Mitch McConnell is urging Republicans to pass the Big Beautiful Bill because MAGA ‘will get over it.’ If they learn about our economic system as presented here, they won’t.
McConnell is correct that MAGA will get over it.
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Summary
Mitch McConnell’s private advice to Senate Republicans—“just pass the thing; they’ll get over it”—summarizes four decades of political cynicism: ram through another “Big Beautiful Bill” that shifts wealth upward, trust short memories to blunt the backlash, and rely on a media ecosystem that obscures how policy choices since 1980 have concentrated power and pain.
- McConnell’s remark exposes a calculated bet that the MAGA base will accept deep Medicaid, SNAP, and consumer-protection cuts bundled with new tax breaks for the rich in the pending reconciliation package.
- Supply-side doctrine has already pushed the top 1 percent’s wages up 182 percent since 1979, while the bottom 90 percent gained only 44 percent.
- Fear-mongering about Social Security’s finances omits the most straightforward fix—scrapping the $176 k payroll cap—even though the trust fund can still pay 77 percent of benefits after 2033.
- The pattern of disproportionate violence abroad continues: 46,707 Palestinians have died in Gaza since 2023, while the entire Iraq War killed 4,419 U.S. troops but hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.
- Favorable tax treatment for capital gains and the ability of the ultra-rich to borrow against assets keep their effective rates below those of nurses and teachers, perpetuating the inequality that McConnell’s bill enlarges.
Viewed together, the bill, the rhetoric, and the history reveal a governing class that protects concentrated wealth by normalizing economic harm. A democratic response requires naming the scam, taxing all forms of income equally, lifting the Social Security cap, and replacing profiteering in healthcare with a publicly financed system that already works in every other wealthy democracy.
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McConnell’s off-camera assurance that grassroots conservatives (aka MAGA) will “get over” the Big Beautiful Bill (aka Big ‘UGLY’ Bill) is not a gaffe; it is a governing strategy. By accelerating a reconciliation package that pairs $3.8 trillion in tax cuts with the most significant Medicaid rollback since 1965, Republican leadership counts on voter fatigue and fragmented media to dull outrage. The remark crystallizes how elites weaponize public distraction: legislate first, spin later, and let short news cycles bury the consequences.
A glance backward confirms the pattern. Since the 1981 Reagan tax cuts inaugurated modern supply-side economics, every primary distributional indicator has moved in the same direction—upward. Economic Policy Institute data show that real wages for the bottom 90 percent rose by 44 percent between 1979 and 2023, while pay at the top 1 percent increased by 182 percent. Josh Bivens and Asha Banerjee calculate that this tilt now drags aggregate demand by roughly 1.5 percent of GDP each year because high-income households save rather than spend. In simple terms, our economic system transfers wealth and income to the top, reducing overall economic activity, thereby making the poor and middle class poorer due to both the ‘legal theft’ by the rich and the contraction in the overall size of the economy. The Big Beautiful Bill would widen that drag by showering new relief on capital and cutting programs that lift consumer spending.
To maintain the upward flow, policymakers and friendly pundits recycle selective crises. The latest: Social Security “bankruptcy.” Trustees indeed project that the retirement trust fund will face a shortfall in 2033—but even if Congress did nothing, the system could still pay 77 percent of promised benefits. What television panels rarely mention is that raising or eliminating the $176K cap on taxable earnings would not only close the gap but also allow higher benefits and/or lower payroll rates for everyone else. The fact that this obvious solution remains largely invisible says more about donor influence than actuarial math.
The same asymmetry defines foreign policy narratives. U.S. media delivered wall-to-wall coverage of the 1,100+ Israelis killed on 7 October 2023, yet largely framed Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza—which has killed at least 46,707 Palestinians—as self-defense. Earlier wars fit the template: during the 2003–11 Iraq conflict, 4,419 American troops died—a tragedy that dominated cable news—while casualty estimates for Iraqis range into the hundreds of thousands, often relegated to footnotes. The disproportion is moral, but it is also budgetary: defense contractors profiting from endless war drive the very stock prices that figure so prominently in elite portfolios.
Domestically, profiteering extends to healthcare and housing. The United States spends $12,555 per person on health—two and a half times the OECD average—yet ranks near the bottom in life expectancy and maternal mortality among wealthy nations. Wall Street REITs push rents far faster than wages, showering shareholders with dividends while teachers and retail workers crowd into smaller units. Each sector’s excess flows into capital markets, then back into lobbying that keeps reform off the agenda.
Preferential tax rules seal the loop. Dividends and long-term capital gains are taxed at a rate of 20 percent, which is far lower than the 37 percent rate applied to wages. Additionally, these gains can be deferred indefinitely by borrowing against unrealized gains. The Big ‘UGLY’ Bill would entrench that preference and even offer new write-offs for donors who hand over appreciated stock to private-school voucher funds, allowing wealthy households to avoid both income and capital-gains taxes. kiplinger.com
Progressive remedies follow logically from the evidence. First, realign taxation with the source of income: equalize rates on wages and wealth, tax unrealized gains at death, and adopt a net-worth levy on fortunes above $50 million, which the Tax Policy Center estimates could raise nearly $2 trillion over a decade while touching only the wealthiest 0.1 percent. Second, protect Social Security by scrapping the payroll cap; modeling by the Chief Actuary shows this step alone would secure full benefits for at least 75 years without raising contribution rates for 94 percent of workers. Third, pass Medicare for All. By replacing duplicative private billing with a single-payer system, the U.S. could match OECD peers on cost and coverage while ending the debt-driven medical bankruptcy unique to American capitalism. Fourth, pivot military spending toward diplomacy and reconstruction; every dollar redirected from bomb factories to public housing or renewable energy produces far more domestic jobs and less global resentment.
Finally, the public must refuse to “get over it.” Critical media literacy, especially from independent outlets, is essential. So is organizing: union drives, tenant coalitions, retiree alliances, and faith-based peace campaigns all chip away at the narrative that concentrated wealth is inevitable. When citizens replace passive outrage with active solidarity, McConnell’s cynical calculus collapses. He is correct about one thing, however: people can get over harmful legislation—but only by rising up and writing better laws themselves.
My analysis is offered in solidarity with everyone who wants to ensure that democracy means more than resigning ourselves to policies designed by and for an oligarchic few.
