Washington, D.C. — This week, congressional Republicans passed a radical budget and tax bill—the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). A new Center for American Progress column details several lesser-known provisions of the OBBBA that will increase costs and limit Americans’ ability to meet their basic needs, create a slush fund for the Trump administration’s lawless overreach, and waste taxpayer money.
The column examines the harms of the OBBBA’s lesser-known provisions, including:
- Defunding Planned Parenthood clinics: The OBBBA includes a provision that would effectively defund Planned Parenthood clinics for one year. The majority of people with Medicaid receive contraceptives (85 percent) and STI services (57 percent) from Planned Parenthood clinics. Losing funding would put 1 in 3 Planned Parenthood centers at risk of closure and would take away a vital source of health care for 1 million people.
- Increasing health care costs for more than 1 million Medicare enrollees: The OBBBA would block implementation of an existing regulation that makes it easier for eligible low-income Medicare beneficiaries to enroll in Medicare Savings Programs (MSPs) that lower Medicare premiums and out-of-pocket costs.
- Imposing new out-of-pocket costs for low-income people on Medicaid: The OBBBA would force states to charge Medicaid enrollees with family incomes between 100 percent and 138 percent of the FPL—just $15,650 for a single adult—who qualify for the program based on income alone up to $35 per health care service. While cost-sharing would be capped at 5 percent of a family’s income, that can add up to thousands of dollars per year.
- Ripping food assistance away from children aging out of foster care, veterans, and the homeless: The OBBBA cut the SNAP paperwork requirement exemptions for veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and youth aging out of foster care. The CBO estimated this change would kick 270,000 people off of their food assistance for three years.
- Giving Trump’s radical OMB director and Project 2025 architect a $100 million slush fund: The OBBBA appropriates $100 million in funding for the White House Office of Management and Budget, led by director and Project 2025 co-author Russel Vought, for “purposes of finding budget and accounting efficiencies in the executive branch.” Vought is the architect of the Trump administration’s attempts to illegally impound funds duly appropriated by Congress.
- $30 billion for Trump’s out-of-control deportation force: The OBBBA provides nearly $30 billion to immensely expand enforcement and deportation operations of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), tripling its 2024 annual budget. The fund will supercharge lawlessness by an agency that the Trump administration has operated without accountability, creating chaos in communities across the country as ICE officers have been snatching students off the streets; brazenly detaining U.S. citizens without regard for their rights; and deporting U.S. citizen children—including a 4 year-old with cancer. Under this bill, the Trump administration will have vastly more power and resources to swell a deportation force that makes no distinction between cartel operatives or those with violent criminal records and hardworking people.
- Introducing a new student loan repayment plan that will increase monthly payments: The OBBBA eliminates existing student loan repayment plans and offers future student loan borrowers two options for repayment plans: a standard plan and the Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP). Estimates show that a typical borrower with a college degree would pay an additional $2,929 per year in student loan payments under RAP.
- Incentivizing waste and poor program administration for SNAP state waivers: To secure a key vote from Sen. Murkowski (R-AK), the OBBBA was altered to temporarily exempt states with the highest error rates from a provision that would shift the costs of SNAP benefits from the federal government to state government, uniquely benefiting Alaska, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, and Oregon.
- Gives start-up investors an additional $5 million in tax-free income: The “qualified small business stock exclusion” in the OBBBA allows wealthy venture capitalists to claim $10 million in income tax-free for investing in certain start up-companies, and research shows that over 75 percent of the benefits of this provision flow to millionaires.
- Diverging public school funding to benefit the wealthy: The OBBBA included a federal 100 percent tax credit for individuals who donate to private school vouchers, creating a permanent uncapped program that could cost the federal nearly $51 billion annually. The diversion of funds from public schools to private schools will eliminate opportunities for more than 80 percent of students who attend traditional public schools to instead pay for wealthy families to send their kids to private schools.
“Poll after poll finds the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is deeply unpopular, but several provisions the public has heard less about—but will feel the pain of soon—threaten to sink its popularity even lower,” said Colin Seeberger, senior advisor for Communications and co-author of the article. “From increasing costs for families and emboldening the Trump administration’s lawless overreach to wasting taxpayer dollars, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act contains something for everyone to resent.”
Read the column: “10 Egregious Things You May Not Know About the One Big Beautiful Bill Act” by Colin Seeberger, Andrea Ducas, Natasha Murphy, Kierra Jones, Andrés Argüello, Lily Roberts, Kyle Ross, Mike Sozan, Silva Mathema, Sara Partridge, Paige Shoemaker Demio, and Corey Husak
For more information or to speak with an expert, please contact Sarah Nadeau at [email protected].