Dear President Trump.

It’s time to pivot on the “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act” you’re trying to get the House and the Senate to pass.

It’s not because your ex-pal Elon Musk has done a 180 and blasted it, bluntly but not so inaccurately, as “a massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill” that “is a disgusting abomination.”

It’s not because Sen. Rand Paul thinks it doesn’t cut federal spending nearly enough, perpetuates Biden’s spending levels and adds too many new borrowed trillions to the future national debt.

Mr. President, you need to pivot because a major part of your Big, Beautiful Bill — the part that extends the 2017 personal tax cuts — is vitally important to the economy.

The bill also contains some much-needed provisions that tighten up our horrible immigration policy, especially regarding enforcement and border security.

I know you keep calling the bill a “winner,” but it’s not as 100-percent beautiful as it should be. In fact, parts of it are ugly.

Its spending cuts are not nearly deep enough and accounting experts who may or may not be right or impartial predict your beautiful act will add between $3 and $5 trillion over the next decade.

In other words, though the bill has many good parts, it will not come close to putting a brake on our runaway federal spending train or doing what you promised in March during your speech to Congress — balance the budget.

But there is a way to push your bill through the messy Washington sausage machine, Mr. President, that would make fiscal hawks in your party like Senator Paul and Congressman Thomas Massie happy and make you a big winner.

First, you need to get House Speaker Mike Johnston to carve your Big Beautiful Piece of Sausage into two not-so big but still beautiful chunks.

You need to have Johnston separate the 2017 tax break extension part and the immigration part from the spending-cut part and save the all-important spending cuts for later.

Every Republican in the House and Senate who is against the bill today would vote in a heartbeat tonight for the tax breaks and tougher immigration policies. A few smart Democrats might too.

A pared down bill would assure the country’s future economic growth by getting the 2017 tax breaks codified by Congress.

And with no taxes on tips, no taxes on overtime and no taxes on Social Security, think how you’d improve your historic 50% popularity and put a nail in the coffin of the Democrats.

If a not-as-big slice of your bill passed quickly — by July 4th? — it could also give you the political momentum you’ll need to get the last important slice of your Big, Beautiful Bill passed by the end of summer.

To help you pull this off, you could copy the deal my father made in the early 1980s when he was trying to get his historic tax cuts through a Democrat Congress.

Tip O'Neill was House Speaker, and because Republicans were so badly outnumbered my father needed support from him and a lot of other Democrats.

After a dinner meeting Tip and my dad had to discuss tax cuts, my dad said, as he was leaving, “Tip, tell your caucus that if any one of them votes for my tax breaks, I promise not to campaign against them in the next election.”

The deal worked.

Conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats — now extinct — and moderate Democrats — now an endangered species — voted to pass the Reagan income tax cuts. The economy soon went from deep stagflation to recovery and boom.

Mr. President, everyone always asks, “What would Reagan do?” Well, that’s what he did 40 years ago.

If you need to, you should be able to make a similar deal with Republicans or even moderate Democrats on your Big, Beautiful Bill.

You get a lot of little easy wins every day in the media, thanks to the violent crimes committed by the illegal immigrants who’ve become the Democrats’ core constituency.

But to win the tough fight over your Big, Beautiful Bill in Congress, you’ll have to pivot and make it less big. It’s something I bet Reagan would do.

Copyright 2025 Michael Reagan