Follow the Money

In 2015, no person on the planet had a hundred billion dollars. Now, according to the reputable business magazine Forbes, at least 15 people have that much and more, with Elon Musk topping the list with an estimated $400+ billion.

Such enormous wealth in private hands poses a real danger to democracies because money buys power. The distinguished journalist, political commentator, and President Lyndon Johnson’s press secretary Bill Moyers saw the danger decades ago: “The rich can buy more yachts than the rest of us, but we can’t allow them to buy more democracy.”

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court allowed them to do just that in the 2010 Citizens United decision permitting unlimited political contributions. Mr. Musk took full advantage by giving a massive $290 million to support Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and the campaigns of several Congressional supporters. According to Americans for Tax Fairness, billionaires contributed $13 million to political causes in 2004 exploding 200 times to $2.6 billion in 2024.

In 2003, Moyers said, “The corporate right and the political right declared class warfare on working people a quarter of a century ago and they’ve won…. The rich are getting richer, which arguably wouldn’t matter if the rising tide lifted all boats.” But it hasn’t. The middle class and the working poor “are barely keeping their heads above water [and] the inequality gap is the widest it’s been since 1929.” Today, the gap is the widest, by far, in our history.

Now comes the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that passed the House with only Republican votes and showing that Moyers was right. The Act is now in the Senate, which will almost certainly make major changes before sending it back to the House for a final vote. 

The House Act extends the Republican tax cuts of 2017, mostly benefitting the richest 20 percent, and will add at least $2.6 trillion to our national debt over ten years on top of the $2.2 trillion added by the 2017 tax cuts. The Act also includes large cuts to SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) and Medicaid, both of which provide crucial financial support to help people with limited incomes. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 8.6 million Americans will lose Medicaid coverage in the next few years. The money saved will cover part of the cost of tax cuts—at the expense of healthcare and food, especially children’s food. The Act is the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in U.S. history.

As presently written, the Act makes it more difficult for needy students to receive Pell Grants for college, gives an extra $150 billion to the Defense Department, funds $155 billion for border security (five times this year’s funding), cuts back many clean-energy tax credits vital to minimizing climate change, defunds Planned Parenthood, and other provisions. Perhaps the most curious are prohibitions on courts holding federal officials in contempt for ignoring court orders and a 10-year prohibition of any state legislation or regulation of artificial intelligence (AI), apparently included to please prosperous technocrats who foresee enormous profits and influence as AI matures.

When the Act passed the House, all three major credit rating agencies downgraded U.S. debt from AAA, with Moody’s calling the Act fiscally irresponsible. Unless the Senate amends the Act to benefit middle- and low-income people, who need it most, instead of those who need it least, the gaping gap between the rich and the rest will widen even more. The GOP is waging war on the common good.