by early 2033. This bill moves that date to late 2032. When the fund depletes, benefits are automatically cut across the board unless Congress acts. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that cut at 24 percent. For a retiree receiving the average monthly benefit of $1,976, a 24 percent reduction means losing approximately $474 every single month. That is seven years away.

If you are a student carrying federal loan debt, the bill eliminates income-driven repayment plans that cap monthly payments based on what borrowers actually earn. Millions of borrowers will see their monthly payments increase significantly, and the protections designed to prevent debt from consuming a disproportionate share of income will be gone.

If you are a working family that relied on the enhanced ACA premium tax credits, those credits were allowed to expire under this bill, contributing to a 21.7 percent increase in marketplace premiums for 2026. Health insurance that was made accessible to working families for several years has become, once again, out of reach for many of them.

Here is what the bill does for people at the top.

The bill makes the 2017 Trump tax cuts permanent. The wealthiest households and the largest corporations receive the most significant long-term benefit. The top 10 percent of earners gain an average of $12,000 per year. The lowest-income households lose an average of $1,600 per year through the safety net cuts. That is not a coincidence. That is a choice. A deliberate, documented, nonpartisan-scored choice about who this government decided to protect when it had to choose.

The net math for a working family is not complicated once you lay it out plainly. The average working family saves an estimated $611 in taxes this year under the bill. That is real. Take it. The other side of the ledger tells a different story. If your family loses Medicaid, the coverage lost is worth between $8,000 and $14,000 per year in actual medical care, not a deduction, gone. If you buy on the ACA marketplace, that 21.7 percent premium increase already cost a typical family roughly $3,120 more this year alone. If your parents are on Social Security, the projected $474 monthly reduction looming in 2032 will hit them harder than any tax saving this bill delivers. If your family uses food assistance, the cuts mean less at the table for families already stretched thin. Add it up honestly and the $611 tax saving does not survive contact with the real numbers. For most working and middle class families, this bill is not a wash. It is a net loss. The temporary provisions expire in three years. The benefit cuts do not.

The bill also pushed the defense budget past $1 trillion for the first time in American history and added $25 billion for a missile defense project the Pentagon had not yet explained or justified. The same bill that accelerated Social Security toward insolvency gave the defense industry a record budget. The same bill that cut food assistance for 3 million Americans continued military financing abroad at billions per year. That is the real budget priority. Written in law. On the record.

Let me be clear about where I stand. A strong national defense matters. A prosperous economy matters. What does not sit right with me is a bill sold to working families as relief that delivered them the cost while delivering the wealthy the benefit. What does not sit right is representatives who voted for it and then went home and told their constituents it was good for them. What does not sit right is a political system so captured by donor interests that a bill this lopsided could pass with a straight face. The families here at home deserved better. They still do.

The families here at home did not write this bill. They did not vote for it. Many of them do not yet know what is in it. That is not an accident either. Complexity protects the powerful. Confusion serves the people who benefit from the status quo. Part of my job as your representative will be to make sure you know exactly what is being done in your name, with your money, and at your expense.

The primary is June 2nd. Your ballot is already in your hands.

With clarity and accountability --
Nina Linh
Independent Candidate, CA-40