RALEIGH, N.C. – How should the American right view the passage of President Trumps signature tax and budget law? Is it really, as Republicans came to call it, One Big Beautiful Bill? Or is it one big mess?
Many conservatives are praising provisions that retain earlier tax reductions, encourage business investment, expand school choice, strengthen defense and public safety, and initiate needed reforms of Medicaid, nutrition assistance, and student-loan subsidies. Other conservatives are criticizing the legislation for exempting other entitlement programs from reform, widening future deficits by trillions of dollars, slow-walking repeal of former President Bidens faddish energy policies, and junking up the tax code with gimmicks that neither make it fairer nor promote economic growth and family formation.
After decades in the movement as a writer, think tank CEO, and now co-leader of the Freedom Conservatism project, I find myself agreeing with both groups. Undeniably big, the bill looks beautiful from some angles and hideous from others – a chimera hatched not from judicious compromise but from brinksmanship.
It began in 2017 when Republicans enacted on a party-line vote “temporary” tax cuts that no future Congress could allow to expire without dire economic and electoral consequences. Knowing this, lawmakers and the Trump administration tacked onto the 2025 bill a wide range of other policies, some prudent, some foolish. The House version was more fiscally responsible than the Senates, but the latter only passed the chamber when Vice President JD Vance broke a tie. So, it was the Senate bill or nothing. Promised more budget cuts via future executive action, nearly all House conservatives played along.
To be fair, the bill could have been far worse. Right-wing populists such as Steve Bannon and Oren Cass actually wanted to raise taxes on many American households and businesses, not reduce them, and objected even to slowing the growth of Medicaid spending. Fortunately, they lost the debate.
Alls well that ends well? Hardly. Our public finances remain a sorry mess. And over the coming months and years, attempts to implement the bills policy provisions will produce incessant conflict. Youll find my fellow Freedom Conservatives on the frontlines of these battles in Washington and in state capitals – just as FreeCons helped craft and defend many of the provisions in question, such as eligibility changes for subsidized health plans and work requirements for public benefits.
Announced two years ago as a response to the rise of nationalist-populists such as Bannon, Cass, and Tucker Carlson, the Freedom Conservatism project is rebuilding an American right firmly committed to free enterprise, free trade, free speech, balanced budgets, decentralization, equal opportunity, and the rule of law.
Since we released the Freedom Conservatism Statement of Principles, more than 300 conservative leaders and activists have signed on. Some formerly served as governors, members of Congress, state legislators, mayors, White House and Capitol Hill staffers, party executives, veteran consultants, and other roles in government and politics. Others include leaders of Americas leading conservative nonprofits, right-leaning commentators for major networks and media outlets, business CEOs, top litigators, and conservative professors from such campuses as Stanford, Duke, Cornell, Princeton, Pepperdine, Grove City, and Hillsdale.
Through a committee process, we recently revised the FreeCon statement to highlight the indispensable role played by families, congregations, and other institutions of civil society in inculcating virtue and fostering community. We also observed that the right of all Americans to be free from the restrictions of arbitrary force derives from the laws of nature and Gods will.
Our rivals on the right, calling themselves National Conservatives and other labels, see things quite differently. They reject our fiscal and regulatory agenda as “zombie Reaganism” and our commitment to localism and pluralism as evidence we “dont know what time it is.”
In truth, the fight for American conservatism has just begun. My fellow FreeCons and I are celebrating the undeniable policy wins contained in the reconciliation bill while getting ready for the harder policy fights to come – with the progressive left, yes, but also with the nationalist-populist right. Neither offers realistic solutions to Americas greatest challenges. We do.
John Hood is president of the John William Pope Foundation, a North Carolina-based grantmaker, and one of the founders of Freedom Conservatism.
