When the Congressional Budget Office published its distributional analysis of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the results were arithmetic, not opinion. The top 10 percent of earners gain an average of $13,600 per year. The bottom 10 percent lose an average of $1,200 per year.
The disparity has a direct mechanical explanation. The law reduces income taxes, delivering the largest benefits to households with the largest tax bills. It simultaneously cuts Medicaid by $863 billion and SNAP by $295 billion over the decade ending in 2034, reducing the transfer income that supplements wages for low-earning households. Tax cuts do not offset program cuts for people who already owe little in income tax.
$863 Billion From Medicaid. $295 Billion From Food Assistance.
The Congressional Budget Office projects 7.5 million people will lose Medicaid and become uninsured by 2034 as a direct result of the law's cuts. New work requirements account for 5.3 million of those losses. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that between 9.9 million and 14.9 million people are at risk of losing Medicaid coverage under the final legislation, depending on how states implement the provisions.
The work requirements take effect on December 31, 2026, a date that will arrive for real people in real states who currently have coverage.
On food assistance, the CBO estimates more than 2 million people will lose SNAP benefits in a typical month under the law. Among those cut: 1.1 million people in areas where employment is scarce, 900,000 adults between 55 and 64 years old, and 270,000 veterans, unhoused people, and former foster youth. The SNAP reductions total $295 billion over the decade and represent the largest single cut to the program in its history.
Households in the bottom income decile see their total resources drop by roughly 4 percent by 2033, according to the CBO's distributional analysis. The tax cuts provide no meaningful offset because the lowest earners owe little in income tax to begin with. The drop is almost entirely in transfer income: food assistance and health coverage that fill the gap between wages and basic costs of living.
"The incomes for the highest 10 percent of earners would rise by an average of 2.7 percent by 2034, while those of the lowest 10 percent would fall by 3.1 percent, mostly because of cuts to programs such as Medicaid." — Congressional Budget Office, 2025
The Case for a Different Set of Numbers
The argument for regulated capitalism does not begin with a rejection of markets. Markets produce goods, allocate labor, and respond to demand in ways that centrally planned economies have consistently failed to replicate. The argument is narrower: markets do not distribute outcomes equitably without structural supports, and a government's primary obligation is to prevent economic failure from becoming a permanent inheritance.
The current law moves resources from programs that serve households who cannot afford healthcare or food toward tax reductions concentrated in households already accumulating wealth. That is a policy choice, reflected in the CBO's numbers, made with access to those numbers in advance.
A functional alternative does not require eliminating market incentives. It requires preserving Medicaid as a floor that keeps low-income adults out of emergency rooms, maintaining SNAP as a buffer against wages too low to cover groceries, and demanding that any tax legislation disclose its full distributional impact before a vote. The CBO produced that disclosure for this bill. The law passed with those numbers on the table.
Sources
- Distributional Effects of H.R. 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — Congressional Budget Office
- By the Numbers: Harmful Republican Megabill Will Take Health Coverage Away From Millions — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
- Budget Office Says GOP's 'Big, Beautiful Bill' Will Make Rich Richer, Poor Poorer — The Hill
- What's In the One Big Beautiful Bill Act? — Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget
- Combined Distributional Effects of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and of Tariffs — Yale Budget Lab
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