On First Anniversary Of His 'One Big Beautiful Bill,' Trump Celebrates The Millions Of Americans It Has Freed From Food, Medicine, And Insurance, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That The Nation's Safety Net Was Still Catching People

WASHINGTON. Marking the first anniversary of the sweeping tax and spending law he signed on the Fourth of July last year, President Trump on Saturday celebrated the One Big Beautiful Bill Act as a resounding success, citing as evidence the millions of Americans it has since relieved of food assistance, health coverage, and the various other supports that had been weighing them down.

Administration officials pointed in particular to the roughly 4 million people who have dropped off the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in the year since the law took effect, a figure that includes an estimated 770,000 children now unburdened by federal help buying groceries. Officials described the decline, the largest in the program's history, as proof that the legislation was working exactly as designed.

The law's benefits have extended well beyond food. Health policy analysts estimate that the bill's roughly $1 trillion in Medicaid reductions, combined with the expiration of enhanced marketplace subsidies, have put coverage out of reach for millions, with the Congressional Budget Office projecting 10 to 17 million additional uninsured Americans over the coming decade. Premiums for nearly 22 million families who buy their own insurance have more than doubled, resolving a long-standing concern that Americans of modest means were still able to see a doctor without first consulting their savings.

"Promises made, promises kept," said Trump, who noted that the law also made permanent the 2017 tax cuts whose benefits flow overwhelmingly to the highest earners, a group that includes the President. He added that the bill represented the largest achievement of any administration in history, a claim he has made about several bills.

"What people don't understand is that assistance creates dependency, and dependency is the real poverty," said one senior administration official, who declined to specify what the newly self-sufficient were expected to eat. "We didn't take anything away. We gave them their independence back, whether they asked for it or not."

At press time, the President had ordered the bill's anniversary added to the list of federal holidays, though the food banks that would ordinarily mark the occasion reported they were too overwhelmed to celebrate.