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Opinion|‘Trump Has Betrayed His Working-Class Voters’: What 7 Conservatives Really Think of Trump’s Bill
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/03/opinion/trump-bill-republicans-conservative.html
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Guest Essay
July 3, 2025, 2:45 p.m. ET
By New York Times Opinion
With President Trump poised to sign his signature policy bill into law, Times Opinion asked seven of our conservative columnists and contributors a simple question: Will it be good for America or bad for America? The group we convened included libertarians, New Right thinkers and traditional conservatives — people from all corners of the conservative universe. Here’s what they thought.
← Bad
The domestic policy bill is ___ for America
Good →
Best Provision
David Brooks The increase in the child tax credit (to $2,200 from $2,000) and the tax-advantaged savings accounts for children (with a government contribution of $1,000 per child born from 2024 to 2028). Those are policies proven to decrease child poverty, and they are consistent with the general trend we should be taking: Spend more on the young and less on the old.
David French The defense spending increase — the bill adds $150 billion to the Pentagon’s budget — is necessary and overdue. America’s military spending as a percentage of its gross domestic product is near its post-Cold War lows, in spite of the fact that Russian aggression has escalated and China is engaged in an immense military buildup.
Matt Labash Even if I hate the bill — and I do — it also seems to deeply irritate Elon Musk. And anything that irritates Musk as much as Musk irritates the rest of us should earn grudging credit as a karmic delivery system.
Katherine Mangu-Ward Extending the income tax provision in Trump’s 2017 tax cuts was a perfectly reasonable thing to do (though it should have been paired with more spending cuts). The fact that the extension is permanent means a modicum of stability in the fiscal chaos. At least we won’t have to have this exact fight again soon.
