“Meanwhile the newly-passed budget will give the top 1% of earners over $1 trillion over the next 10 years through tax cuts. These breaks extend to the top 10% of earners with lower income tax rates and beneficial changes to estate tax.”
“The public officials who just voted to cut healthcare and food support for millions of low-income Americans on average pulled in millions of dollars to fund their campaigns and most of them are worth more than a million dollars themselves.
The Republicans’ budget bill, originally dubbed the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” by President Donald Trump and the members of his regime, just passed into law through three razor-thin votes in Congress. Only Republicans voted in support of Trump’s budget bill.
The first vote on the budget passed through the House of Representatives by a margin of 215-214 on May 22, then it passed through the Senate by a tie-breaking vote from Vice President J.D. Vance on July 1, and passed through the House again on July 3 by a margin of 218-214. Then Trump signed the bill in celebration on Independence Day.
The bill slashes social safety nets for people in the poorest income brackets, cutting over $1 trillion in Medicaid and a 20% cut to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, while raising taxes for people making $30,000 or less annually.
Those making less than $15,000 per year will see their taxes increase by over 70% and people making between $15,000 and $30,000 per year will see a 20.65% yearly tax increase.
Meanwhile the newly-passed budget will give the top 1% of earners over $1 trillion over the next 10 years through tax cuts. These breaks extend to the top 10% of earners with lower income tax rates and beneficial changes to estate tax.
The seven biggest individual donors in the latest election cycle are all billionaires who’d directly benefit the most from the new budget. They gave tens to hundreds of millions to Republicans almost exclusively, according to OpenSecrets.
Elon Musk gave the most to the 2024 elections, to the tune of giving Republicans $291 million. Next was billionaire Timothy Mellon to the tune of over $172 million to Republicans.
Then Miriam Adelson, owner of the Las Vegas Sands and passionate Zionist and a supporter of illegal Israeli settlements, gave Republicans $148 million.
According to OpenSecrets, the next highest donors are Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein who gave Republicans $143 million, then Kenneth Griffin of Citadel LLC who gave Republican candidates $108 million.
According to OpenSecrets, the only billionaires in 2024’s top seven political donors that gave any money to Democratic candidates were Jeffrey and Janine Yass, who gave $1,500 to Democrats and $100.3 million to Republicans. Behind them in funding is Paul Singer of Elliot Management, who only donated to Republican campaigns to the tune of over $64 million.
While those seven mega donors did not directly give money to every Republican in Congress who voted for the Trump regime’s budget, they still pulled in millions on average to fund their campaigns.
According to campaign finance data from OpenSecrets, the senators who approved the budget that cut Medicaid for millions of struggling Americans received a median amount of $13.4 million to finance their campaigns. The average campaign funds for senate Republicans who passed the budget is $22.4 million.
Republicans in the House of Representatives that approved the bill raised a median amount of $2 million for their latest reported campaign, according to OpenSecrets. The average amount received for house campaigns was just over $3 million.
The officials that passed the bill that increased taxes only on the poorest of their constituents are often worth millions themselves, according to personal finance data from OpenSecrets and Quiver Quantitative.
The median net worth for senators that voted for the “Big Beautiful Bill” was $4.75 million, and the average personal net worth was over $31 million. The reason for such a difference in the median and average was an outlier in Florida Senator Rick Scott, who is worth an estimated $553 million, according to Quiver Quantitative.
Republican members of the House of Representatives that voted for the bill that would severely cut funding for food assistance programs are worth an average of over $3 million. The median estimated net worth of those representatives is $2.06 million, according to OpenSecrets and Quiver Quantitative.
Many of these Republican officials grow their wealth through personal stock trading while also serving in Congress.
Policymakers engaging in personal stock trading means they can directly profit from the laws they pass, like Pennsylvania Representative Robert Bresnahan who dumped stock in a Medicare exchange company right before the budget passed, according to Quiver Quantitative’s social media.
Quiver Quantitative reports that 33 of the 50 senators that passed the bill trade personal stocks and only 90 of the 218 representatives that passed the bill also trade stocks.
The median trade volume for the senators that passed the budget is $1.7 million, and the median trade volume for house members that passed the bill is over $1 million, according to OpenSecrets and Quiver Quantitative.
Median values are the central point in the sequence of numbers, and are unaffected by outliers like averages, which are the result of adding all values in a set together and dividing by the total number of values in the set. Both average and median can represent the idea of a central, or most regular, value for a dataset.
These public officials that approved the budget fundraised millions for their campaigns, while having millions in many of their personal bank accounts, and some trade stocks to further increase their wealth. Meanwhile the budget they just passed will award over $1 trillion to the wealthiest in society at the direct expense of the poorest in the country and their social safety nets.
Many who make the least in this country will lose money and some even their lives as a direct result of wealthy politicians giving more and more resources to the wealthiest few at the top of our society.
Mark Credico is an independent journalist working in Southern Nevada. He covers subjects including government accountability, homelessness, workers' unions and the environment.
