When I published the opening installment of this series, in January, and in every monthly column since, I resolved to take a nonpartisan view of the issues the series would explore. I took this approach because the economic inequality that now plagues the U.S. has been caused by so many years of political abuses and shell games that both Democrats and Republicans bear responsibility for the result.

This past year, however, what has been done to the nation’s working class, in comparison to the coddling that wealthier Americans received, went beyond anything that any modern administration has ever achieved. Because the politicians in charge during this time have been Republican, and because they and their policies have been almost entirely created and led by President Trump, the blame this time around must be laid at his feet.

I am sorry to say this to any readers who support President Trump, but as the old saying goes, it is what it is. Facts are facts. And a particularly consequential set of those facts recently hit an important milestone. On July 1, just three days before the nation celebrated its 250th year, the first budget for President Trump’s second term—what he dubbed the “One Big Beautiful Bill” (or OBBBA)—marked its one-year anniversary.

There’s only one good way to commemorate a budget’s anniversary, and that is to take a clear, unbiased look at what the budget accomplished.

Depending on who you ask, there are, of course, many different opinions about the effects of a budget that required 940 pages, containing hundreds of different directives at an eventual price tag of more than $4 trillion. For my part, I like the account recently released by The Patriotic Millionaires (or the PM). The whole essay is worth a read, but here are some highlights:

OBBBA, the PM says, does contain some provisions that helped workers, such as its expansion of standard tax deductions, the Child Tax Credit, and its move away from taxing tips, overtime, and interest on auto loans, as well as seniors. Beyond that, PM found, the country’s “top 20% of earners received 72% of the benefits from OBBBA, with the top 1% reaping 22% [of those rewards]. Meanwhile, the bottom 20% of earners saw less than 1% of the benefits.” On the business front, “88 corporations paid $0 in federal corporate income tax in 2025.“

Overall, PM concluded, the president’s bill “represents the single largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in U.S. history.”

While assertions like the above might sound like typical leftist cant, I consider them credible, for two reasons. First, they are by definition probative, because the Patriotic Millionaires, unlike most organizations, works against its own financial interests. (More precisely, the group works against millionaires’ short-term interests; more on that distinction in a moment.) Why do they do this? The 300 wealthy individuals who constitute the membership of the Patriotic Millionaires believe that the numerous tax breaks the wealthy have been given in recent decades, which the working class have mostly been denied, are unfair.

PM members also believe that it’s high time for our government to start funding the country’s growing number of unmet needs;1 and that the most obvious source for that funding sits in two big pools: in corporations’ rising profits, which, on average, are only lightly taxed; and in the assets held by ultra-wealthy individuals, which are rising even faster, and are increasingly hidden from taxation.

Morris Pearl, PM’s longtime chair who made his fortune at BlackRock, puts the case this way: “I’m not any more altruistic than the next guy. I’m just greedy for a different kind of country.” Pearl wants a nation where the working class can afford to buy things, build businesses, and prosper. When that economic energy is missing, it stalls growth across the board. And that decreases income for everyone, including corporations and the wealthy. So wouldn’t corporations and the wealthy actually do better if they endured some short-term pain (higher taxes) for long-term gain (nationwide prosperity)?

The second reason I find PM’s reports credible is that I’ve watched them get created. As I’ve noted in previous columns, for the sake of full disclosure, I am a dues-paying member of the Patriotic Millionaires, and an active volunteer in their lobbying efforts, endorsements, and other initiatives. So I’ve seen this group in action, and in my experience they treat the facts on economic issues without fear or favor.

One last point: I am not suggesting that the Trump Administration’s efforts to reduce government spending is unwarranted. After working as a reporter for nearly 50 years, some of it in Washington, I am fully aware that there is plenty of waste in federal programs. The problem is that the president’s team, particularly during Elon Musk’s tenure leading DOGE (the “Department of Government Efficiency”), looked in all the wrong places. As is well-known by now, Musk never found, or cut, anything close to the $2 trillion he promised. (The final cutbacks, even according to the conservative CATO Institute, totaled a measly $150 billion.)

Ironically, if our elected leaders in Washington had been serious about making government more efficient, they could have easily found $2 trillion of wasteful spending.2 And those potential cuts are in programs that wouldn’t have triggered the pain and damage that DOGE caused—all in order to save less than 10% of the cost reductions that the Administration promised.