WithDonald Trumppushing hard to give big tax cuts to the rich and do huge favors for crypto billionaires, it was jarring to see a photo of aTrump aide carrying a signthat said: “President Trump’s Pro-Worker Priorities”. The aide was about to place the sign on Trump’s lectern; it mentioned such “pro-worker priorities” as ending federal taxes on tips and overtime pay: catchy, but scattershot policies that will help only a fraction of the nation’s workers.
Not surprisingly, that sign made no mention of Trump’s many anti-worker policies that will do serious harm to millions of workers and their families. Trump’s “big, beautiful” budget bill, which is advancing in the House, includes thebiggest cuts ever to Medicaid, anearly 30% reductionin food assistance, and a$350bn cutin aid that helps working-class kids afford college. Trump has also pushed toend home-heating assistanceand to make it harder for millions of Americans to afford Obamacare. If that isn’t painful enough, GOP deficit hawks have vowed to torpedo the budget bill unless it includes even more cuts. Under the current Trump House bill, at least 13.7 million peoplewould lose health coverage– and the deficit hawks’ demands would increase that number.
Even some prominent Republicans acknowledge that the Republican bill contains policies that will screw workers. Josh Hawley, a Republican senator from Missouri, slammed the Trump-GOP push to chop hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid. “These are working peopleand their children who need healthcare, and it’s just wrong to go and cut their healthcare when they’re trying to make ends meet, trying to help their kids,” Hawley said. He added: “No Republican should be supportingMedicaid benefit cuts.”
To give a truer picture of what Trump is all about, that Trump aide should have also been carrying a sign that said: “President Trump’s Pro-Billionaire Priorities”. Those priorities are more ambitious and will cost far more than Trump’s “pro-worker priorities” – they include over a trillion dollars in tax cuts for the wealthy, stratagems to help crypto billionaires grow ever richer, andbig cuts to the IRS budgetto reduce the chances that the ultra-wealthy will get audited. To please his billionaire finance buddies, Trump has sought togut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was created to protect typical families from financial scams and extortionate banking practices. And let’s not forget the many ways Trump is helping tosteer more businesstoElon Musk, the world’s richest person and Trump’s biggest campaign contributor (to thetune of $270mbacking the president and other Republicans).
The Center for American Progress points out that the Trump/Republican budget bill would, if implemented, “bethe largest transfer of wealthfrom the poor to the rich in a single law in US history”. Another progressive thinktank, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, notes that the budget billwould cut $1.1tnfrom food aid, Medicaid and other health programs while lavishing $1.1tn in tax cuts upon those earning over $500,000. Not only that, the 1m households earning over $1m a year would receive $105bn in tax cuts in 2027 – that’smore than the tax cutsgoing to the 127m households earning under $100,000.
Republicans defend their painful program cuts as healthy, saying they will hold down the budget deficit. But there is of course a far less painful and more worker-friendly way to reduce the budget deficit: don’t extend the trillions in Trump tax cuts that overwhelmingly favor the rich.
When Trump boasts about the “big, beautiful” bill, he talks only about the tax cuts, but never about howthe cuts in Medicaid and Snap(Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) will hurt millions of families. The Republican party consistently fails to note thatone in four small-business ownersand one in four veterans live in households that receive help from Snap, Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Under the planned cuts to Snap,42 million people– includingone in five childrenin the US – could see their food assistance reduced.
According to thePenn Wharton Budget model, when one factors in the Medicaid and Snap cuts along with the tax cuts, the Trump-House bill would cause Americans earning less than $17,000 a year to lose $1,030 on average in after-tax income starting in 2026. Households earning between $17,000 and $51,000 a year would lose around $700 on average. The very wealthy do far better. For those in the richest 0.1% – that is, households earning at least $4.3m a year – their after-tax income would jump by over $388,000.
That doesn’t sound very pro-worker to me. It’s a perversion of the truth for Trump to boast of his pro-worker bona fides when he steadfastly refuses to push for the two things that would do most to lift workers’ living standards: push to raise workers’ pay and push to strengthen labor unions and worker bargaining power. Not only has Trump done nothing to increase the paltry $7.25-an-hour federal minimum wage, but he killed a Biden-era regulation that required federal contractors to pay their workersat least $17.75 an hour. Now many of those workers will see their pay sink to $13.30 an hour. What’s more, Trump has sought to sabotage unions, not strengthen them. He has movedto strip 1 million federal employeesof their right to bargain while also seeking tocripple the National Labor Relations Board, which protects workers’ ability to bargain for better pay and conditions.
As for Trump’s call to end the tax on tips, that will help many restaurant servers and hotel housekeepers, but the Yale Budget Lab says that provision has a narrow scope and will helpless than 3% of all workers.
Last year, candidate Trumpsaid: “As soon as I get to office, we will make housing much more affordable.” But second-term Trump is doing just the opposite. His budget calls for a devastating40% cut in rental assistancethat millions of Americans rely on to pay their monthly rent. Candidate Trump also said: “Your heating and air conditioning, electricity, gasoline –all can be cut down in half.” But for millions of Americans he is increasing that burden by pushing to end aprogram that helps six millionstruggling households afford to heat and cool their homes.
Many blue-collar Americans are eager to send their kids to college, but Trump and House Republicans would make that harder.Around one in eight Americanshave federal student loans, which have been key to enabling millions of people to afford college. But Republicans want toeliminate subsidized loansfor undergraduates andincrease the minimum monthly paymentsthat low-income borrowers already have a hard time paying.
Trump boasts he is pro-worker, but he is doing absolutely nothing to help with what many workers say are their biggest priorities: making housing more affordable, reducing the cost of childcare and healthcare, making it easier to send one’s kids to college, and bringing down prices. Billionaires can rejoice that Trump is capitulating to them and their priorities, but American workers shouldn’t be fooled into believing that Trump is addressing their needs.
Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author focusing on labor and the workplace, as well as economic and legal issues