Hello, this is Michael Moss.

Heather Cox Richardson is traveling today,

and her travel arrangements did not allow her time to read today's letter.

So I will be reading it in her place.

July 5, 2025.

Yesterday afternoon, President Donald J. Trump signed the nearly 1,000-page budget reconciliation bill Republicans passed last week. Trump had demanded Congress passed the

measure by July 4th, and Republicans rammed it through despite the bill's deep unpopularity

and Congress's lack of debate on it. When House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican of Louisiana,

presented Trump with the Speaker's gavel during the signing event, the symbolism of the gift was

a little too on the nose. Today, we are laying a key cornerstone of

Americans' new golden age, Speaker Johnson said at the signing. The new law is the capstone to the

dramatic changes Maga Republicans have made to the U.S. government in the past six months. The measure makes the

2017 Trump tax cuts for the wealthy corporations, which were due to expire at the end of this year,

permanent. At the bill signing, Trump harked back to the idea Republicans have embraced since 1980,

claiming that tax cuts spark economic growth.

He said, after this kicks in, our country is going to be a rocket ship economically.

In fact, tax cuts since 1981 have not driven growth. And a study by the nonpartisan

Penn Wharton budget model of the University of

Pennsylvania projects that the measure will decrease national productivity, known as gross domestic

product, by 0.3% in 10 years, and drop the average wage by 0.4% in the same time frame. From 1981 to 2021, tax cuts move more

than $50 trillion a year from the bottom 90% to the top 1%. And Penn Wharton projects the top 10%

of households will receive about 80% of the total value of this law, too.

...