WASHINGTON—The U.S. Senate takes up Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” this week with a real chance that the measure will go down to defeat if just five Republicans who have expressed reservations about it stick to their guns and vote no. All five are under intense pressure from constituents who stand to lose health care if the measure passes.
Among the five are Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who say they oppose killing Medicaid. Tom Tillis of North Carolina, a state where the bill could result in shutting down of many rural hospitals, is also among the group. Josh Hawley of Missouri says his constituents will be hurt by the Medicaid cuts, and Kentucky’s Rand Paul is a Libertarian worried about national debt who says he, too, is a “no” vote.
The bill needs 51 votes to pass, and if the five hold firm, it will get only 48. Even a vote by Vice President Vance would bring it to 49, short of a majority of 51.
Eyes are also on Iowa’s Joni Ernst. Pressed hard by constituents about the measure’s key spending cut—at least $715 billion over 10 years from Medicaid— she caused a firestorm by telling a constituent concerned that the bill would result in an increase in deaths when she said, “We all have to die.”
The opposition to the bill this week is being led by labor with a dramatic and intensive ad campaign directed at the vulnerable Republicans in the Senate. Determined to derail Trump’s huge tax cuts for the rich and tax increases—and program cuts—for everyone else, the Teachers/AFT are taking to the airwaves with a six-figure eight-ad streaming video campaign against the measure.
The 10-day ad buy will be on all major online platforms and streaming TV in Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.
It aims to get voters to convince the Republican senators of those states to defy party orthodoxy—and President Trump—and vote down what is officially the “reconciliation” tax and spending measure.
The “Big Beautiful Bill” is the largest transfer of wealth in U.S. history from working people to the corporate and capitalist class, especially ultra-rich billionaires, the ads say.
AFT and other unions point out that class uses its campaign contributions and dark money to buy political clout and to—in Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s words, “rig the system.”
Hitting at the exact time
The ads are hitting at the exact time that the debate happens in the Senate this week. They build on the current $2 million “Put families first” ad campaign already underway by the Teachers/AFT and AFSCME, AFT President Randi Weingarten said.
That campaign and similar opposition by unions and their allies convinced several Republican lawmakers, but not enough, to oppose the bill in the GOP-run House. It passed there, 215-214, with all 215 “yes” votes from among the 220 GOPers.
“The ads expose the true toll the bill will have on people’s everyday lives, revealing the devastating consequences of shredding the programs hardworking Americans rely on to pay for tax cuts for billionaires,” the union says.
“The bill kicks millions of people off Medicaid. It balloons the national debt, ratcheting up pressure on interest rates. It includes an unprecedented school voucher handout,” nationwide “that will siphon” $25 billion in people’s tax dollars billions mostly to rich parents of private school students.
The ad spots feature voters describing “the devastating real-world impact of the president’s big, ugly, bill,”said Teachers/AFT President Weingarten.
“The stories are heartbreaking,” she said. “ Whether it’s closing rural hospitals, denying kids critical healthcare or pushing up everyday costs for families, these reckless and chaotic cuts pushed by extremist politicians should be called out.”
The ads reveal, she added, that “the GOP goal is the wholesale gutting of the services that help working Americans have a shot at a better life. And for what? To pay for tax cuts for billionaires. Our ads send a direct message about the human cost of the administration’s attacks and make the case that it’s time to put families, not ultra-wealthy [political] donors, first.”
The ads also present an alternative vision of the U.S. future, and one that, while Weingarten did not say so, congressional Democrats have struggled to articulate against Trump and the GOP.
That vision, New York City civics teacher Weingarten said, includes “opportunity and justice for all, working-class tax cuts, full funding of public schools and colleges, expansion of affordable healthcare, and for appropriate AI guardrails that stoke innovation in close partnership with educators.”
“This transfer of billions in wealth from workers to the ultra-rich comprises the largest fiscal heist in U.S. history,” the ads point out. Not only would it transfer trillions to billionaires, but contrary to GOP claims, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the Trump-GOP “reconciliation” bill would increase the federal deficit by $2.4 trillion over a decade.
CBO estimates the measure “would reduce the resources of the poorest 10% of households by $1,600 per year, while those in the top 10% see $12,000 yearly gains. Other studies show that even most of those gains would go to the top 1%.
Given those findings and their impact, polls show a majority of people, including a slight majority of MAGA Republicans, oppose the bill, AFT says. The ads feature regular everyday voters carrying that message, it adds.
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