It is with a typically Trumpian focus on packaging that supporters have dubbed the Republican tax-cut legislation the House passed early Thursday “One Big, Beautiful Bill.” But make no mistake: For Medicaid recipients, working people and anyone else who doesn’t dwell among America’s wealthy elite, this is the ugliest mess to emerge from Washington in years.

Eight years, to be specific. It was 2017, the first year of President Donald Trump’s first term, that the Republican-controlled Congress passed a massive tax cut that primarily benefitted corporations and wealthy individuals. Defenders claimed the measure would “pay for itself” by boosting economic growth. Instead, its main impact was to add upwards of $2 trillion to the deficit.

Now the current Republican majority in Congress is doubling down on that betrayal of their own populist base by seeking to extend those tax cuts. It is, once again, a classic reverse-Robin Hood scheme that would steal from the poor to give to the rich.

The version the House passed on Thursday morning is actually worse than the original — and not just because of its vague yet weirdly propagandist title. (Yes, the “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act” is, bizarrely enough, the measure’s official name, suggested by, of course, Trump.) This time, the tax giveaways to millionaires, billionaires and corporations will be paired with deep social-service cuts that will most hurt those who can least afford it.

Medicaid, the federal-state insurance program for the poor, could see funding reductions of almost $800 billion in order to partly offset the expense of the tax cuts, potentially throwing more than seven million Medicaid recipients out of the program. The plan includes another $260 billion in reductions in antipoverty food assistance.

And to what end? According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the plan, if passed as-is by the Senate and signed into law, would decrease resources for the nation’s lowest-earning households while steering benefits to the highest-income Americans.

And even with the reductions in funding for Medicaid and other services to the poor, the measure will add some $3.8 trillion to the deficit over the next decade. The irresponsibility of it was driven home last week with the decision by Moody’s to downgrade the U.S. credit rating, a direct response to a national debt that already tops $36 trillion.

Even in the portions of the bill that will aid lower-income Americans, the focus on coddling the rich is clear. For example, the bill would offer a $500 increase in the standard child tax credit, raising it from $2,000 to $2,500 — but only for three years, after which the credit would revert to its previous, lower level. Meanwhile, it would make permanent the income and estate tax cuts that benefit primarily high-end taxpayers.

That the supposed deficit hawks who control the Republican Party are willing to (once again) explode the deficit in order to reward the richest Americans is just one element of the irony here.

The GOP in the MAGA era has leaned increasingly into populism, recasting its previous country-club image and preening as the champions of the working poor. Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley in particular has made it a personal project to challenge his own party — rhetorically, at least — to avoid Medicaid cuts.

When the tax bill gets to the Senate, we will all see whether Hawley and other Republicans are serious about protecting the struggling Americans who have increasingly migrated to their party — or if in the end it’s all performance politics by what remains the party of the rich.

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Readers can contact Hawley and other senators to voice their views on the tax-cut legislation by going to senate.gov/senators or by calling the Senate switchboard at 202-224-3121.

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