Now Republicans have to sell Trump’s megabill to voters

Polls show that the bill is unpopular. Opposition outweighed support by more than 20 percentage points in recent Fox News and Quinnipiac University polls. Some Republican lawmakers facing tough races next year represent the most Medicaid-reliant districts. They will have to defend the big cuts in the bill to Medicaid, the health-insurance program for low-income and disabled people, as well as to rural hospitals and to nutrition assistance, once known as food stamps. Those cuts help fund tax cuts in the bill that President Trump called for during the 2024 campaign.

“If a Republican candidate voted to cut Medicaid to pay for tax cuts, they would lose by 21 points," the GOP firm Fabrizio Ward cautioned after polling competitive House districts in May. After a March survey, the firm warned that cutting Medicaid “could spell political peril for Republicans." Trump himself has acknowledged the risk, saying the target is waste and abuse, not services. “We’re not cutting Medicaid," he has said.

Control of Congress in next year’s elections could turn in part on how voters come to see the bill. As the two parties prepare to spend millions of dollars to shape their impressions, Republicans have some advantages: Voters might be skeptical of the package, but many know little about it, suggesting they are open to persuasion. And some of its elements are popular.

While only 27% of adults in a Pew Research survey said the bill would give them even a little help, surveys also show that some tax provisions, such as Trump’s signature proposals to end federal taxes on tips and overtime, draw overwhelming support.

Medicaid is popular: About one in five Americans get health coverage through the program. But so are provisions of the bill that require many beneficiaries to show that they are working, looking for work or in training programs to retain Medicaid benefits. The bill also directs new spending to the military and to immigration enforcement, which were top Trump priorities. Those are all messaging opportunities for the GOP.

“The two biggest issues last fall were border security and the cost of living," said Chris Gustafson, communications director for One Nation, a super PAC affiliated with Senate Republican leaders. “If we’re talking about delivering on campaign promises, the two biggest issues are delivered in this bill."

By contrast, Brendan Buck, a former communications strategist for two prior GOP House speakers, said voters have rarely applauded Congress for passing big legislation. Democrats lost control of the House in 2010, after passing the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, and Republicans lost it in 2018, after approving a big tax cut during Trump’s first term.

“I think the question is how much of this bill—which is relatively unpopular—is front of mind for voters, and I don’t think there’s much evidence that it is front of mind," Buck said. The important factor will be how voters come to feel the effects of the bill—whether their taxes are truly cut, and whether nonpartisan estimates that as many as 11 million people will lose Medicaid coverage come to pass.

One challenge for the GOP is that relatively few people benefit from provisions such as “no tax on tips," while the broadest-based tax provision—the continuation of tax cuts enacted in 2017—doesn’t create a change that most voters can feel. The 2017 tax cuts were due to end this year, and Republicans will now ask for credit for leaving the lowered marginal rates in place.

“For the most part, these are not actual tax reductions from what people have been paying for seven or eight years," Buck said. “There’s a bit of a risk that they are overpromising tax cuts that are not going to materialize" for most people.

Alaska’s 2026 Senate race is already showing the calculations the two parties are making.

Sen. Dan Sullivan is on nobody’s list of Republicans at high risk of defeat in next year’s elections. And yet a group run by allies of Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) is spending $700,000 this summer on ads that criticize him for backing the bill.

The early Democratic investment is evidence the party believes the legislation will generate enough voter anger to put relatively safe Republican seats in play, especially in House districts and states, such as Alaska, that are likely to be most affected by cuts to Medicaid. “Dan Sullivan voted to cut Medicaid to pay for more tax cuts for the rich," one of the Democratic ads says.

Sullivan dismissed such ads as fearmongering. He said he fought to include a $50 billion rural hospital fund in the bill, and that he was confident that Alaska would receive more than $200 million from the fund per year, over five years.

Sullivan is gambling that he can persuade his constituents that the fund, along with other elements of the bill, made it a good deal for his state. In an interview, he said Alaska would benefit from nearly $25 billion he championed for the Coast Guard, which he said would fund new icebreakers, including $300 million to home port one in Juneau. Sullivan also said he fought to get Alaska temporarily exempted from some of the cuts to food assistance and pushed for language that opens more of Alaska’s federal lands to oil and gas development.

“I think it’s safe to say that no state fared better than Alaska," he said.

Democrats are telling voters that the Medicaid changes put rural hospitals, many of which are on weak financial footing, at further risk. “Rural hospitals will be forced to close, all to pay for tax cuts for billionaires," says an ad the Democratic Senate PAC is running against GOP Sen. Joni Ernst in Iowa.

Ernst said the GOP bill actually “strengthens the integrity of Medicaid," echoing her party’s assertion that the work requirement and other changes help focus the program on the most pressing needs. Senate Republicans fortified the fund intended to help rural hospitals weather the Medicaid cuts, but, overall, the bill calls for substantial reductions, analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows.

Republicans, in turn, are saying that Democrats voted to raise taxes by voting against the bill. “He’s voting yes for higher taxes," says a Republican ad against Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia, which ran just before the Senate approved the bill.

The GOP hopes voters will feel concrete benefits from the bill quickly. They have front-loaded the tax cuts in the bill while delaying the benefit cuts. Ending federal taxes on tips for many workers takes place this year, while the Medicaid work requirement kicks in later on.

Republicans are taking lessons from Trump’s first term, when the party pushed a big tax cut through Congress but gained little political benefit. The bill remained unpopular, and Republicans lost more than 40 House seats in the 2018 election.

“People didn’t know what was in the bill. All they heard was that this is for the wealthy and corporations," said Dave Winston, a Republican strategist who advises House and Senate GOP leadership.

Winston says Republicans can build support for the legislation by showing, with specificity, how it affects individual tax bills. He cautions that Republicans are making a mistake by casting the bill as the largest tax-cut ever, language the White House and GOP leaders have employed but which Winston thinks voters dismiss as hyperbole.

Instead, Winston says Republicans should focus on the fact that about 90% of people take the standard deduction, which was due to fall from $30,000 to $16,000 next year for a couple if the bill hadn’t passed, exposing more of their income to taxes.

“If you walk them through the math of what they’re going to face in 2026 without the bill, that’s the single most persuasive argument," he said.

Mike Stanfield, 73 years old, a retired engineer in Huntsville, Ala., is a Trump voter who feels lukewarm about the bill. He likes many of the principles behind it, but not many of the specifics.

Cutting taxes on tips “is a bad idea, economically, but I don’t begrudge the people who work in those industries a tax cut," he said. He doesn’t think the military needs a budget increase. And, he said, “I think we have enough money spent on the border. The border is closed right now." Adding work requirements to Medicaid makes sense, he believes.

“My opinion of the bill at this point is probably not very good," largely because it adds to the deficit, he said. Still, he said, Democrats would have to offer “something dramatically different than what they’ve offered in the last few cycles" to win his vote.

He cited Elon Musk’s call for a new, third political party. “It may be time for that, if we can’t get the Democrats or Republicans to act appropriately."

Write to Aaron Zitner at aaron.zitner@wsj.com, Lindsay Wise at lindsay.wise@wsj.com and Natalie Andrews at natalie.andrews@wsj.com