'Voters Are Split' On The Big Beautiful Bill, New Poll Shows: Dritan Nesho

On "Forbes Newsroom," HarrisX Founder and CEO Dritan Nesho discussed voters' attitudes on the Big Beautiful Bill.

Transcript

00:00And President Trump, he touted his big, beautiful bill, and he had a goal to get that to his desk

00:07by July 4th. And that seems like a tall task at this time. It almost seemed impossible for

00:12Republicans to do, but they did do it. And he signed it into law. It was nearly a thousand

00:17pages and it contains his signature tax and immigration policies. What do Americans think

00:22about the one big, beautiful bill act? Well, the mark, the administration didn't do a very good

00:30job marketing the big, beautiful bill. And it was labeled by the Democrats and by Elon Musk and by

00:39other parties, the big, ugly bill faster than they could tout the advantages of the bill. So it's no

00:47surprise that voters are split when it comes to the bill. 44% supported, 44% opposed, 12% haven't

00:56really made up their mind. What's interesting about the bill, though, is most of the individual

01:01elements of the bill receive very, very strong support. Very few of those elements actually

01:10voters view negatively. And I think that important in the administration's economic strategy has

01:21to be a selling of the big, beautiful bill on the back end, making sure that voters understand

01:29the benefits that they're getting from this bill so that the administration isn't left holding

01:35the back for all the negative connotation that the bill has been wrapped around. So I wish

01:43I had something important other than the picture is still split. But, you know, on the all important

01:51question, will this bill make the economy better or worse? Voters, again, are split. 52% say

01:58worse. 48% say we'll improve the economy. So again, lots of work to be done on the economic

02:05front by the administration. Some of the more controversial parts of this bill in the

02:10conversations I've had with lawmakers and strategists were that changes to Medicaid could leave millions

02:16of Americans uninsured over the next decade, and that this could add trillions of dollars to the

02:22national deficit. What do voters make of that? Were they concerned about those elements of this bill

02:27as well? So in general, any conversation around Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, voters

02:37are leery towards. And these two items, which, you know, they also happen to be the largest contributors

02:45to the federal budget deficit, remain the third rail of American politics. But actually, what we see

02:54here is that on the issue of imposing work requirement for Medicaid for adults with dependent children

03:02over 14, the picture is split. 51% supported, about, I would say, 36%, a little bit more, are against it,

03:14and 12% are undecided. So not one of the overwhelmingly popular items within the bill,

03:21but also not one of the worst. Some of the ones that voters didn't really like were imposing a 5% tax

03:29on remittances sent abroad. There's obviously a lot of immigrants in the United States, and they don't

03:35agree with that. There's a lot of confusion around the SALT deduction cap, which really raises the cap

03:42to $40,000 for taxpayers under $500,000, and then reverts back after a number of years.

03:50That's split picture within the data, and so on and so forth. So the Medicare and Medicaid issue,

03:59for sure, it's an issue that voters are sensitive towards. Adding to the federal budget deficit,

04:06the bill has been painted as a bill that will contribute to the federal budget deficit, so voters

04:11do not want to see those kinds of actions or steps. But as presented on an individual basis,

04:17line by line, actually, even the more controversial elements of the bill, voters are split around

04:24them, which suggests that with a push and a strong and consistent marketing effort, the administration

04:32might be able to win voters over the big, beautiful bill.