Review: Wisconsin winners, losers, and liars–the big beautiful budget mess and chaos in Congress

President Trump’s megabill will affect Wisconsin primarily through Medicaid and healthcare cuts.

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Nobody in Wisconsin can say they weren’t warned about the contents of President Donald Trump’s domestic policy package. Trump calls the bill “big” and ”beautiful,” which provides the perfect starting point to review the winners, losers, and liars that made possible an unparalleled transfer of wealth from Wisconsin’s middle class to the country’s booming billionaires.

Fact Check: Big? True.

Depending on your printer specs (and assuming you’ve got a truckload of toner), the Trump tax favors and spending cuts are contained in a bill just over 900 pages long. If each member of Congress were given one paper copy, that would keep a Wisconsin paper mill busy enough to turn about 50 trees into paper. 

By coincidence, the Affordable Care Act, derided for its size in 2010, also clocked in at around 900 pages. One added healthcare coverage; one is ripping it away.

Fact Check: Beautiful? Not in Wisconsin.

To pay for tax cuts geared toward the super-wealthy, Trump’s bill makes massive cuts to vital programs including health care and nutrition assistance for lower-income families. In Wisconsin, 258,396 people face the loss of their health insurance coverage—148,254 who rely on Medicaid and 110,142 whose coverage through the Affordable Care Act is in jeopardy, according to a study by the Joint Economic Committee of Congress.

Losers: Medicaid recipients

Trump’s megabill Wisconsin impact starts with $900 billion in Medicaid cuts that will become apparent in Wisconsin in a multitude of ways. 

• Loss of nursing home coverage.
• Loss of pregnancy care coverage.
• Loss of coverage in the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP)
• Rural hospital closures
• Loss of coverage for substance abuse and addiction.

Losers: Affordable Care Act customers

As Trump’s cuts make the Affordable Care Act less affordable, 17 million Americans could lose their coverage. The ACA is based on what was once a Republican model for health care: Instead of government-owned health insurance, provide subsidies so Americans can afford to purchase coverage in the corporate market. Now Trump and Republicans are slashing the subsidies that helped more than 313,000 people in Wisconsin afford policies in 2024.

Fact Check: Cuts by any other name are still cuts

Keep in mind that the spending reductions do not necessarily mean someone’s coverage is cut immediately. Instead, Republicans put a blizzard of red tape around programs—increased eligibility requirements designed to frustrate people so they drop out.

As people lose their coverage, they pay more out of pocket or skip getting care altogether. Skipping doctor visits and prescription refills lead to higher costs later and more dangerous health risks as small problems become big.

When people finally go in for care, they use emergency rooms— far more expensive than clinic visits or primary or preventive care. And when they can’t pay the hospital bills, the costs get passed along to everyone else in the form of higher rates and premiums. That’s assuming the hospital is still there, since Medicaid is the final lifeline for many small, rural caregivers. 

At no point does Trump, or Sen. Ron Johnson, or US Rep. Derrick Van Orden, or any other Republican tell a rural hospital to close, but the impact of less funding and more paperwork has the safe effect. Which takes us to our next group.

Liars: Politicians still gaslighting about cuts

There is no credible evidence that such huge spending cuts would not affect those who’ve earned and deserve their benefits—there simply aren’t that many undocumented immigrants or “able-bodied” freeloaders for the math to work. So continuing to claim otherwise appears to be an intentional lie more than an earnest miscalculation. 

“We’re cutting $1.7 trillion in this bill, and you’re not going to feel any of it,” President Trump said at the White House last week, knowing he has no evidence to back up his claim. 

Eight years ago, Trump claimed his tax package would spark an economic revival, enabling tax cuts to pay for themselves despite no evidence that has ever worked before. It didn’t work this time, either—adding about $2 trillion to the national debt.

“There are no cuts to Medicaid. Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, veterans’ benefits, SNAP and WIC are not being cut,” Van Orden told WKBT-TV. He and Trump have claimed evidence of fraud involving 1.4 million undocument immigrants on Medicaid, but they are not there illegally. While undocumented immigrants are ineligible for Medicaid, it is a federal-state partnership and some states do provide coverage as a way to avoid uncompensated care—as well as illness and death.

Liars: No tax on tips and overtime. True for a limited time only.

This is a gimmick similar to the 2017 tax bill: Provide tax breaks to the middle class and upper brackets, but neglect to mention the breaks for businesses and the super-wealthy are permanent while the middle class breaks expire. In this case, barring any changes, taxes on tips and overtime will come roaring back after only three years—just past the next presidential election. 

And that temporary relief would go to only a fraction of the state’s labor force, with 2.5% of American workers relying on tips, according to studies—many of them not earning enough to pay taxes in the first place, much less have their tip income deducted.

Here’s another example where an apparent win is actually a loss: the child tax credit. While the bill increases it from $2,000 to $2,200 —certainly good news for around 600,000 people in Wisconsin— it would also make about 4.5 million children ineligible nationwide under a new requirement that both parents have a Social Security number.

Winners: Wall Street

Apart from high-wealth households, businesses getting a permanently lower corporate tax rate, and the mythical Wisconsin paper mill for printing the bill, there aren’t many winners in the state—until you look at those withWall Street connections.

There’s a tax code gimmick called the carried interest loophole that allows profits on certain investments to be taxed at a lower rate than actual work. This loophole allows money managers to pay lower rates than firefighters, teachers, and nurses. Closing it would save $13 billion over the next ten years. 

Trump has said he supports ending it, but it didn’t happen in his first term, and there’s little evidence he’s put much more than lip service behind it now. So Democratic Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin tried to help him along by proposing an amendment this week to close the loophole. It didn’t pass.

Trump’s Megabill Wisconsin Impact: Still TBD

The list of winners, losers, and liars surrounding Trump’s agenda may be revised now that the Senate bill is going back to the US House for reconciliation. All of Wisconsin’s Republican House members voted for passage the first time around. Now they’ll be asked again whether they’ll support all that Wisconsin families stand to lose in Washington’s big, beautiful mess.