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July 4, 2025 
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 | By Laura Reston Deputy Editorial Director, Opinion |
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Over the past few months, as President Trump’s signature policy bill inched through Congress, Times Opinion covered what it would do to the deficit, to rural hospitals and to the neediest Americans. We’ve published essays by Republican and Democratic senators, Treasury secretaries, academics and experts in their fields — people who have studied how this legislation would transform the fabric of American life. And we profiled some of the people whose lives would change most, to see if they had lost faith in Trump.
Now that the bill has passed the House and the Senate, we wanted to hear from another group: our conservative columnists and contributors. This week, we asked them a simple question: Will this bill be good or bad for America? Some of them found things to like — the higher tax on university endowments, the increased military budget, the way the bill annoyed Elon Musk. But only one of our participants rated it “good for America.” Overall, this was an indictment of a bill that few people, even among Trump’s supporters, seem to like.
“The Trump administration has chosen the most fiscally reckless course,” wrote our columnist David French. One contributor called it “insane”; another said it was “misguided and draconian.”
One takeaway was clear: That Trump was able to ram this through Congress, with his movement so divided, is a testament to his enduring political muscle.
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