Here are 10 provisions in Trump’s signature law that have flown under the radar
WASHINGTON – Since President Donald Trump signed his signature domestic policy legislation into law on July 4, Republicans and Democrats alike have been busy telling their constituents what’s in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
The thing about a bill that’s nearly 900 pages long, of course, is that understanding what it contains is no easy feat – and leaves plenty of room for each party to focus on the parts it wants to talk about.
There’s a reason Idaho GOP Rep. Russ Fulcher’s “One Subject at a Time Act,” which would have prevented this kind of legislative smorgasbord, never took off: Leaders of both parties prefer to pack hundreds of measures into a single bill, forcing an up-or-down vote on their entire agenda and hammering out most of the details behind the scenes.
“We had so much in there that no matter who you are, there was something in that bill that would make your congressman or your senator – or your congresswoman, much more importantly – raise their hand in support,” Trump said at the White House on July 4. “Right, Lisa?”
That was a reference to Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the Republican who cast the decisive vote in the Senate after she won a handful of obscure concessions for her state, including a tax break for Alaskan whaling captains. Murkowski voted for the legislation, unlike a few other GOP senators, even while she called it “a bad bill” that “is not good enough for the rest of our nation.”
When it comes to the Republicans’ new law, the big picture is simple enough: It makes expiring tax cuts permanent, creates some new short-term tax cuts and boosts spending on the military, immigration enforcement and more for a total of $4.8 trillion in costs over 10 years, relative to what would happen if the bill hadn’t passed. That’s according to estimates by the Congressional Budget Office, a group of nonpartisan number-crunchers whose predictions have historically proven fairly accurate, although both parties have criticized the office when its forecasts don’t serve their goals.
To pay for part of those new costs, the law aims to cut spending by $1.4 trillion over a decade, mainly by imposing new reporting requirements and other restrictions on health insurance and food assistance for low-income Americans. But those savings cover less than a third of the law’s projected cost, or even less if lawmakers choose not to let the temporary tax cuts expire, so the government will need to borrow the remainder – an estimated $3.4 trillion – by selling bonds to foreign creditors.
Republicans have emphasized the fact that the tax cuts they passed during Trump’s first term in 2017 would have expired at the end of 2025, causing a tax hike had they not acted to extend them. And although the law largely keeps taxes at their current levels, rather than making major cuts, GOP lawmakers say they believe it will spur so much economic growth that new tax revenue will erase the trillions in debt the law will otherwise create.
Democrats have stressed that the GOP is paying for part of the estimated $4.5 trillion cost of those tax cuts by taking a $1 trillion bite out of Medicaid, the health insurance program for low-income people. They point out that adding to the debt is effectively a tax on future generations of Americans and say that cutting benefits and borrowing money for tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the richest people is unfair to everyone else.
Among those big-ticket items, the bill also contains dozens of other provisions that have largely flown under the radar. Here, in no particular order, are 10 of them.
New incentives for charitable giving
Since the Republicans’ 2017 tax law increased the standard deduction taxpayers can take, only about 10% of Americans have itemized their tax returns, which has been required for those who want to write off donations to charity. This year, Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho, the Republican who crafted the bill’s tax provisions as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, sought to expand that incentive to other taxpayers.
Under the new law, starting in 2026, taxpayers who take the standard deduction can also deduct up to $1,000 – or $2,000 for married couples – in qualifying donations. The law also increases the standard deduction slightly from $15,000 to $15,750 – twice that for couples who file jointly – and indexes it to rise with inflation in the years ahead.
Changing student loan payments and limits on new borrowing
Democrats and Republicans in Congress generally agree that the nation’s higher education system needs reform, but partisan differences have kept them from doing much about it. The GOP law makes several changes to the federal student loans many Americans rely on to attend colleges and universities, including the elimination of the unlimited “Grad Plus” loan program that has been blamed for rising costs and ballooning student debt.
For Americans who already have student loans, the biggest impact is likely to be from the Republicans’ replacement for the repayment plan former President Joe Biden implemented after the Supreme Court blocked his efforts at sweeping loan forgiveness. The GOP law eliminates Biden’s income-based “SAVE” plan, along with several older plans, and the Education Department announced Wednesday that borrowers enrolled in the SAVE plan will see interest start to accrue on Aug. 1.
Starting on July 1, 2026, borrowers must choose between two options: a standard repayment plan, with fixed payments over the course of 10 to 25 years, depending on the original amount borrowed, or a new income-based plan called the Repayment Assistance Plan, which increases the maximum repayment period from 25 to 30 years and changes payment calculations. That could increase monthly payments – although exact rates depend on each borrower’s income, debt and household size – and anyone on an existing income-based repayment plan will need to choose a new plan before July 2028.
$40 million for statues in a ‘Garden of Heroes’
In a speech at Mount Rushmore near the end of his first term, Trump first pitched the idea of a “Garden of Heroes” to be filled with statues of notable Americans. That vision could become a reality in his second term, after Republicans earmarked $40 million for the garden in the new law. The location of the garden isn’t decided, but the governor of South Dakota has offered a spot near Mount Rushmore.
After Trump’s initial list of Founding Fathers, civil rights leaders and other notable Americans didn’t include anyone of Indigenous, Asian or Hispanic descent, the White House released a more diverse list of names in an executive order just before he left office in 2021. The idea is still controversial, with Democrats arguing that spending millions on statues while cutting spending on health care benefits and food aid represents misplaced priorities.
A bigger child tax credit – but by less than original bill
The Republicans’ 2017 tax bill doubled the maximum child tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000 and raised the income limit for individual parents to receive that full amount from $75,000 to $200,000 a year. When Democrats took control of the House, Senate and White House in 2021, they transformed the annual credit into monthly payments totaling up to $3,600 that went to even the lowest-income parents.
The Democrats’ approach didn’t stick after some members of the party objected to its long-term cost, but the Republicans’ new bill keeps the child tax credit from reverting to the $1,000 maximum at year’s end and increases its cap to $2,200. The House version of the bill included a bigger maximum of $2,500, but GOP senators chose to reduce that amount – while preserving tax cuts for the highest-earning Americans.
Making gun silencers cheaper and easier to buy
The National Firearms Act of 1934, enacted in the Prohibition Era to crack down on gang violence and other crime, has required anyone who wants to buy a silencer or a short-barreled shotgun or rifle to fill out additional background-check forms and pay a $200 fee. Thanks to the new GOP law, that requirement is no more.
Silencers, which the gun industry prefers to call “suppressors,” are often used by hunters and sport shooters, but Republicans’ decision to eliminate the restrictions on their purchase has stoked controversy because of their association with crime. Opposition to the measure was strong enough that House lawmakers removed it from their version of the bill before sending it to the Senate, but GOP senators added it back – along with easing similar restrictions on “sawed-off” shotguns and rifles.
Tax-free inheritances up to $15 million ($30 million for couples)
Another key part of the GOP’s 2017 tax law roughly doubled the amount of money a person can inherit from a dying parent without paying taxes, to about $14 million, but that limit would have reverted to just over $7 million in 2026. Instead, Republicans made that exemption permanent and raised the limit to about $15 million for individuals, or $30 million for married couples passing on their wealth.
According to the Congressional Budget Office and Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation, this measure will cost $212 billion over 10 years, compared to what would happen if the increase were allowed to expire at year’s end. Democrats have keyed in on this provision as an example of Republicans prioritizing the wealthy over low-income Americans. Not extending those cuts, for instance, would more than pay for the estimated $186 billion in cuts to food assistance over the same 10-year period.
A temporary tax break for seniors, but not the tax-free Social Security payments Trump campaigned on
Trump campaigned on a promise to eliminate tax on the Social Security payments many American seniors rely on. The GOP law doesn’t do that, but it includes a temporary $6,000 deduction for taxpayers 65 and older beginning this year. The Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan research organization, estimates that the break would benefit fewer than half of American seniors, with the biggest benefits for those who earn between about $80,000 and $130,000 a year.
That hasn’t stopped the Trump administration from claiming it has kept that campaign promise. In an unusual move by a traditionally nonpartisan agency, the Social Security Administration sent an email to all beneficiaries on July 3 celebrating the bill’s passage and touting that nearly 90% of seniors won’t pay income taxes on their benefits, but that deduction will expire in 2028.
Politically shrewd timing means the perks come first, pain comes later
The tax breaks and other benefits of the law that Americans are likely to notice will take effect relatively soon, mostly at the start of 2026. The cuts to health care spending and other elements that could raise costs for Americans, meanwhile, will kick in later – some as late as 2029, after Trump’s term in office ends.
One relatively minor provision exemplifies the political strategy and branding savvy embedded in the bill: Tax-advantaged savings accounts, which Republicans renamed “Trump Accounts” after the original “MAGA Accounts” name didn’t cut it, will be seeded with $1,000 for every child born in the United States – but only through 2028, the last full year of the president’s term.
Tax breaks for tips, overtime wages and auto loan interest payments are likewise scheduled to expire near the end of Trump’s presidency – that is, if Congress doesn’t find that politically difficult enough that the cuts are extended. That points to another tactic both parties have deployed: Set “sunset” dates for popular provisions that serve the dual purpose of making a policy’s long-term cost appear lower while putting the other party in a bind.
Who needs a Farm Bill when there’s a Big Beautiful Bill?
Congress has traditionally passed major legislation once every two years that includes crop insurance, disaster assistance and a slew of other provisions the nation’s farmers depend on. That package, dubbed the Farm Bill, has been delayed by dysfunction and partisan squabbles for more than a year, and Republicans used the One Big Beautiful Bill Act as a vehicle for a “skinny Farm Bill” that addresses some of those needs.
When the White House published a series of statements praising the bill’s passage, many of them came from agricultural groups grateful that Congress had finally made long-awaited updates to things like crop reference prices. “Farmers and ranchers are the foundation of America’s food supply chain, and they need the certainty that this legislation will provide,” said Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation.
A $5 trillion increase to the U.S. debt limit
Despite claims by the White House and congressional Republicans that their legislation will cause such gangbusters growth to the U.S. economy that the budget deficit will actually decrease – a claim many conservative economists and former GOP budget wonks have dismissed as baseless – the law also raised the debt limit by $5 trillion, allowing the government to borrow the money needed to fund the law.
Interest on the national debt, which now exceeds $36 trillion, costs taxpayers more than every other line item in the federal budget with the exception of Social Security and Medicare – more than defense, Medicaid or veterans’ benefits, according to data from the Treasury Department. In his address to a joint session of Congress in March, Trump said he would balance the federal budget – something that hasn’t been done since the end of the Clinton administration – but his signature legislation has the opposite effect.