KCII spoke with U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley about the Big Beautiful Tax Bill, and how he begins to examine the over 1,000 page document. When asked about the bill and what comes next, he said, “Well, that’s in the House of Representatives, we haven’t even put together our bill in the United States Senate. We could work off of the house bill. I think the most important thing here is that we’ve spent a lot of time since January discussing what ought to be in the Senate tax bill. We haven’t actually written the tax bill. But tonight (Monday) at 5:45 p.m. we will gather again as members of the Senate finance committee. We are the tax writing committee in the Senate, and we’ll discuss further parts of it. So, it isn’t like we haven’t had plenty of discussion. In fact I like to say tongue in cheek, all we do is talk, talk, talk, we don’t make any decisions. But we are down to this point where we got to start making decisions now. But, I don’t expect a lot of difference between the House and Senate, because the chairman of the Senate committee has been working with the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee to try and keep the bills as closely as possible together, but they’ll never be exactly the same.” 

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office the bill would help U.S. households overall, but benefits would decrease for those in the lowest income levels because of spending cuts. The lowest levels impacted include Americans making about $17,000 to $51,000. They would lose about $700. Those with an income of less than $17,000 would lose more than $1,000 on average. Benefits would increase for those in the highest levels, including those with annual incomes of about $217,000 or more according to a preliminary analysis on May 20th. The plan would make permanent the 2017 tax cuts from Trump’s first term. It would reduce some taxes, but it would raise others, and change spending amounts.

According to the Iowa State University Iowa Community Indicators Program, the median household income in Iowa is $64,499.