“Beautiful” for Who? A Line-by-Line Reality Check of the Utah Congressional Delegation’s Op-Ed Justifying Their Votes for Trump’s Tax Bill

Utah’s Republican delegation wrote an op-ed praising Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill”. So we did what any responsible citizens would do: we read it, we annotated it, and then we rewrote it honestly.

(this is very much an AI generated image, in case you couldn’t tell)

Before We Dive In...

Every once in a while, a piece of political writing drops that is so detached from reality, so full of buzzwords, and so proud of its own mediocrity that it begs to be annotated. Enter: the co-signed op-ed by Utah’s Republican congressional delegation praising the "One Big, Beautiful Bill Act” and justifying their votes for it.

This is a masterclass in misdirection, loaded with empty patriotism, cherry-picked stats, and folksy anecdotes designed to distract from what the bill actually does: funnel money to the rich, slash social programs, and give fossil fuel companies a blank check.

We read it so you don’t have to. And we also marked it up, fact-checked it, and rewrote it the way it should have been written: with honesty.

Let’s begin.

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What They Really Meant

We rewrote their op-ed. But this time, we told the truth.

We Know It’s Not What You Wanted. Here’s Why We Did It Anyway

By Mike Kennedy, Celeste Maloy, Blake Moore, Burgess Owens (not really, but I wish)

Last year, polling showed that Americans were frustrated with the state of the country, much like they have been for decades under both parties. We believe that frustration can be politically useful, especially when we can pin it on the former Democratic administration. So this July 4th week, we passed a bill designed to consolidate support from our base, deliver for our corporate donors, and give us talking points for re-election.

We’ve labeled it the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act because naming things after Trump still polls well in Republican primaries. Inside this bill are hundreds of provisions: tax breaks for the rich, fossil fuel perks, a few symbolic gestures for working families, and a handful of ideologically driven policies that shift public dollars into private hands. We hope you won't read the fine print.
The core of this bill makes permanent the Trump tax cuts from 2017, the ones that mostly benefit the top 1%. Without it, wealthy donors and corporations would have seen higher tax rates in 2026. That was just unacceptable to us. So we prioritized extending those cuts over investing in things like childcare, public education, or affordable housing. For working families, the savings are slim to none but we’re highlighting them loudly so you won’t notice where the bulk of the money is going.

We slightly increased the Child Tax Credit, though not as much as we could have, and not enough to help the poorest families. We also carved out a temporary tax exemption for tips and overtime pay, which sounds great but will expire soon and doesn’t fix low wages. We threw in a few other gimmicks — like allowing non-itemizers to deduct small charitable contributions like tithing — so we could say we did something for "everyday Americans," even if we didn’t.

This bill also guts Medicaid access for millions of low-income adults by tightening eligibility and imposing work requirements that sound good in a press release but actually result in like a lot of people losing coverage. We framed this as “cutting waste,” even though the waste is often just people trying to use the system they qualify for. Same with SNAP: we made the program harder to access, increased work, age, and dependency requirements, added bureaucracy, and forced states to foot more of the bill all under the banner of "accountability." But kids don’t need lunch anyway.

To court energy industry support, we weakened environmental reviews and restarted fossil fuel leasing on public lands. This will help developers and oil companies move faster, regardless of the environmental or community impact, because now, you can pay to get out of any environmental reviews. As for jobs, we’re still using outdated, inflated estimates that don’t reflect today’s heavily automated industry. But it sounds good in a headline.

For rural voters, we threw in some nods to agriculture, like raising the estate tax exemption, even though only the ultra-wealthy benefit from it. Most family farms won’t notice, but agribusiness dynasties will. We also expanded crop insurance tools, but didn’t address consolidation, water shortages, or climate risk because that would’ve required real investment.

In education, we created a federal voucher scheme that sends public dollars to private and religious schools through a dollar-for-dollar tax credit. It’s a windfall for wealthy families and existing private school users, all under the banner of “parental power.” Meanwhile, public schools, and the 90% of kids still in them, get left behind.

We also authorized $160 billion in border-related spending, mostly for walls, surveillance tech, and detention centers. It’s an election year, and nothing rallies our base like the illusion of border chaos. This won’t fix the immigration system (like the bipartisan bill we killed last year) or make communities safer, but it lets us look tough and run ads about it later.

To soften the blow of all that, we included a two-year reauthorization of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA). We let it lapse last year, but after public backlash, we brought it back for now, even though it should be permanent and expanded. This provision is here mostly so we can say the bill wasn’t all bad. But we were the ones to let it lapse in the first place, so please give us a standing ovation for renewing the thing we took away.

We know this bill adds over 3 trillion dollars to the deficit, despite our party branding around "fiscal responsibility." We chose tax cuts over budget balance, because our donors come first and our talking points are more important than our math. We hope voters won't notice that we’re tax-and-spend Republicans until after the election.

In Utah, we like to talk about hard work, strong families, and lasting communities. But when it comes time to vote, we prioritize corporate profits and conservative ideology. This bill reflects that. And if we sell it well enough, maybe you’ll believe it reflects your values, too.

The Op-Ed They Wrote — Annotated

“Last year, two-thirds of Americans felt our country was on the wrong track...”

FACT CHECK: That’s been true for over two decades under both parties. It’s not a Biden-specific phenomenon. Gallup shows "right track" numbers peaked in early 2020 at 45%, and have hovered around one-third or less since 2005.

“They called for a course correction from the Biden Administration’s harmful policies that raised prices, over-regulated our industries and created the worst border crisis in American history.”

The rest of this piece is for our paid Substack subscribers (aka the folks helping us keep the lights on and the politicians honest). Click here to subscribe.