As Republicans in the House and Senate sprint to pass President Donald Trump’s signature One Big Beautiful Bill Act, we found Americans in their own scramble, poring over the bill’s hundreds of pages and trying to determine how their lives might change.
Here’s a little of what they told us:
SNAP and Medicaid cuts
To try to pay for the bill’s trillions of dollars in tax cuts, congressional Republicans are cutting or changing the funding mechanisms for programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the vital food assistance initiative.
Tanja, who asked that we not use her last name, is on both.
Sitting in her wheelchair next to her loyal service dog Zoe, she told ABC News she’s never followed a bill this closely. She’s living paycheck-to-paycheck and can’t afford the specific foods her doctors say she needs without SNAP.
Tanja: There is not a lot left over in my monthly allowance for anything.
O’Brien: You really seem to live paycheck-to-paycheck
Tanja: Yeah, even…
O’Brien: Even worse?
Tanja: Even worse. Worse than that.
“The way it’s going right now, and it’s not just me, we’re all scared,” she added.
The Senate version of the megabill cuts agriculture programs by roughly $186 billion, most of which will come out of SNAP.
And, health care providers are concerned, too.
Ruben Bastell is a lab technician at a New York hospital, where he says roughly four in 10 patients are on Medicaid, the health insurance program for low-income Americans and those with disabilities.
The current version of the budget bill imposes new work requirements on Medicaid recipients and increases the required paperwork to verify eligibility.
It would also start to cut what’s known as the provider tax, which helps fund state obligations to Medicaid, in 2028
Both could result in millions less on the program and, Bastell warns, could upend parts of the U.S. health care system.
Bastell: Eventually hospitals are going to have to close their doors .
O’Brien: What is that going to do to patient care in general?
Bastell: Patient care? It’s definitely going to delay it. A lot of patients won’t be able to get treated.
Republicans say those concerns are overblown and they are making both Medicaid and SNAP more sustainable by targeting waste, fraud and abuse in both programs.
The bill’s changes to Medicaid are expected to cause 11.8 million Americans to lose their insurance, according to a recent analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Slashing green energy tax incentives
In addition to cuts in programs like Medicaid and SNAP to help pay for the bill, the legislation phases out Biden-era green energy tax incentives, particularly for wind and solar power.
Micah Gold-Markel is deeply nervous about that.
His small Philadelphia company Solar States has swelled in the last few years, thanks to increased demand because of those tax incentives. Now, he’s worried he may need to fire half of his employees if those credits are rolled back.
Many of his employees voted for Trump, he says, in the must-win state of Pennsylvania. And now their jobs could be on the line because of his bill.
Gold-Markel: The hardest part of being a business owner is laying people off. Hands down, hands down…
O’Brien: Are you worried you’re going to have to do that more?
Gold-Markel: (tears up) I’m really worried about that, yeah.
Gold-Markel has been driving back and forth from his warehouse to Capitol Hill, lobbying against slashing the green energy incentives. And while the Senate has lessened how quickly some of the tax credits will get phased out, he and the others in his industry have largely been unsuccessful.
“I think some [lawmakers] think that the jobs are not real. And I don’t know, other than to come in front of them and to tell them I was born in West Philly. This is my job. I don’t know what else to say to them, and some of them still look you in the face, and they just don’t believe you,” he said.
Taxes and Trump accounts
In Englewood, New Jersey, we met firefighters who, between juggling 911 calls, are also watching Congress closely. But they’re excited.
Trump’s bill includes a key campaign promise: no federal income taxes on tips and overtime. And while some service workers have celebrated the tips portion, the firefighters we met are focused on their OT. They work a lot of it.
“It could be in the thousands of dollars that a firefighter could get. More of a refund when they do the taxes, for sure,” said Matt Caliente, a former firefighter and president of the Professional Firefighters Association of New Jersey. The union’s national arm has endorsed the overtime provision of the bill.
“It certainly lightens the burden for your family. Pays for things like childcare and some rest, some vacations,” Ed Zebrowski, a Cape May, New Jersey, firefighter added.
Another section causing some excitement — so-called “Trump accounts” — investment accounts for newborns — would open with a one-time deposit from the federal government of $1,000.
“[These] initiatives are going to Main Street and America and helping everyday people succeed,” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said recently at a White House event.
The bill also includes a roughly $4 trillion tax cut, largely by making Trump’s 2017 tax law permanent before it was due to expire. Because the law is currently on the books, most Americans largely won’t see a change to their yearly tax filings because of this bill, but they also won’t pay more.
Blocking AI regulation
Another provision buried in the bill — which came as a surprise to some House Republicans who say they didn’t read it before voting on it — is a ban on any state or local regulations on artificial intelligence for 10 years.
The move would block laws on the books in more than 20 states, including those covering AI scams, election misinformation and explicit deepfake images of children.
Marty Jackley, South Dakota’s attorney general, said the state’s Legislature worked hard to pass its bans on AI-generated misinformation and deepfakes and he’s calling on fellow Republicans in Congress to change course.
“All it does is prevent the states that already have laws in place from protecting our citizens against AI-generated child porn, against election manipulation and consumer fraud,” he said.
ABC News’ Mariam Khan, Isabella Murray, John Parkinson, Allison Pecorin, Lauren Peller, Joe Locasio and Cameron Krakowiak contributed to this report.
The post Some people who will feel the effects of Trump’s megabill appeared first on ABC News.
