One Big Beautiful Bill: Legislative Package Faces Senate Struggles
May 26th, 2025
Arnav Goyal and Jack Riegler
May 26th, 2025
Arnav Goyal and Jack Riegler
In early 2025, House Republicans, led by Representative Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) introduced the “One Big, Beautiful, Bill Act,” aimed at spearheading President Trump’s 2025 agenda and introducing sweeping reforms across the government. The over 1,000 page bill combines tax breaks, spending cuts, Medicare, SNAP, and SALT reforms, with border security funding and other priorities.
However, what is this bill? What will it do? It’s Trump’s budget bill, which has been aggressively pushed by him and his allies to secure priorities.
Some of the provisions are:
A raise on the SALT deduction cap to $40000 for those making under $500,000 a year
Work requirements for SNAP and Medicaid, and more stringent eligibility requirements
Funding for promises of mass deportations and border security and also defense initiatives
“MAGA” savings accounts, creating $1000 per child saving accounts for parents, and an increase on the child tax credit to $2500 until 2028
This is not all of it. However, 4 main things have stuck out that make this bill particularly controversial.
An expansion of lower taxes on wealthy people, which experts have characterized as one of the largest transfers of wealth
A projected $3.3 trillion dollar increase in the deficit due to this bill, with a $4 trillion debt ceiling increase, incentivizing “reckless spending”
Little to no spending cuts in the bill to offset the deficit increase
This bill wasn’t even supposed to be passed. Budget proposals have to get out of committee first, and the first vote did not go well, being 16-21, with Representatives like Chip Roy pointing to increased deficit spending. With that, even more opposition from budget hawks came within the Republican party for reckless spending, such as raising the debt limit by $4 trillion. This comes as a result of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent telling Congress to raise the debt limit by mid July to avoid defaulting during the August recess. However, after some negotiations with Trump himself, most eventually folded. Thomas Massie, a Representative from Kentucky, remarked that “this bill is a ticking debt time bomb”, and eventually him and two others voted against the bill due to such grievances. Yet, a few days ago, it passed on a vote of 215-214. But the problems don’t stop there. This has led to a lot of opposition in both the Senate and House.
Following opposition from Republicans within the House, President Trump headed to Capitol Hill to campaign for its passage and threatened holdouts that opposing it would hurt their future in the party. President Trump appeared at a conference meeting last Tuesday and hosted a session at the White House on Wednesday. His administration then released a statement saying that failure “would be the ultimate betrayal.”
On Thursday May 22, the “Big Beautiful Bill Act passed in the House of Representatives, with every Democrat voting no and Representatives Warren Davidsion (R-Ohio) and Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) and Andy Harris (R-Maryland) voting present with a final vote tally of 215-214. Following passage of the bill, certain Republicans, many Democrats, and the public voiced harsh criticisms of the bill, mainly surrounding the 8.6 million people who would lose healthcare coverage, increases in deportations, defunding Planned Parenthood, and work requirements for SNAP.
After passing the house, the bill was sent to the Senate, where GOP Senators have criticized the piece of legislation for what they say is reckless spending and an unacceptable rise to the national deficit. It must pass the Senate. In the Senate, there are a lot of GOP holdouts, mainly spearheaded by Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. He opposes the OBBB because like I mentioned, most want more cuts. This has led to a standstill in the Senate. There are almost certainly more than 3 holdouts, which is needed for the bill to pass. To add salt to the would, Johnson has said that this bill does not have enough GOP Senators to keep it afloat. The math seems correct. There are at least 6 senators who will vote no.
Overall, we must see how the One Big Beautiful Bill does in the Senate. It may be a dud, or after some amendments, it may pass after major negotiations. Yet, one thing is clear. This One Big Beautiful Bill has only become a Big Beautiful Bother for Trump, as he says he wants to quit the grandstanding and get the bill passed. Let’s see what plays out over time.
Extemp Analysis by Blake McFalls
How should Senate democrats handle the GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill?
AGD: Starting off with a funny agd about a political party should not be a challenge. If it is, look on the subreddit r/nottheonion for funny stories.
Background: my policy for creating a background is to address all nouns mentioned in the prompt; here these would be the OBBB and Senate democrats. Also, I split the background into 2 sections: background (how we got here) and context (update). For the first part, I would mention Trump’s urge for the return of his 2017 tax cuts and how that along with other provisions ended up in the bill, thereby explaining what is in the bill. For context, I would state that it passed the House but still faces the Senate and democratic opposition.
Significance: For the SOS, ensure you make the audience feel urgency in the problem. Here, I would give the CBO report on how the tax cuts would cost the government $3.8T in the next 10 years. Personally, I would max out at this one statement here, but I’ve been hearing talk about the double SOS, where you mention 2 things. If you desire this, just extend the budgetary impact on the economy and/or public services.
Thesis: Since this is an open-ended question, your core thesis is not really that important because it isn’t a yes or no answer. All you need to do here is set up your 3 points, which I would do with something like “they must ensure they get their way”, then your points would explain how they can get that done. There are many answers to this question, but I will list what I would have as my sample 3:
MP1: forming opposition coalition
MP2: proposing amendments
MP3: mitigating the damage with future bills
When it comes to ordering points, I usually go with (1) obvious, (2) meh, (3) wow, though I know some people have catchier names for these. Sometimes though, especially in prescriptive questions like this one, asking for solutions, I do them in the logical order they would be implemented in. So here, the first thing democrats would do is block the current form of the bill by the 27th, then they would try to change the bill before future votes, then they would clean up the remaining mess after the bill is passed.
Substructure: this question, once again, is prescriptive, meaning the “how should” nature of the question looks for your solution. A problem, cause, solution substructure is commonplace for this, but there are variations to this. I don’t do:
A: problem
B: cause
C: solution,
because I do:
A: problem + cause
B: solution
C: impact.
Just because in a world where you spend 30 seconds on A, 30 on B, and 15 on C, you don’t want to spend 4 times as much time on the problem (including its cause) as you do on your solution while also leaving no room for your impact. In addition, your cause can act as your problem’s warrant, which you need anyway in each subpoint. Considering all of this, this is what my final substructure looks like:
A: cause → problem
B: solution → achieves goal
C: impact
Using this format, let’s do MP1, forming an opposition coalition:
A: senate majority 53-47 for reps → OBBB would pass easily on partisan lines
B: works with opposing reps (like Susan Collins) to gain majority → ability to fail
C: budget is spared of cuts for now
Practice flowing the other 2 points on this substructure. Obviously, my opinion on how to answer this question is not the only way; find what fits your style.
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